George Jones

George Jones

Jones performing at Harrah's Metropolis in Metropolis, Illinois in June 2002
Background information
Birth name George Glenn Jones
Also known as No Show Jones
The Possum
Thumper Jones
"Buns" McGuirk
Born September 12, 1931 (1931-09-12) (age 79)
Origin Saratoga, Texas, USA
Genres country
Occupations singer-songwriter
Instruments acoustic guitar
vocals
Years active 1954 – Present
Labels Starday
Mercury
United Artists
Musicor
Epic
MCA Nashville
Asylum
Bandit
Associated acts Tammy Wynette
Website www.GeorgeJones.com

George Glenn Jones (born September 12, 1931) is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette.

Over the past 20 years, Jones has frequently been referred to as "the greatest living country singer."[1] Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved."

Throughout his long career, Jones made headlines often as much for tales of his drinking, stormy relationships with women, and violent rages as for his prolific career of making records and touring. His wild lifestyle led to Jones missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones." With the help of his fourth wife, Nancy, he has been sober for many years. Jones has had more than 150 hits during his career, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists. The shape of his nose and facial features have given Jones the nickname "The Possum." Jones said in an interview that he has chose to tour only about 60 dates a year.

Contents

Biography

Early life

George Glenn Jones was born on September 12, 1931 in Saratoga, Texas and raised in Vidor, Texas, along with his brother and five sisters (another sister died young before George was born),[2] and was exposed to music from an early age from his parents' record collection and listening to the gospel music he heard in church or in a barn. When George was seven, the Jones family bought a radio which introduced George to country music. The gift of a guitar when Jones was nine, he was busking for money on the streets of his hometown of Beaumont.

Jones left home at 16 and headed for Jasper, Texas where he found work singing and playing on a local radio station. Before he was out of his teens he married his first wife, Dorothy, but their union didn't last a full year and Jones joined the United States Marine Corps. Despite the Korean War being fought at the time Jones was not sent overseas; instead, he sang in bars near his base in California. After leaving the Marine Corps his music career took off.[3]

The Wild Years

Jones' alcohol consumption was legendary. For a great part of his life he woke up to a screwdriver and spent the rest of the day drinking bourbon. Perhaps one of the best known stories of Jones' drinking days occurred while he was married to Shirley Corley, his second wife. Jones resorted to some desperate measures in obtaining alcohol:

“ Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn't walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left. But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition.

I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.[4]

 ”

The riding mower incident was not a one-time event. Former wife Tammy Wynette recalled in her 1979 autobiography.

“ About 1 am I would wake up and look over to find he was gone. I got into the car and drove to the nearest bar 10 miles away.

When I pulled into the parking lot there sat our rider-mower right by the entrance. He'd driven that mower right down a main highway. He looked up and saw me and said, `Well, fellas, here she is now. My little wife, I told you she'd come after me.'[5]

 ”

Jones later jokingly sang of the lawn mower incident in his 1996 single "Honky Tonk Song", and parodied his own arrest in the song's music video.

In the 1970s, Jones was introduced to cocaine by a manager before a show in which he was too tired to perform. This accelerated his already unpredictable actions. His self-destructive bent brought him close to death and to the inside of a psychiatric hospital in Alabama at the end of the decade. Although somewhat celebrated by some of his fans as the hard-drinkin', fast-livin' spiritual-son of his idol, Hank Williams, he missed so many booked engagements that he became known as "No-Show Jones." (The song "No-Show Jones" makes fun of the foibles and weaknesses of Jones and other country singers.) He was often broke and later admitted that friends Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash came to his aid financially during this period.

Poking fun at his past, two country music videos would feature Jones arriving on a riding lawn mower. The first was Hank Williams, Jr's "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" in 1984 while the second was Vince Gill's "One More Last Chance" in 1993. Gill's song mentioned the mower with the lines "She might have took my car keys, but she forgot about my old John Deere." At the end of Gill's video, he is leaving the golf course on a John Deere tractor and greets Jones with "hey possum." Jones, arriving at the golf course driving a John Deere riding lawn mower with a set of golf clubs mounted behind him, replies to Gill "hey sweetpea."

Marriages

Jones was married twice before he turned 24. His first marriage was to Dorothy Bonvillion in 1950, which lasted but a year. They had one daughter, Susan. In 1954, Jones married Shirley Ann Corley. This marriage lasted until 1968 and they had two sons, Jeffrey and Bryan. He next married fellow country musician Tammy Wynette in 1969. They were married until 1975 and had one daughter, Tamala Georgette. Georgette Jones, now a published country singer in her own right, has performed on stage with her famous father. He married his current wife, Nancy Sepulvado, on March 4, 1983 in Woodville, Texas. Sepulvado also became his manager. Jones credits Nancy for rescuing him from drinking, as well as cocaine consumption. The couple currently live in Franklin, Tennessee.

Wives

Awards and honors

Jones has received many awards during his long career, from Most Promising New Country Vocalist in 1956 to being named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2008.

Number one country hits

  1. "White Lightning" (1955)
  2. "Tender Years" (1961)
  3. "She Thinks I Still Care" (1962)
  4. "Walk Through This World With Me" (1967)
  5. "We're Gonna Hold On" (with Tammy Wynette) (1973)
  6. "The Grand Tour" (1974)
  7. "The Door" (1975)
  8. "Golden Ring" (with Tammy Wynette) (1976)
  9. "Near You" (with Tammy Wynette) (1977)
  10. "He Stopped Loving Her Today" (1980)
  11. "(I Was Country) When Country Wasn't Cool" (with Barbara Mandrell) (1981)
  12. "Still Doin' Time" (1981)
  13. "Yesterday's Wine" (with Merle Haggard) (1982)
  14. "I Always Get Lucky With You" (1983)

Discography

For a list of singles and albums, see George Jones discography

See also

References

  1. ↑ CMT.com : George Jones : Biography
  2. ↑ Jones, George with Tom Carter (1997). I Lived To Tell It All. Dell Publishing. p. 8. ISBN 0-440-22373-3. 
  3. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2003). All Music Guide to Country (2nd edition ed.). San Francisco, CA: Backbeat. p. 387. ISBN 0-87930-760-9. 
  4. ↑ Jones, George. (1996). I Lived to Tell It All. New York: Dell Publishing Company
  5. ↑ Wynette, Tammy; Wynette, Dew and Wynette, Joan, "Stand By Your Man", 1979, New York: Simon and Schuster

Further reading

External links

2008 Kennedy Center Honorees
Morgan Freeman · George Jones · Barbra Streisand · Twyla Tharp · Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey