Late in the book, he quotes a newspaper review of Jones’s memoir, “ I Lived to Tell It All,” which was released in 1996, three years before its author’s near-fatal drunken-driving accident: “Even diehard Jones fans are likely to tire of the umpteenth remembrance of another blown show date. The couple released a string of early-’70s ballads that seemed to comment directly on their marital struggles, such as “We’re Gonna Hold On” and “Once You’ve Had the Best.” But Kienzle attributes even this artistic exhibitionism to famed producer and songwriter Billy Sherrill’s shrewdness rather than any sense of agency on Jones’s part. Like West, Jones offered his fans titillating glimpses into his marriage, at least his 1969-1975 marriage to Tammy Wynette, a country star in her own right.
For example, he had a habit of taunting via CB radio the handlers andĬoke dealers who would come looking for him when he missed a show. Kienzle’s evident admiration for his subject does not keep him from reporting innumerable episodes that make Jones seem more coddled and petulant than Kanye West has ever been. The oft-told yarn about how Jones rode his lawn mower eight miles to the nearest liquor store after his second wife, Shirley Corley, hid the car keys turns out to be “a true story that only added to the Jones legend.” His subject, after all, is a man who, for all his extraordinary power to convey sadness in song, loved nothing more than to putter around on his riding lawn mower. That’s as far as Kienzle’s attempts at psychoanalysis go and maybe as far as they could. Kienzle draws a link between this chronic absenteeism and the abuse that the young Jones endured at the hands of his alcoholic father, who demanded that his boy sing on command. The nickname he earned and eventually embraced - “No-Show Jones” - alluded to his habit of failing to turn up for concerts, a violation of the most basic contract between performer and audience. He was an ineffably gifted vocalist whose huge success in the late ’50s through the early ’80s never translated to an interest in the world beyond the South, and who lost what should have been his prime years as a performer to his dependency on booze and cocaine. He wasn’t a reflective artist like his contemporary Johnny Cash or an industry rebel like Willie Nelson or a social critic like Merle Haggard. As he observes in the prologue to his new biography, “ The Grand Tour,” Jones was “above all a master interpreter” rather than, primarily, a songwriter. Vu ♥ ♥ ♥ twitter.In attempting to pinpoint the genius of beloved country singer George Jones, Rich Kienzle has given himself a bear of an assignment. To keep track of all the musicians who died this year, head over to Musicians Who Died in 2021.
he's a representative of the days of smooth-voiced, sharp-dressed country singers who helped position what was once dismissed as "hillbilly" music as a commodity that would move uptown." Wide Open Country's Bobby Moore profiled Jackson just last year, saying ".
THE GRAND TOUR GEORGE JONES FULL
The late Porter Wagoner would introduce Stonewall on his show by saying he came to the Opry "with a heart full of love and a sack full of songs."
His 1971 Recorded Live at the Grand Ole Opry was the first "live" album ever recorded at Nashville's 'Mother Church of Country Music', the Ryman Auditorium. Over his career, Stonewall landed 44 singles on the Billboard country chart. the D.J.," and "Waterloo," which later became his signature song. Some of Jackson's hits included "Life To Go," penned by the late, great George Jones, "Smoke Along the Track," "B.J.