Two years since George Jones went home!

[Niels Andrews]

I just find that hard to believe. I think I will play a little George today.

[Joachim Kettner]

I came to real Country Music late. My first experience was listening to "Sweetheart" back in'68. Then in the late seventies Roger McGuinn did "Why Baby Why". But to hear him sing "in person" it took the Bradley Barn Sessions. He was one of the greatest singers. RIP Mr. George Jones.

[Graham]

double post

[Graham]

George was a singer who grew on you. Hated him when I first came to country music but soon changed my mind.

He recorded 159 lp's with major labels, (Starday;Mercurey;United Artists;Musicor;Epic;MCA;Elektra;BNA and Bandit).

I am missing 7

These 159 were just his mainline lp's, no budget lp's included in the mix.

In this mix, is this lp:



Put out by Mercury in 1957. Volume 1 was put out by Starday in 1956.

This lp does not show up in any discography of George Jones!

[John Booth]

There will never be another George.

[Dan Behringer]

I was 10 years old in 1970 when my Dad told me that he recently discovered that George Jones was the greatest singer in the world. Now being that Pa was a professional musician, I really couldn’t doubt what he was telling me was true. But.. I’ve always been the skeptical type and I wanted to understand “why” he said that.
I’ve spent all these years listening to people sing, and trying to judge their talent. The end result is that to this day I have yet to hear anyone who could match the things George Jones could do with his vocal chords.... and old Dad sure knew what he was talking about.
If you don’t understand this, then you should start listening too!

[John Booth]

I understand it Brother.
I was so upset when he died I went to Nashville for the service.
I spent a lot of nights listening to George and drinkin'.
(Course' I dun give all that up now)
But I don't think I'd trade that time for anything.
JB

[Graham]

Dan:
I'll name two for you - Johnny Paycheck and Sammy Kershaw.

Listen to Paychecks' Little Darlin' records and you will hear similar voice inflections to George.
With Kershaw's new tribute cd to George, "Do You Know Me", if you close your eyes you can almost see George singing these songs. I never thought anybody else could sing He Stopped Loving Her Today after George did it but I was wrong!

[John Booth]

No doubt Sammy is the logical choice to carry the torch, he is very talented
and George's influence on him is very obvious. Also Sammy has that
"special something" that can reach deeper into a ballad than probably anyone else at this time.
JB

[Dan Behringer]

It’s not just about voice inflections or driving emotion. What set George above everyone else was his ability to hit any note at will. When he was in his prime, he could sing as high as any woman and as low as any man. His range was just phenomenal, and his ability to hit any note in that range just hasn’t been duplicated.. It seemed he could hit all them notes at once too! Billy Sherrill said, He’s the only person he ever heard that could make a 5 syllable word out of Church”. I think he was talking about the song A Picture of Me Without You.

Another aspect was his harmony singing. Any human being is going to have a certain range in which their vocal chords and ear are going to allow them to hit harmonizing notes, but George didn’t seem to have those limitations. He could sing anything from bass to tenor harmony, and his close harmony to a woman singer was unreal. I have found that even a lot of musicians can’t hear close harmony notes, (for some reason?). One example, in Golden Ring with Tammy, in every chorus when they say “self” in “by it-self”, that note he hits just sends shivers down my spine. Old Fashioned Singing with Tammy is another great one for his high harmony. Also, listen to all he does in You Don’t Seem To Miss Me with Patty Loveless.

I know there have been a bunch of great singers down through the years. For my money, Lefty Frizzell was the only one that could come close to George’s ability to torture his vocal chords into any note at will. Listen to the ending Lefty puts on the song Mom and Dad’s Waltz to see what I mean here.

One thing that can’t be argued, no one else has had a voice that could put recordings on the music charts for 5 decades, and have number one hits in 4 different decades. If George hadn’t been such a crazy man hellbent on self destruction, and if he had approached music as a business, he could have been the richest man in the world.

[Jay Noel]

I started in the music business in 1961 when I was five years old. My favorite singer then and now was George Jones. Listening back to some of those early tunes George was very nasal and twangy. But even then the uniqueness of his voice was notable. As said in earlier posts his ability to turn syllables out of a couple of words with numerous notes was legendary. but it was also in his delivery. A great example I can think of to illustrate this is the song, "Tell me my lying eyes are wrong" on the tag line at the end of the song while the background singers are singing the tag, he delivers the lines "lying eyes are wrong" in a unique delivery out of time with the background singers, yet conveying the hurt and pain of the man who obviously doesn't want to believe his sweetheart is unfaithful to him in a superb manner.
Rumor is that his slurred voice also lent uniqueness in his song White Lightning when he said, "took one sllluuuuggg and drank it on down". It is ironic that the greatest Country song of all time, was at first hated by George. He usually had a sense of a hit song, but missed this one greatly, responsible for resurrecting his career, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is arguably the greatest country song ever written. I think Choices was one of his best albums in later years, and his vocals, although not quite as strong as his younger years, still are light-years ahead of most of todays singers. In fact that is just it -- George was not just a "singer" he was a "vocalist". George is missed and will be missed for a long, long, time.