by Rich Kienzle
While admiring his friend’s singing, Nallie felt sympathy for George’s offstage life, saying, “He’d stay with one family and then another, but he didn’t actually have a home.” George Washington Jones also became an occasional irritant. “I never met his mother,” Nallie added. “But his dad used to come out and he was an alcoholic. He’d come around tryin’ to bum money from George to buy some booze. And George’d get upset.
“George never really had a home. That’s what was bad.”
Nallie remembered the pair had a regular circuit, starting with Lola’s and Shorty’s on Pine Street.
“Lola’s and Shorty’s was right there by the shipyard, right by the Neches River. And it was a knock-down, drag-out place. We played another place out there on Highway 90, just a little ways out of Beaumont, called Miller’s Café. It was kind of a drive-in beer joint. We played inside but we had the speakers goin’ outside because people would sit in their cars and drink beer and listen to the music. They had carhops that would go back and forth and they had people inside, too, and they’d serve hamburgers, stuff like that. They had another place a half mile further down called Glenn Vista. We’d play on Sunday from one to five at Miller’s Café, and then we’d go over at Glenn Vista from six till closin’ time. I was flat worn-out. But we made a little money. George was pretty good. They’d put money in the kitty and we’d split it up. They paid a little something, like five dollars, which wasn’t bad back then. I was livin’ at home.”
George’s guitars, Nallie remembered, were catch-as-catch-can. “He kind of borrowed guitars. I don’t know if he had one of his own or not. He had friends that he stayed with that were musicians and he’d use one of theirs. We were still playin’ beer joints and then later on we added a fiddle player, Robert Shivers, and another one by the name of Lloyd Gilbert, and later on as time went on George got up a band with the drums and the whole shot.” He enjoyed creating onstage comedy, sometimes at Luther’s expense. He’d cede the microphone to his partner, whose specialty vocal was the dramatic 1950 hit ballad “Cry of the Wild Goose,” a pop hit for Frankie Laine and a country success for Tennessee Ernie Ford. As he sang, “Tonight I heard the wild goose cry,” George started honking, goose-style, behind him, cracking up the crowd and deflating Nallie’s presentation.
George drank during this time, but Nallie insisted it wasn’t yet a major problem when they were performing. Offstage was another matter. George and Nallie joined the owners of Lola’s and Shorty’s for a day of fishing on their small boat, equipped with an outboard motor and an ample supply of beer. Fortified with more than a few beers, George took the wheel only to hit something that damaged the propeller. When Luther raised the motor from the water to effect a temporary fix, a laughing, drunken George began rocking the boat.
It was at Playground Park that George first encountered the Bonvillian family: the patriarch, known as Willie; his wife, Claudia; and their daughter, Dorothy Ann, who’d come to Beaumont from Houston. Dorothy had been born in Houston in 1929. For Willie, going to bars and enjoying live country music on weekends was a respite from his job as a superintendent of the painting division of G. Sargl, Inc., a large Beaumont general contractor Nallie knew well, noting, “They would do like big buildings and they must have had thirty, forty painters, people workin’ in that department.”
The entire family seemed fascinated with the young singer. Willie liked his voice enough to buy him a portable PA system and a decent guitar. Overwhelmed by the attention, George took a liking to Dorothy. When he proposed, she accepted, but their wedding on June 1, 1950, proved awkward. The upwardly mobile Bonvillians seemed discomfited by Clara Jones and her backcountry ways, and by George’s insistence that Brother Burl, a true backwoods preacher, officiate. Since he and Annie were doing revival meetings in Port Arthur, the wedding was held there. Even in the wedding photo, with both mothers separated by the happy couple, the more urbane Claudia Bonvillian looks uncomfortable.
The disconnect became all too clear when the couple moved in with the Bonvillians. Willie might have loved his son-in-law’s singing, but he also knew music wasn’t going to support a wife, much less a family, on hit-and-miss payments from Playground Park, Yvonne’s, Miller’s, or anywhere else. He laid down the law. Playing music in bars was fine on weekends, but his new son-in-law needed a day job with steady pay, and he happened to have one in mind: work as an apprentice housepainter for Sargl. George tried it, hated it, and quit, leaving Willie highly displeased. He landed a job driving a delivery truck and moved Dorothy and himself into an apartment. George’s job history became even more checkered when he bailed on the delivery position and, later, a job at a funeral home. Soon the couple returned to the Bonvillians. With Dorothy pregnant by early 1951 and the marriage in free fall, George was back playing clubs, which disgusted his in-laws and ramped up the tension. As the conflicts escalated, George moved out.
George and Dorothy’s parting ways benefited Nallie on two levels. “Willie had bought George one of those Bogen PA systems, the kind where the two speakers fit together and the amplifier fits in the middle and you take it apart, spread the speakers out. When George quit and left and all that, Willie took [the PA] back. Well, I was still playing out there with somebody else, and the first thing, I got George’s job paintin’. Willie put me to work. I said, ‘That PA system, I’d like to have that. How much do you want for it? I don’t have any cash.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ll take $120 for it, and you can pay me ten dollars a month.’ That’s what I did, and I had that set for a long time. Willie was a real nice guy. But he didn’t take any baloney from anybody.”
George occasionally headed elsewhere. In Houston, he showed up at Cook’s Hoedown, a dance hall known for presenting local western swing acts like Dickie McBride’s Ranch Hands. He didn’t leave a great impression. George Ogg, who played sax and clarinet with the band, told researcher Andrew Brown about seeing George with his guitar, singing on the bandstand steps during intermissions. Calling him “the sorriest presentation I ever saw in my life,” Ogg noted, “you could insult him and he’d smile at you.”
His pantheon of musical heroes increased by one in 1950–51, this one born not far away: Lefty Frizzell, from Corsicana, Texas. In the fall of 1950, his raw Texas honky-tonk swept America with the hit single “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time,” a lively drinking song, and the single’s B-side, the ballad “I Love You a Thousand Ways,” Frizzell originals recorded at Jim Beck’s studio in Dallas. George became enamored of Frizzell’s phrasing, the way he’d stretch out certain one-syllable words for effect—“way” became “way-a-hey,” and so on—and worked to master Lefty’s vocal style as well. For a time, George played guitar and sang with the Rowley Trio, who later worked with Lefty. Jerry Rowley; his wife, Evelyn; and his sister, Vera “Dido” Rowley, had an early-morning show on Beaumont’s KFDM that often took requests on the air for songs, listeners choosing who would sing them. George stuck around for a while, but the early-morning hours were more than he wanted to handle.
Lefty had Beaumont ties. His new manager was a local businessman, Burl Houston Starns, known as Jack, who knew little about country music. His wife, Neva Starns, however, had considerable experience managing and booking local country acts. They owned Neva’s, a dance hall/café on Voth Road in the northern end of Beaumont. Starns guided Frizzell’s career, which included an entire stage show with supporting acts and his own band. He kept Lefty touring constantly, traveling to distant shows in his own plane.
Meanwhile, George’s domestic situation worsened. On July 23, 1951, Dorothy Bonvillian Jones filed for divorce in the District Court of Jefferson County, citing George’s drinking and propensity for violence. Four days later, the court ordered him to refrain from bothering his wife and set support payments for the unborn infant at thirty-five dollars a week, with an added $466 for medical bills relating to her pregnancy. When he failed to fork over the required amount, the judge jailed him on August 24. Five days later, his sister Lo
yce bailed him out. A month later, the scenario repeated itself when he was jailed again on September 28. Dorothy gave birth to Susan Marie Jones in Beaumont on October 29.
With two jail visits under his belt, George finally had to face the reality Willie Bonvillian knew from the start: singing in East Texas beer joints wouldn’t cover child support, and sure as hell wouldn’t keep him out of jail. The judge hearing his case offered one sure solution: enlisting in the military, where family-support payments were automatically deducted and forwarded. It was, however, not the optimal time to sign up. Since June 1950, America, along with the United Nations, was in an undeclared war—or “police action”—in Korea battling the Communist North Koreans. The military draft was in full swing. It wasn’t what he wanted, but given the realities, namely the fact that the Bonvillians and Jefferson County courts and sheriff were set to pounce at the first late check, he had little choice. George was amazed to find waiting periods for the army and navy, but not for the marines. On November 16, 1951, George Glenn Jones enlisted for two years in the United States Marine Corps with nary a bit of enthusiasm. He’d left in anguish, Dido Rowley remembering him in tears before his departure. Little wonder. The odds he’d wind up in Korea were high.
Assigned the serial number 1223231, he underwent his basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and dodged a huge and literal bullet. The Corps sent him not to Korea but to Moffett Field, a naval air station near San Jose, south of San Francisco. His MOS (military occupation specialty) was that of basic infantryman. Despite the war, he’d spend his entire enlistment there, holding no rank higher than Private First Class, with the classification of Rifleman. He lived for leaves and weekends, when he could take his guitar to the area’s clubs and dance halls. One of his early favorites: Tracy Gardens in San Jose, where nineteen-year-old steel guitarist Bobby Black and his guitarist brother Larry spent their Saturday nights playing as members of the house act, Shorty Joe Quartuccio’s western swing band the Red Rock Canyon Cowboys. Local musicians and even strangers who felt they could sing routinely asked to sit in with the band, who were happy to oblige.
One night George, in uniform, approached the bandstand wanting to sing. Black never forgot the crowd’s reaction. “Right away, he was a hit because he sang the songs they were playin’ on the radio, mostly Frizzell and Hank Williams. I remember him singing ‘Always Late,’ ‘Mom and Dad’s Waltz,’ ‘Cold Cold Heart,’ and all that kind of stuff. He sounded like Hank and Lefty, another reason why people liked him. There wasn’t anybody around these parts that could do that. You had to have a certain quality to your voice, and George had it.” His lack of ego also impressed Black, who called him “kind of quiet and unassuming—just a good ol’ country boy, and although we didn’t suspect at all that he would someday be a star, it was obvious that he had what it took to become one. I recall [him performing] maybe three or four times,” Black continued. “It wasn’t every Saturday. We’d get him up to sing a few numbers and everybody always wanted to hear him . . . He would just sort of vanish. We just called him ‘George the Singin’ Marine,’ and later ‘Burr-head.’ At that time, he was lookin’ for a place to go, to hear a country band, and maybe just get up to sing with somebody.”
That desire caused him some grief at Moffett Field. He later admitted to going AWOL. It’s not clear if that was the specific offense that on April 21, 1952, after a summary court-martial, earned him ten days in the brig. It didn’t stop his extracurricular performing. He met Cottonseed Clark, a popular Bay Area disc jockey and promoter based in nearby Oakland, who’d started promoting country and western swing dances there in the forties. Clark began doing shows at the Foresters of America Hall, better known as Forester’s Hall, a popular gathering spot in nearby Redwood City, where George earned the nickname “Little Georgie Jones, the Forester Hall Flash.” At least once he traveled to Los Angeles, where some accounts have him appearing as an occasional guest on Cliffie Stone’s Saturday-night Hometown Jamboree TV show from El Monte Legion Stadium. On October 27, he wound up in the infirmary at Moffett Field with some unspecified malady.
His marine buddies, who’d heard him sing around camp, knew how much he admired Hank Williams. Much had changed for Hank in the years since George had met him. He’d become one of the nation’s top country stars, charismatic onstage when able to sing, but too often he either took the stage drunk or not at all. Pain from back surgery had got him addicted to chloral hydrate prescribed by a quack “physician.” After he missed various broadcasts and stage appearances around the nation, the Opry suspended him in 1952, but the Louisiana Hayride quickly took him back. Many hoped a New Year’s Day 1953 gig in Canton, Ohio, would begin his redemption and eventual restoration to the Opry ranks.
When George came into his barracks New Year’s morning, one of his friends told him, “Your buddy’s dead,” and handed him the morning paper, revealing Hank had died in the backseat of his baby-blue Cadillac en route to Canton. The coroner’s later findings of a simple heart attack were, of course, bullshit. Hank had been whacked out of his gourd on booze and chloral as eighteen-year-old Charles Carr chauffeured him north. During a stop in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Carr found his passenger cold to the touch. Reading the story, a devastated George sat on his bunk crying over the loss of a hero he’d actually met. The image of Hank stoned in a Caddy would haunt George for decades.
As her son had never been a letter writer and perhaps felt no great desire to stay in touch with his family, a worried Clara had to write his superiors to get him to communicate at all. On April 18, 1953, he got another leave. He came back to Beaumont dragging along a woman he claimed was his wife, and hung out with friends before returning for his last few months of service. At some point another letter arrived from Beaumont. This one wasn’t from Clara, but from Jack Starns. Aware of George’s singing and impending discharge, Starns told him about a new record company he’d cofounded and urged him to get in touch when he returned home that fall. His separation from the Marine Corps began October 28, when he was reassigned to a facility in Oakland, California. He was back in Beaumont in November. He had to keep eyes in the back of his head and maintain his support payments, lest the Bonvillians and the courts wind up nipping at his heels. Nonetheless, buoyed by the note from Starns, George Jones was ready to resume his music career.
CHAPTER 2
1953–1961
East Texas was the last place Bobby Black expected to be at this point in his life.
The twenty-year-old steel guitarist had left the San Francisco Bay Area to join Blackie Crawford and the Western Cherokees, Lefty Frizzell’s former backup group. Fronted by singer-guitarist Crawford, they were a large, versatile unit capable of backing honky-tonkers of Lefty’s stripe or playing hot, danceable western swing of the type Black played in the California dance halls. One day, Black and Cherokees pianist Burney Annett arrived at Beaumont’s Railway Express to take delivery of a custom-built pedal steel Black had ordered from builder Paul Bigsby before he left California. Anxious to see the new instrument, the two men enthusiastically tore open the wooden crate, removed the hard-shell case, and opened it. As a crowd gathered around the rich, curly maple guitar with its stainless-steel hardware, Black heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, what are you doin’ here?”
He turned and saw a smiling, newly civilian George.
“Man, what are you doin’ here?”
“This is where I live, man! I’m not in the marines anymore!”
Black asked if he was still singing. When George replied he was, Black said, “You should go to Nashville.”
“Yeah,” George answered. “I’m thinkin’ about it.”
The Cherokees had more to do than play dance halls. They were the house band for Starday, Beaumont’s new record company, a partnership of Jack Starns and Houston jukebox kingpin and record retailer Harold Westcott Daily, known to all as Pappy. The label’s name was a mash-up of the names Starns and Daily.
Even when manag
ing Frizzell, Starns was far from a longtime country music fan, but he succeeded in part due to his wife Neva’s experience in the business, booking acts and running her Beaumont club and dance hall. The family lived next door. In May 1951, with Lefty riding high, the Starnses added a second dance hall by purchasing the legendary Reo Palm Isle in Longview, Texas. Jack had guided Frizzell for about a year before the two fell out over a two-year option to renew the management contract that Lefty claimed had been added without his approval. After legal parrying, it cost Lefty $25,000—all the cash he had—to get Starns out of his life. The Western Cherokees, however, decided to stick with Jack, not Lefty. Jack had an idea how to use that windfall. With Neva handling her end, he’d launch a record company focused on Texas talent. To make it work, he’d need someone with hands-on record company experience.
Born in Yoakum, Texas, in 1902, Pappy Daily, was a former marine and baseball player who’d worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Houston. In the early 1930s, with the nation laid low by the Great Depression, he began distributing jukeboxes through his Southcoast Amusement Company, an increasingly lucrative field despite the dire economic times. He expanded into retailing after World War II with Daily’s Record Ranch, a Houston retail store that also featured live performers, as Nashville’s Ernest Tubb Record Shop later did. His connections led him to become the Texas distributor for California-based Four Star Records, who recorded West Coast country acts like T. Texas Tyler and the Maddox Brothers and Rose. Four Star owner Bill McCall, notorious for his slippery business dealings, wanted to tap the Texas market and needed a talent scout and producer who could find regional acts, record them, then ship him the finished recordings.