George Jones: 1931-2013

by Julian Spivey
It seems to be universal among fellow country singers that George Jones was the greatest country singer to ever live. I really don’t know that I believe that, but when listening to a track like the legendary “He Stopped Loving Her Today” it’s almost impossible to argue with. Jones may or may not be the greatest to ever live, but there’s a small (maybe almost insignificant to some) moment in his 1980 career reigniting hit that I believe may be the greatest vocal in music history. It’s the inflection of utter heartache he places on the word ‘her’ in the chorus that makes you realize just how much his song’s character hurt and pined for a love that was lost long ago, but never gone from his heart. Nothing is more poetic than a love that only death can quench, and while the words of Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam are certainly special, it’s the soaring vocal of Jones that makes the melancholic song (maybe the saddest ever recorded) absolutely timeless.
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The legend Johnny Cash always extolled that Jones was his favorite singer of all-time and crooner Frank Sinatra once remarked that Jones was the “second best white singer in America,” after him, of course. How badass is that? When two performers, who are among the all-time best themselves, put Jones on that high of a pedestal you have to take listen.

Jones was one of the all-time greats because he could seemingly do anything with his voice and capture just the right emotion needed at the exact right moment, just like the previously mentioned sadness in his magnum opus or the rich baritone on beloved lines like “hotter than a two dollar pistol” on “The Corvette Song (The One I Loved Back Then)” or that spine tingling twang he’d throw out so often on classics like “The Race Is On.” If there was an emotion in a lyric that desperately needed to be captured he’d find it and deliver it flawlessly, often times intonating a feeling that was probably never even imagined possible by the songwriter. The phrase “his voice was his instrument” is cliché and oftentimes too quixotic, but with Jones it rings true.

He was not only one of the greatest singers to ever grace any genre of popular music in this country, but also one of music’s greatest characters – something that led to maybe more negatives in his lifetime than positives. There was the pain of lost love and abusive relationships and the troubling and torturing addictions of alcohol and drugs. There were his numerous failings to show up for concerts and arrests and warrants. When he sang about pain and sorrow it was real because many times in his life he had felt it. He lived his songs like so many of the greats often do, for good or bad, and like so many of those today claim to, but rarely (if ever) do. He was a real person with real faults and this just helped to make his music more believable, more lifelike and more real.

George Jones died on Friday, April 26 at the age of 81, but his music and his legacy and those unbelievably fantastic inflections and intonations never will. In a 1985 classic Jones questioned, ‘who’s gonna fill their shoes?’ The answer: no one. Some shoes are just too large to fill.