Country Music Memories

One of the legends of country music died yesterday. George Jones had several nicknames over the years, "The Possum" and "No Show Jones" being two of the most famous. He was a hard drinker for many years, and his drug addictions and numerous failed marriages were the stuff of tabloid fodder. You don't see a lot of performers who truly qualify to be called "larger-than-life," but George Jones was definitely one of them.

I loved his music. Any fan of traditional country music loves George Jones. I remember hearing "White Lightning" when I was a kid and being enchanted by the sound effects it included (the sound of a cork being pulled out of a jug, for example), and as I grew older, I came to appreciate just how much drama and emotion Jones's songs conveyed. I teared up today when I listened to one of his greatest songs, "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Everyone loved that song, it was an instant favorite, but everyone also has at least one other George Jones song that they love. Mine is "Choices," a song from 1999 about living your life according to your own rules. There was always a rather thin line between the words of his songs and the events of his life, so when he readily admits in the song that some of his choices were mistakes, you know that's coming from a place of deep, personal understanding.





The list of great George Jones songs goes on and on. A few of my other favorites:

• "Window Up Above," one of his first songs to convey the sadness of love gone wrong
• "She Thinks I Still Care," a great song with a sly sense of humor to it
• "A Good Year for the Roses," which he recorded twice, perhaps most famously with Alan Jackson
• "A Picture of Me (Without You)," a song which Lorrie Morgan covered in the 1990s, but no one sings it like the original
• "The Grand Tour," a remarkably poignant song about a man who has truly lost everything important to him
• "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)," the song that, to me, perhaps best represents the intertwining of lyrics and personal life

And then there were the duets with Tammy Wynette, whose voice still makes me shiver. I loved Tammy Wynette, and her pairings with her then-husband were legendary. I have a story to tell about one of them in particular. "Golden Ring" came out in 1976, just a couple of years after my maternal grandparents divorced. That summer my grandmother and I spent a couple of weeks with my mother in northern Illinois, and "Golden Ring" (which was recorded the year after George and Tammy had themselves divorced) was a staple on country music radio. We were sitting at the kitchen table one day when it came on, and my grandmother remarked how much she liked the song. My mother and I acknowledged this but didn't place much importance on it. My grandmother returned home to Mississippi and I stayed a few weeks longer in Illinois until my grandfather came to pick me up. We were in the kitchen one day when the song came on, and he too said that he really liked the song. At this point, my mother and I made eye contact and silently noted that both of them probably had some regrets about having ending their marriage and that the song had caused those feelings to resurface. We knew they still loved each other, but they just couldn't be married any longer.

"Golden Ring" isn't the true story of what happened between George and Tammy, and it certainly isn't the story of what actually happened between my grandparents, but its message about two people who love each other despite not being able to live with each other certainly resonated with my family.

I think that's what makes George Jones's music so great, so timeless.His music was about love and loss, about pain and regret. His voice conveyed the difficulties of life and put you into the song in a way that few of today's country singers (or singers of any kind of music, for that matter) can ever achieve. I posted the video for his song "Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes" on Facebook as a tribute yesterday because I truly think we've seen the last of singers like George Jones.

I had only one chance to see him in my lifetime. He was playing in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the 1980s. Family members were buying tickets and asked me if I wanted to come home from the university on the weekend to go to the concert. Jones's reputation for failing to make appearances at the time was at its height, and I thought it would be a waste of money to buy a ticket for someone who wasn't likely to show up. They went to the concert without me and, of course, it turned out to be one of the greatest shows they ever saw. I have a few regrets about people I had the chance to see perform live but never did (Bea Arthur, for example), and missing that show in Tupelo is certainly one of them.