The Essential George Jones is pretty good, and almost even good enough. But since it skips right over his Musicor years (not to mention most of the last twenty years), it falls a little short in being the only Possum you'll ever need.
John Owen is a music writer, multi-instrumentalist and music industry veteran based in coastal Massachusetts.
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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.