Personal Information
Born September
12, 1931, in Saratoga, Tex.; son of a pipe-fitter and a church
pianist; married
first wife 1949 (divorced); married second wife, 1954
(divorced, 1968); married
Tammy Wynette (a country singer), September,
1968 (divorced, 1975); married Nancy
Sepulveda, 1983; children: (second
marriage) two sons, (third marriage) Georgette.
Career
Professional singer-guitar player, c. 1945-. Began performing on
Texas radio
stations and in honky-tonks, 1945; signed with Starday Records, 1953
(some
sources say 1954), had first country hit, "Why Baby Why," 1955;
signed with
Mercury Records, 1958, moved to United Artists label, 1961, moved
to
Musicor label, 1965, and Epic Records, 1967. Military service: U.S. Marine
Corps, 1950-53.
George Jones is often called the best honky-tonk performer
of all time. An artist
whose own life mirrors the defeat and despair of his song
lyrics, Jones was one
of the most popular male country singers of the 1960s.
He has remained a
Nashville favorite to this day despite numerous bouts of drug
abuse, repeated
legal entanglements, and even an arrest for assault. Jones has
recorded so many
albums and singles that even he has lost count, but since the
1980s began he has
exerted more control over the direction of his music and the
substance of his
sound. This new control has meant that Jones's material has
returned to the
unembellished, hard-hitting honky-tonk style that brought him
his first fame.
Jones's miseries began literally at birth--the doctor who
delivered him dropped
him and broke his arm. Jones was raised in a succession
of small Texas towns,
his family finally settling in Beaumont, where his father
took work in the
shipyards. Life was hard for young George, who took what little
consolation he
could find from the guitar he learned to play at the age of nine.
When his sister
died of a fever, his grieving father turned to drink, often rousing
George and the
other children late at night to sing for him. George ran away
from home at
fourteen and began to support himself playing backup guitar for
radio programs.
By eighteen he had married--and deserted--the mother of his first
child.
Jones spent three years in the Marine Corps and then returned to
Texas to
work as a house painter. Within months he was moonlighting as a radio
performer, imitating his heroes Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, and Lefty Frizzell.
Gradually his reputation spread, and he became acquainted with H. W. "Pappy"
Daily, a producer for the Houston-based Starday label. Starday signed Jones
and
encouraged him to discover his own distinctive sound. In 1955 he had his
first
country hits, "Why Baby Why" and "You Gotta Be My Baby." The
following year he realized a dream that he had held since childhood--he was
invited
to join the Grand Ole Opry. He switched to the more prestigious
Mercury label
in 1958, where he recorded his first
"honky-tonk classics"--"White
Lightning" and "The Race Is On"--and
developed "the emotional
wail-and-moan delivery that would become his
trademark."
Between
1958 and 1971 Jones placed at least one song in the country top ten
each year.
Only Merle Haggard rivals Jones for the most number-one country
hits in the history
of the business. Jones's number-one singles include "Window
Up Above,"
which he wrote himself, "She Thinks I_Still Care," "We Must Have
Been out of Our Minds," "Take Me," "Things Have Gone to Pieces,"
"Love
Bug," "I'm a People," and "You Can't Get There
from Here." Record
companies bid for Jones's services, and he switched several
times, working at
United Artists, Musicor, and finally Epic. For more than a
decade he turned out
albums at a staggering rate and toured almost without a
break.
The relentless pace Jones set inevitably began to take its toll. By the mid-1960s
the singer began to drink heavily and behave erratically, missing concert dates
entirely or playing only abbreviated programs. His reputation received a
reprieve
in 1967, when he began to tour with Tammy Wynette. Both Jones and
Wynette were
at the peak of their careers at the time, and they proved a
winning duo. They
were married in 1968. For a time the marriage seemed to
steady Jones--he and
Wynette even ended their concerts with a song version of
their wedding vows--but
turbulence developed and Jones began drinking
heavily again. Jones and Wynette
divorced in 1975 and quarrelled openly for
some years thereafter.
The
late 1970s proved a nadir for Jones. He had to declare bankruptcy after a
number
of show promoters sued him for missed dates. Alcohol abuse led to
automobile
accidents, fights with lovers, and one instance where he fired a gun
at a male
friend. By 1983 he had been hospitalized and arrested repeatedly for
alcohol
and cocaine use and sued by a legion of creditors and ex-wives.
His problems "only
made him more irresistible to his fans."
Even as he wrestled with the shambles
of his personal life, Jones made a
momentous professional decision: he vowed
to return to the traditional country
sound that he had always loved, a sound
that had too long been submerged in
over-produced tracks.
Jones told
High Fidelity that he allowed his producers--among them the
celebrated Billy
Sherrill--to orchestrate his material in such a way that it might
appeal to the
"crossover" audience. "I went along with the record company
against
my better judgment," he said. "I didn't wanna do it, but I let them put
strings on my sessions just out of curiosity, more or less, just to see what they
might do. ... When you use strings and horns and all these things, you just don't
have country music anymore ... you abuse it. To try to sell two or three hundred
thousand more records ... hell, a man could always use the money, but I
wouldn't
go out of my way to have that big a production on my records,
because I'm never
gonna sell pop."
Jones's return to his roots salvaged his career. Works
such as He Stopped
Loving Her Today, My Very Special Guests, and Shine On assured
Jones a
front-runner position in the resurgent honky-tonk format.
"Unlike
most country singers," the critic
writes, "there is no cheap melodrama
in his singing. He works his rough Texas
voice with a noble gravity, wringing
from every work its full color and power.
He has a poet's sense of rhythm: the
most pedestrian lyrics emerge from his
mouth with teutonic dignity.
Many
times Jones has said that he plays, sings, and writes country music out of
a
deep love for the genre. He has been Quoted as saying
"I wouldn't care if
I even got paid for
the dates, because how can you put a price on it?... It's
really not that important
to me, as far as glory, popularity, and those things.
I just feel like I'm makin'
people happy, that they're likin' what I'm doin'.
And they durn sure make me
happy when I walk out on that stage. That's all that's
really important to me."
