(An aside. What is it about geniuses with drug problems? The mental image of George Jones peeling himself off a sticky studio couch with a crushing hangover and stepping up to the microphone to unfurl a searing and perfect vocal take reminds me of the legendary session that bassist James Jamerson played for Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On. Jamerson reputedly came up with the perfect and eternal bass line of the title song in one heroic take from the floor of the studio, lying flat on his back because he was too high to get up. What is it about geniuses with drug problems?)
Since the high water mark of his "He Stopped Loving Her Today," his last #1 single, Jones has aged into a gray eminence of country music, releasing decent-to-good albums that sell okay and are mostly totally ignored by the country establishment. His voice has somehow only deepened and become richer with age, even as Jones gets well into his seventies. He has also become one of the great touchstones of country music, a wellspring from which scores of younger musicians have drawn inspiration. And yet, Nashville treats him like a leper. In one telling incident from 1999, the Country Music Association refused to let Jones sing all the verses of his latest hit, the CMA-nominated "Choices," at the Country Music Awards, citing time constraints. Jones chose to boycott the show instead, and in a surprise move, singer Alan Jackson sang a verse or two of "Choices" at the end of his own CMA performance, in a show of solidarity with one of his idols.
In the same year, No-Show Jones almost lived up to the promise of his other nickname, The Possum. Newly sober yet somehow hammered on vodka, Jones wrapped his car around a Tennessee underpass and very nearly died. Although he had been through countless close shaves and near-death experiences in his career, this one seemed to bring it home to him that it was finally time to straighten up and fly right. With each passing year, it seems more and more likely that The Possum will die peacefully in his sleep rather than as a pink smear decorating a quarter mile of lonesome highway.
Any serious fan of American music really needs to have some George Jones in his collection. But knowing just what to buy can be rough. Jones has recorded dozens of LPs in his half-century career, and the majority are wildly uneven affairs that aren't really for novices. On the other hand, the greatest hits collections also tend to have drawbacks: they are poorly selected and cheaply licensed, confined to one era or one label's output, or too broad and expensive for beginners.
Article comments
1 - Vern Halen
Why Baby Why & The Race is On were both covered by Jason & the Scorchers during their career. I;m not a big fan of Jones' ballads, but he oughta get a medal for writing those two rockin' classics.
2 - John Owen
Those are two good songs for sure! It's funny... Jones has this whole parallel career of weird honky-tonk raveups that you never hear about. Just about every LP of his I've ever heard has one or two, and some of them are even half-decent. But it's not what he's known for, and this Essentials disc doesn't contain even one of these songs from after 1964. Kinda a shame.
I've actually never been clear on how much hand Jones had in writing any of his material. Although a lot of his early stuff credits him as a co-writer, I get the impression that that's just a formality for the sake of royalties, and that his co-writers are actually the real songwriters generally.
I beg any and all blogcritics to set me straight on this...
3 - Vern Halen
Correction - sorry. The Race is On was a cover on the first Georgia Satellites 12" EP, not the Scorchers, although who knows? - maybe the Scorchers did it in concert. My memory is good, but it's short.
Yeah, that whole Nashville thing is odd - I figure if you'd look behind the songwriting credits for many major artists you'd find there's more ghost writing than you'd ever imagined.