NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — George Jones, the peerless, hard-living
country singer who recorded dozens of hits about good times and
regrets and peaked with the heartbreaking classic "He Stopped Loving
Her Today," has died. He was 81.
Jones died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in
Nashville, according to his publicist Kirt Webster. He was
hospitalized with fever and irregular blood pressure, forcing him to
postpone two shows.
With one of the most golden voices of any genre, a clenched, precise,
profoundly expressive baritone, Jones had No. 1 songs in five separate
decades, 1950s to 1990s. He was idolized not just by fellow country
artists, but by Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, James
Taylor and countless others. "If we all could sound like we wanted to,
we'd all sound like George Jones," Waylon Jennings once sang.
In a career that lasted more than 50 years, "Possum" evolved from
young honky-tonker to elder statesman as he recorded more than 150
albums and became the champion and symbol of traditional country
music, a well-lined link to his hero, Hank Williams. Jones survived
long battles with alcoholism and drug addiction, brawls, accidents and
close encounters with death, including bypass surgery and a tour bus
crash that he only avoided by deciding at the last moment to take a
plane.
His failure to appear for concerts left him with the nickname "No Show
Jones," and he later recorded a song by that name and often opened his
shows by singing it. His wild life was revealed in song and in his
handsome, troubled face, with its dark, deep-set eyes and dimpled
chin.
In song, he was rowdy and regretful, tender and tragic. His hits
included the sentimental "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes," the foot-
tapping "The Race is On," the foot-stomping "I Don't Need Your Rockin'
Chair," the melancholy "She Thinks I Still Care," the rockin' "White
Lightning," and the barfly lament "Still Doing Time." Jones also
recorded several duets with Tammy Wynette, his wife for six years,
including "Golden Ring," ''Near You," ''Southern California" and
"We're Gonna Hold On." He also sang with such peers as Willie Nelson
and Merle Haggard and with Costello and other rock performers.
But his signature song was "He Stopped Loving Her Today," a weeper
among weepers about a man who carries his love for a woman to his
grave. The 1980 ballad, which Jones was sure would never be a hit,
often appears on surveys as the most popular country song of all time.
Jones won Grammy awards in 1981 for "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and
in 1999 for "Choices." He was elected to the Country Music Hall of
Fame in 1992 and in 2008 was among the artists honored in Washington
at the Kennedy Center.
Jones continued to make appearances and put out records, though his
hit records declined.
"I don't want to completely quit because I don't know what to do with
myself," he said in 2005. "I'll be out there as long as the people
want me to be out there."
Jones was a purist who lamented the transformation of country music
from the family feeling of the 1950s to the hit factory of the early
21st century. He was so caught up in country, old country, that when a
record company executive suggested he record with James Taylor, Jones
insisted he had never heard of the million selling singer-songwriter.
He was equally unimpressed when told that Neil Young had come to visit
backstage and declined to see him, saying he didn't know who he was.
He did listen to the Rolling Stones, only because of the guitar
playing of Keith Richards, a country fan who would eventually record
with Jones.
Asked about what he thought about Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and
other young stars, Jones said they were good but they weren't making
traditional country music.
"What they need to do really, I think, is find their own title," he
said.
In 1991, country star Alan Jackson dedicated his hit song "Don't Rock
the Jukebox" to Jones, asking in the song that country music remain
faithful to the Jones style instead of drifting toward rock 'n' roll.
Jones was born Sept. 12, 1931, in a log house near the east Texas town
of Saratoga, the youngest of eight children. He sang in church and at
age 11 began performing for tips on the streets of Beaumont, Texas.
His first outing was such a success that listeners tossed him coins,
placed a cup by his side and filled it with money. Jones estimated he
made more than $24 for his two-hour performance, enough to feed his
family for a week, but he used up the cash at a local arcade.
"That was my first time to earn money for singing and my first time to
blow it afterward," he recalled in "I Lived to Tell it All," a
painfully self-critical memoir published in 1996. "It started what
almost became a lifetime trend."
The family lived in a government-subsidized housing project, and his
father, a laborer, was an alcoholic who would rouse the children from
bed in the middle of the night to sing for him. His father also noted
that young George liked music and bought him a Gene Autry guitar, with
a horse and lariat on the front, that Jones practiced on obsessively.
He got his start on radio with husband and wife team Eddie & Pearl in
the late 1940s. Hank Williams once dropped by the studio to promote a
new record, and Jones was invited to back him on guitar. When it came
time to play, he froze.
"Hank had 'Wedding Bells' out at the time," Jones recalled in a 2003
Associated Press interview. "He started singing it, and I never hit
the first note the whole song. I just stared."
After the first of his four marriages failed, he enlisted in the
Marine Corps in 1951 and served three years. He cut his first record
when he got out, an original fittingly called "No Money in This Deal."
He had his first hit with "Why Baby Why" in 1955, and by the early
'60s Jones was one of country music's top stars.
"I sing top songs that fit the hardworking, everyday loving person.
That's what country music is about," Jones said in a 1991 AP
interview. "My fans and real true country music fans know I'm not a
phony. I just sing it the way it is and put feeling in it if I can and
try to live the song."
Jones was married to Wynette, his third wife, from 1969 to 1975.
(Wynette died in 1998.) Their relationship played out in Nashville
like a country song, with hard drinking, fights and reconciliations.
Jones' weary knowledge of domestic warfare was immortalized in such
classics as "The Battle," set to the martial beat of "The Battle Hymn
of the Republic."
After one argument, Jones drove off on a riding mower in search of a
drink because Wynette had taken his car keys to keep him from
carousing. Years earlier, married to his second wife, he had also sped
off in a mower in search of a drink. Jones referred to his mowing days
in the 1996 release, "Honky Tonk Song."
His drug and alcohol abuse grew worse in the late '70s, and Jones had
to file for bankruptcy in 1978. A manager had started him on cocaine,
hoping to counteract his boozy, lethargic performances, and Jones was
eventually arrested in Jackson, Miss., in 1983 on cocaine possession
charges. He agreed to perform a benefit concert and was sentenced to
six months probation.
"In the 1970s, I was drunk the majority of the time," Jones wrote in
his memoir. "If you saw me sober, chances are you saw me asleep."
In 1980, a 3-minute song changed his life. His longtime producer,
Billy Sherrill, recommended he record "He Stopped Loving Her Today," a
ballad by Curly Putnam and Bobby Braddock. The song took more than a
year to record, partly because Jones couldn't master the melody, which
he confused with Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make it Through the
Night," and partly because he was too drunk to recite a brief, spoken
interlude ("She came to see him one last time/And we all wondered if
she would/And it kept running through my mind/This time he's over her
for good.")
"Pretty simple, eh?" Jones wrote in his memoir. "I couldn't get it. I
had been able to sing while drunk all of my life. I'd fooled millions
of people. But I could never speak without slurring when drunk. What
we needed to complete that song was the narration, but Billy could
never catch me sober enough to record four simple spoken lines."
Jones was convinced the song was too "morbid" to catch on. But "He
Stopped Loving Her Today," featuring a string section that hummed,
then soared, became an instant standard and virtually canonized him.
His concert fee jumped from $2,500 a show to $25,000.
"There is a God," he recalled.
In 1983, Jones married his fourth and final wife, Nancy Sepulveda,
whom he credited with stablizing his private life. He had four
children, one with first wife Dorothy Bonvillion, two with second wife
Shirley Ann Corley and one with Wynette. His daughter with Wynette,
Georgette Jones, became a country singer and even played her mother in
the 2008 TV series "Sordid Lives."
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