The Grand Tour

by Rich Kienzle

  Those feelings of inferiority and occasional self-loathing remained. When he overcame his fears playing for an audience of hippies and his core blue-collar fans at a 1976 gathering, he was triumphant. Offered a prestigious showcase booking in New York a year later, he agreed, only to flee before he could be flown there, convinced he was unworthy and uncomfortable with the notion of performing for the celebrities and media stars invited to hear him. At his lowest, mentally and physically, in an era before rehab became respectable, even commitments to hospitals didn’t help. Consequently, few expected him to live long. Yet amid that dark time, he emerged with the song destined to stand among his many triumphs as his definitive statement: “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

  Jones’s death spiral seemed fixed when he met Nancy Sepulvado in 1981. Their relationship heralded a new beginning, though his turnaround wasn’t immediate. With no background in music, this simple, blue-collar woman fell in love with the man, not the star. She’d endure his worst, be an innocent bystander at incidents including a cocaine arrest that would likely end the career of any other country singer. Slowly, particularly after the couple moved back to his home territory of East Texas, where he had family, Jones realized he had a true partner, the support he hadn’t had or taken advantage of in the past. The couple married, and by the early 1980s he began to gain an equilibrium he hadn’t had before. The cocaine vanished; the drinking continued, but he had greater control over his intake, enabling him to largely avoid the binges. There were backslides, including a near-fatal 1999 vehicle accident near his Franklin, Tennessee, home. Nonetheless, a man many expected would die in his late forties or early fifties endured and flourished for three more decades. He lived to enjoy—and gracefully accept—a stream of honors including his 1992 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, his 2003 National Medal of the Arts, and the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors.

  Even these more sanguine years had bittersweet moments. George’s fans and peers continued to revere him, but the passage of time diminished his once-routine successes on records as younger generations of singers, some inspired by him, began to dominate the music. Decades of heavy smoking eroded the respiratory system that regulates every vocalist’s skills and power. Singing that was once effortless, even in his darker periods, gradually became more difficult. Yet he persevered until his Final Grand Tour, conceived to conclude with his retirement. He died in 2013, clear of mind, fully aware the end was approaching.

  All of this history fuels a cumulative perception that George Jones is defined by wildness, drinking binges, fistfights on the road, and endless tales of bad behavior that took place around Nashville, northern Alabama, and every other place where he traveled or performed. Documented stories and legends are told, retold, and explored. And that is a vital part of the story. His domestic issues, cavalier irresponsibility with money, and inability to meet commitments or his responsibilities are all essential to the narrative, vital to understanding his simple yet complex makeup. Much of his life was an open book, free of many of the showbiz facades constructed to help performers control their narrative. George himself admitted that at times when he missed shows, an agent or manager would suggest claiming illness. More than once, Jones responded, “Tell ’em I was drunk!” Nonetheless, he was in many ways impossible to fully know or understand, a condition rooted in the Big Thicket area of East Texas where he grew up. Thicket men literally beat their own trails, to hell with what anyone thought.

  There was, however, another equally important part of that narrative. Jones’s life and music are inseparable. The music often triumphed even during his worst personal moments. His evolution from twangy imitator to distinctive new voice, from influential vocalist to master of his craft, is as important as his personal failings. Exploring that musical side—how he found songs and recorded them; the perspectives of the public, those involved in creating his records, and Jones himself—is pivotal to understanding the story.

  I’ve attempted to take the long view, examining not only his life and the events that shaped him from start to present, but simultaneously exploring his immense musical legacy, all in a clear chronological context. I’ve examined how he was perceived by the media of the times and spoken to people who knew him well and saw him at his best and worst on the road, at home, and in the studio. Like any other prolific artist, he recorded gems and throwaways, and noting a lapse is not denigrating an entire career.

  I hope that if I’ve achieved anything, I’ve chronicled and explored his life and art and taken a step or two toward defining his pivotal place in country music history—and, more important, his stature in American popular music and culture.

  There was and will be only one George Jones. His life is part of the American fabric. Even so, it’s the voice—always the voice—that has defined that life for posterity.

  CHAPTER 1

  1931–1953

  It’s a story that persists today: the Ghost Light of Bragg Road, built on an old railroad line in the Big Thicket near Saratoga, Texas. No one seems sure if it’s swamp gas, car headlights, a dead railroad worker’s ghost carrying a light, or what, but Bragg Road to this day has the nickname “Ghost Road.”

  The legend is understandable. The Thicket, in southeast Texas, was a huge and forbidding region of piney woods, bayous, swamps, and backwoods, more like Louisiana than the Texas prairie. It stood out against the largely flat and arid background of the Lone Star State. Remote and untamed, it dominated five rural counties at its largest and covered between two and three million acres. The Brazos River bordered it on the west, the Sabine River on the east. The town of Nacogdoches marked the northern border. It once ran south until not far from the Gulf Coast.

  Nature, not man, held the cards. Dense woods and wild creatures within the Thicket made it a sort of terrestrial black hole, a place that explorers and even Native Americans largely avoided due to the potential for entering and never exiting. The area has seven types of hickory trees, according to a Department of the Interior survey, not to mention multiple types of oak and cypress. A similar diversity applies to the vines and shrubs there. At one time, the Thicket had junglelike wildlife in its midst: coyotes, wolves, bears, ocelots along with bobcats and foxes. Alligators, turtles, snakes—some of them lethal—and lizards were abundant.

  Inevitably, civilization intruded. Nineteenth-century outlaws on the lam from some other part of the country began settling there in part because of the isolation. Confederate deserters arrived during the Civil War. They faced a difficult life in the Thicket, which wasn’t the optimal place to plant crops and was highly vulnerable to flooding. Settlers had to be resourceful just to stay alive. When lumber companies saw vast, seemingly endless acres to be harvested in the 1880s, the region began attracting workers willing to cut down the trees.

  The Thicket developed its own unwritten code, where laws mattered less than a rugged libertarianism. People left others alone unless their space or rights were being violated. For those who got in someone else’s way, the resolution was often swift and violent. Husbands were expected to provide for their families, wives were to handle domestic chores and accept whatever the husband dished out. Breadwinners who did not provide adequately were considered unsavory. Racism and violence against minorities were part of everyday life, one reason many African Americans and Latinos avoided the area. Just as violence, domestic and otherwise, was common, drinking was part of the austere lifestyle, the booze largely homemade. Gunplay, not surprisingly, was also part of everyday life, whether aimed at a bear or at somebody who provoked a fight or stole something from someone else. The region became a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism delivered in primitive, ramshackle churches matching equally primitive, ramshackle houses built of logs and wood.

  J.F. Cotton, who settled in one area of the Thicket, discovered a mineral spring there before the Civil War and later found oil beneath the ground. He did little with it at the time, but in the 1880s, businessmen began promoting the springs to attract people seeking their
therapeutic value. A hotel was constructed there and the growing community dubbed Saratoga, named for upstate New York’s Saratoga Springs. The government opened a Saratoga post office in 1884. After Spindletop, the first major oil field in Texas, was discovered south of the Thicket, in Beaumont, in 1901, the region became open to exploration, including the Thicket itself and the area around Saratoga. Other settlements grew, including Kountze, Thicket, and Sour Lake. The oil fields did in the springs, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad ran a branch into Saratoga to service the lumber and oil activities.

  The town was laid out with three sections reflecting the community’s phases of growth. Old Town was adjacent to the site of the springs; New Saratoga adjoined the oil fields that came next. Depot Town sat near the railroad station. By the time of the Depression, however, the oil fields were largely tapped out and the lumber industry had drastically diminished the Thicket. A 1936 survey found it covered no more than a million acres. Conservationists viewed it as a laboratory for biodiversity worth preserving before it disappeared, an effort that increased after World War II. To protect what remained, President Gerald Ford signed legislation creating the Big Thicket National Preserve, administered by the National Park Service, in 1974.

  George Washington Jones had Alabama roots. His ancestors had left there for Texas in the first half of the nineteenth century. Frank Jones, his grandfather, had been a Confederate officer whose son, David Raleigh Jones, born in Nacogdoches in 1872, married Mississippi native Mary Elizabeth Farris, a tough, volatile woman who enjoyed a drink or two and whose family had a reputation for hard living. The couple had separated by the time of George Washington Jones’s birth in Lufkin, Texas, on January 10, 1895. Living with his mother and her family, he grew into a tall, strong man who enjoyed the bottle, played the harmonica, and danced, but also possessed a powerful work ethic that never left him.

  Clara Patterson’s ancestors also hailed from out of state. Her mother, Martha, was born in Mississippi before her family moved west and settled in the Thicket. Her Florida-born father, Jepton Littleton Patterson, known as Uncle Litt, was a deeply religious farmer. He not only imparted his fundamentalist spirituality to his fourteen children—twelve daughters and two sons—he also constructed a church on his property. Clara, the couple’s seventh child, was born in Nona, Texas, on March 10, 1896. Her love of family and religion were seamless. As she matured, she became a fine singer and formidable organist, the last young woman one would think would fall for someone like George Washington Jones.

  When they met in the tiny settlement of Thicket, Texas, northwest of Saratoga, each found much to like about the other, leading to a move totally out of character for Clara. The couple secretly married on August 14, 1915. Clara’s father, well aware that his new son-in-law was part of the rowdy Farris clan, was not happy. The couple settled in the Thicket, moving from rented house to rented house through the region over the next twenty-five years. They both realized mere survival required backbreaking labor in the thick, hot, piney woods and taking whatever work could be found.

  The census of 1920 revealed George Washington Jones, twenty-four, and Clara Patterson Jones, twenty-three, renting a home in Hardin County, in the middle of the Thicket. They had one child, Ethel, born in 1918. George’s listed occupation was “teamster,” connected to the local logging industry. The couple and their expanding family scraped out a living through sheer determination. George did whatever he could to provide for the family, delivering and selling ice and whatever else brought in money. When the oil fields tapped out, his specialty became carving and shaping the wooden slats, or staves, that make up barrels. He didn’t come about the lumber honestly, raiding the nearby forests for the right wood. They grew their own food, and Clara’s frontier-era approach made use of everything she had available. When a hog was butchered, she combined the fat with lye to make soap for a family that was growing fast.

  Herman, their first son, was born in 1921, followed by Helen in 1922 and two consecutive sets of twin daughters, Joyce and Loyce in 1925 and, in 1928, Doris and Ruth. Dr. Alfred William Roark, who had an office in back of a local drugstore in the area, was one of the few physicians around. He often used a bicycle to maneuver through the backwoods. Delivering babies was common for Roark, who’d delivered Ethel and knew the Jones family well. When he required help in emergencies, he often summoned George Washington Jones, who developed a skill for tending to wounds and setting broken bones that made him a sort of primitive EMT or physician’s assistant.

  Ethel, the firstborn, was special to her father, who doted on her within the couple’s limited means. When she became ill in 1926, George and Clara tried to take care of her. A hospital might have helped, but the money wasn’t there, and George’s Thicketeer nature led him to refuse any charity. Dr. Roark did what he could, but it wasn’t enough. Ethel died February 28, 1926. Her shattered parents buried her at Felps Cemetery, northwest of Saratoga. Clara’s deep religious faith helped her cope with the overwhelming grief, but for George Washington Jones, the loss of his first and favorite child forever changed him. He could dull the pain by plunging into the hard work required to support his family. When work ended, after the next week’s groceries were purchased, he began to anesthetize the pain with regular drinking binges that led to alarming personality changes. He became boisterous, belligerent, and even verbally or physically abusive.

  The 1930 census showed thirty-five-year-old George and thirty-three-year-old Clara residing in a house near Saratoga with an estimated value of $150. While the census taker mistakenly listed his trade as “stove maker,” the form correctly categorized the job as part of the “timber” industry, whose trees he was poaching for the wood. The children were Herman, Helen, “Jocee” (Joyce), “Lous” (Loyce), “Doriss” (Doris), and Ruth. Clara’s occupation was “housewife.” In early 1931, she was again pregnant. Dr. Roark was present to deliver the eighth and final Jones child on September 12, 1931. George W took the kids to a nearby home while Dr. Roark saw to Clara and delivered her twelve-pound son, heavy enough that the physician accidentally dropped him, breaking his arm. Telling the kids they had a new baby brother, George Washington Jones brought his brood home to find the infant’s fracture had already been set. The couple named him George Glenn Jones, but to the family, and everyone else in the vicinity, he was Glenn, a name that stuck to him into adulthood. Clara rarely called him anything else.

  She doted on her youngest son, as did his sisters. On Sundays she took them to nearby church meetings. Clara noticed he seemed responsive to music, sometimes hymns, or the old folk tune “Billy Boy,” which she often sang to him at home. He eventually began trying to sing himself, and his uncanny ability to remember a melody and even sing it back impressed many. Clara kept him constantly by her side, as if something catastrophic might happen. But she couldn’t always keep her eyes on him. Sometimes the baby, who had little use for clothes, would run buck naked to neighbors, grinning all the way. As he entered his toddler phase, more folks noticed Glenn’s clear, strong voice in church, a source of pride to Clara, Herman, and the girls. Music became a respite from hard work, and when George Washington Jones was in a good humor, he sometimes pulled out his harmonica and played as Clara happily led their children in singing hymns. Later, when the family acquired a wind-up record player, Glenn found joy in the primitive mountain songs of the Carter Family.

  Within a year of Glenn’s birth, the family relocated to a house in the Depot Town area. Like others in the Thicket, they existed much like nineteenth-century pioneers. The family often lived on gravy and bread and whatever vegetables were available. They took baths in washtubs. When Dr. Roark wasn’t needed, Clara treated common ailments with home remedies. Toys had a different connotation around the Thicket than they did in more affluent areas. On Christmas, any playthings the Jones children received were tiny and few. When Glenn was old enough to handle a chore, he was assigned the job of loading the iron stove with wood chopped for that purpose. The first time he
tried, anxious to do well, he overloaded it, the intense heat nearly ruining the stove before it had to be doused with water. As he grew, the boy, unaccustomed to any other life, had little idea of his poverty, like many other Thicketeers. Shy but friendly, he loved solitude and often walked deep into the woods to daydream or sing songs at the top of his lungs.

  Still haunted by Ethel’s death, George Washington Jones remained sober and evenhanded when he worked. It’s difficult to dismiss the enormous pressures on him to provide for his family. Making staves became impossible when timber companies who owned the forests posted private guards to stop anyone—by whatever means necessary—from filching lumber for any purpose. With Prohibition repealed, the always resourceful Jones, fully aware he lived in a dry area, found a new vocation: brewing and selling moonshine and beer.

  CLARA PASSED HER STRONG MORAL CODE, ROOTED IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, to her children and expected them to follow it to the letter. Glenn once ran afoul of that rule when he stole a pocketknife from a neighbor’s home. When the neighbor told Clara, Glenn admitted the theft, produced the knife, and got a whipping for his trouble, one he knew he deserved. Clara’s simple Christian values and belief in charity became a lifelong touchstone for her son, who would help others without hesitation, often without being asked.

  The problem came with the undeserved violence the family suffered at the hands of their patriarch.

  George W’s taste for alcohol wrought immense psychological havoc and physical abuse on the family he worked so diligently to support. It became a ritual. He’d frequently stumble home drunk in the middle of the night, tearing up the house and waking the kids to demand they sing for him, using his belt on any who balked. Glenn and Doris were often singled out. Well aware of his youngest son’s singing talents, George W increasingly focused on Glenn. When they could, Helen and her sisters helped their little brother sneak out an open window. Clara was not silent. Her husband’s drinking offended her sensibilities, and she railed at him about it. For her trouble, she found herself in his line of fire, beaten and battered around.