by Rich Kienzle
After setting up Starday’s distribution, warehouse, and studio complex on Dickerson Road in Madison, just outside Nashville, Don Pierce got a taste of George’s whiskey-fueled paranoia when the singer dropped by his offices and began asking questions about his record sales. George was dissatisfied with the answers he got. Pierce tried to defuse things by giving George $900, to no avail. As George began slamming things around in the office, Pierce called the police, and George slept it off in a cell overnight. The next day, sober and contrite, realizing what he’d done, he returned and apologized profusely to Pierce. He had a similar issue with Pappy. The story would be repeated time and again for nearly three decades, the product of his bifurcated Jekyll-Hyde personality from the Thicket.
Needing a follow-up to “White Lightning,” George turned to Darrell Edwards and two other writers for “Who Shot Sam.” Despite being an unimaginative musical clone of “Lightning,” it managed to reach the country Top 10 and even made a modest showing on the pop charts. Unfortunately, Pappy, sensing more life in the “Lightning” formula, didn’t know when to quit. He went to the still once too often with “Revenooer Man,” a weak if rocking moonshiner knockoff penned by Donny Young.
Other songs reflected more conventional Nashville standards, among them George’s spot-on performances of Roger Miller’s magnificently loopy story-song “Big Harlan Taylor” and Eddie Noack’s clever drinking ditty “Relief Is Just a Swallow Away,” playing on an Alka-Seltzer commercial from that era. He continued honing his growing ballad skills with “Accidentally on Purpose,” another Edwards lament and one of his most accomplished early laments. It centered around the theme of a man dealing with a situation where the woman he loved had married someone else. George’s ideas about making records required some adjustment, Pig Robbins remembered. “Back in the beginning, he wanted to play guitar [with the studio band]. Which was pretty much a no-no when you’re tryin’ to sing and they’re trying to get the mix down and all that kind of stuff, and sometimes he’d miss chords and that sort of thing. Or if he got over the line, he might change the melody and everything at a certain point.”
Around the time “Running Bear” became a hit for Johnny Preston, Mercury released the LP George Jones Sings White Lightning and Other Favorites. The cover featured a right-profile shot of George, staring straight ahead, his flattop cut standing tall. It was almost certainly the album that inspired Nashville drummer, announcer, and disc jockey T. Tommy Cutrer to bestow the nickname “Possum” on George. Others credited Slim Watts—his friend from KTRM—with the nickname, but in later years, George cited Cutrer as the originator. He was known as Possum for life, though he had occasional love-hate issues with that nickname.
The year 1960 kicked off with a January tour of the Midwest with Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, Norma Jean, Carl Perkins, and Carl’s fellow ex-Sun rockabilly labelmate Warren Smith through Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Spring included extensive sessions in Nashville, yielding a less successful yet riveting take on Luke McDaniel’s masterful ballad “You’re Still On My Mind” and, most notably, a searing performance of “The Window Up Above,” George’s first-ever recording with a Jordanaires-style vocal chorus behind him.
George’s musical obsessions could drive friends to distraction, as Frankie Miller remembered. That summer, he guested on ABC’s Jubilee USA, a rebrand of the network’s longtime country variety show Ozark Jubilee, produced in Springfield, Missouri. During one Springfield visit, he roomed with Charlie Dick, Patsy Cline’s husband. At the time, George was smitten with Miller’s recording of “Young Widow Brown,” written by two Lubbock, Texas, disc jockeys: Sky Corbin and the other credited on the label as “Wayland Jennings.” Jones loved the record so much he played it thirty times, singing along and driving Dick to distraction. Frankie Miller and George occasionally sang it together: “We used to sing it onstage when I was with him,” Miller said. “He’d say, ‘You want harmony or melody?’ I said, ‘Whatever you want.’ He’d say, ‘I’ll sing harmony!’”
THE OPRY MIGHT HAVE BEEN HIS BOYHOOD DREAM, BUT HE LEFT THE SHOW AT some point in the early 1960s. He would return in 1969, depart yet again, and, according to Opry historian Byron Fay, return once more—this time to stay—in 1973. Later in 1960, he moved Shirley, Bryan, and Jeffrey to a larger, newly constructed home on Hulett Street in Vidor.
In spite of being a national act, George wasn’t carrying his own musicians. On tours, another singer’s band might back him; in clubs he’d work with the house band. In the late fifties and early sixties, many stars carried harmony singers. Up-and-comer Buck Owens had hired sideman Don Rich to handle fiddle and vocal harmonies. Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys had a steady stream of vocalists filling that role, among them Van Howard, Roger Miller, and Donny Young, later followed by a Texas boy named Willie Nelson. One night in 1960, newly discharged army vet and aspiring vocalist George Riddle stopped by George’s room at the Hermitage Hotel, where the star was doing some partying. As he heard George talk about hiring a harmony singer, Riddle was truly in the right place at the right time. Eager for the chance, he took the job and remained with George, witnessing and participating in some of his craziest escapades, for the next five years.
Released in the fall of 1960, “The Window Up Above” was a straightforward performance, as raw and simple as his previous work. Along with the pedal steel and solo fiddle, however, was a vocal chorus, the sort of embellishment used by Chet Atkins or Owen Bradley. It would not reach No. 1, but it nevertheless established itself as one of his great ballad performances and finest compositions.
George loved the fancy, rhinestone-spangled western suits in style at the time. He was a regular customer of the famous Hollywood western tailor Nudie Cohn, who made virtually all of George’s show outfits and had to have been kept busy given the number of them ruined by his carrying on. He had Nudie create a suit honoring “Window,” the back of the jacket depicting a man looking out a window. With his characteristic disregard for material things, he wore it for a while. When he tired of it, he’d sell the suits, usually for less than he paid, something he’d later do with more expensive items including fancy vehicles and boats.
Frankie Miller, recording for Starday, was George’s top clothing customer. Mentioning a famous Starday color publicity shot of himself in a red Nudie suit, Miller said, “I bought that red suit from George for one hundred dollars. Genuine Nudie-made suit when Nudie was makin’ the suits himself. [George would] get tired of ’em. I bought three or four suits from him. He would throw ’em in the back of the bus and I’d meet him somewhere and go back there, dig through ’em, and find one I wanted.” Miller acquired the “Window Up Above” suit, but added, “I gave that back to him because Shirley and him had a little museum [in Beaumont]—out on the end of Fifteenth Avenue—so he could put it in the museum.”
So far, George had been making raw, unabashedly twangy honky-tonk with some rockers thrown in. Yet things had changed since the days of “Why Baby Why.” Rock ’n’ roll’s popularity led two of the town’s major producers, Chet Atkins at RCA and Owen Bradley at Decca, to try a new approach with some artists: cutting back on the fiddles and steel guitar and using a muted, neutral rhythm section and vocal chorus behind singers. It would become known as the Nashville Sound. The rudiments had shown up occasionally on Nashville recordings in the early fifties, but Capitol’s Ken Nelson really got the ball rolling in 1956 with Sonny James on the song “Young Love” and Ferlin Husky on “Gone.” Atkins and Bradley began doing the same, recording country songs with smoother accompaniments. Atkins used it with Jim Reeves and Don Gibson; Bradley made it work with Bobby Helms and Patsy Cline. The idea of recording George this way seemed to make little sense given his popularity recording twang-laden honky-tonkers. It’s not likely Pappy cared one way or another, as long as it sold. But Mercury had a new head of Nashville A&R named Shelby Singleton, whose wife, Margie, recorded for the label.
Darrell Edwards came through again with “Tender Years,” an eloquent,
stately romantic ballad. George’s performance would differ from anything he’d done in the past. As with “Window Up Above,” it would include a muted pedal steel but also a vocal chorus, very likely the Jordanaires, and an addition: the soprano voice of Nashville singer Millie Kirkham, heard on Husky’s “Gone.” While pedal steel guitar remained prominent, on this recording it fit into a less prominent musical context. The rhythm section, with Pig Robbins adding a brief, graceful solo, was smoother, solidly in the Nashville Sound mode. Given his conservative musical tastes, it’s difficult to think George was totally comfortable with this softer background. Nonetheless, he delivered a stunning, mature performance reflecting his capacity to evolve while retaining the straight-ahead delivery so many admired. A harbinger of what he’d do at Epic Records a decade later, “Tender Years” became his second No. 1 and remained at that position for nearly two months. A subsequent single, “Did I Ever Tell You,” a duet with Margie Singleton, gave him his second successful duet with a female vocalist when it reached No. 15 later that same year.
Much had changed in only a few years. George was beginning to leave his influence on the music of other performers, a step toward his eventual status as the Greatest Living Country Singer. His fluid vocal range and ability to move between high lonesome and low baritone, combined with his distinctive phrasing, set him apart from any of his peers, earning their admiration as well as his fans’. Buck Owens, who’d had his first national successes on records over the previous couple years recording honky-tonk shuffles in the Ray Price style, had a phrasing with obvious elements of George embedded within. “I thought that George was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I could not help it. If you listen [to the records of my] early years, you’re sure gonna hear George, because he was a big influence on me as far as the singers go.”
Soon enough, George, his status continuing to rise along with his reputation as a hell-raiser, would be heard on a different record label.
CHAPTER 3
1962–1968
Bill Hall, George’s former Beaumont manager, owned Gulf Coast Recording Studio. George did most of his business, such as management and bookings, in Nashville, but when off the road, he’d often drop by the studio to hang out with Hall and his partner, singer, songwriter, and producer Jack Clement. If they weren’t at the studio, they’d hang out at Rich’s Snack Bar across the street, where the Cajun food was authentic and the homemade chili was great.
The eccentric, iconoclastic Clement, a Tennessee native, ex-marine, and former bluegrass mandolinist, had formerly worked for Sam Phillips at Sun Records. At Sun, he discovered and produced Jerry Lee Lewis and later supervised Johnny Cash’s Sun recordings before Cash left for Columbia Records. A hassle with Phillips led Jack to depart Sun in 1958. After running his own label, Summer Records, and working on and off in Nashville, he arrived in Beaumont in 1961 and joined Hall to organize a song publishing operation known as Hall-Clement Music.
One of Hall-Clement’s writers was Dickey Lee Lipscomb, who recorded as Dickey Lee. Clement knew him well, since Lee had recorded several sessions at Sun. Lipscomb and Steve Duffey wrote the pop ballad “She Thinks I Still Care.” Few paid it any mind, but Clement felt the song had potential. He had a demo tape but hesitated to play it for George because the original melody sounded more pop than country. Throughout his career, George never automatically embraced every tune thrown his way and had a sixth sense when he felt a song was too “pop” for him. Jack grabbed a guitar and began singing him the song, subtly altering the melody to make it feel more country. Clement recalled George finding another issue: the number of lines starting with the phrase “Just because.” Raymond Nallie, Luther’s brother, told Nick Tosches that George had eyes on a portable recorder they had at the studio, and that Hall told George he could have “the fuckin’ recorder” if he did the song. Clement supposedly played him “She Thinks I Still Care” on several different occasions. George later disagreed with those accounts, claiming he knew the song was right for him from the first time he heard it, but the details in the accounts of both Nallie and Clement tend to favor their memories.
The year 1961 saw Pappy working with Art Talmadge, his old friend from Mercury, now at United Artists Records, a spinoff of the film production company. The label, formed in 1957 to distribute soundtracks from UA-produced feature films, also released jazz albums and pop collections. Pappy would bring George and some of his masters from the D Records label to UA, including material by Texas singers like Tony Douglas, Glenn Barber, and “Country” Johnny Mathis (so named to differentiate him from the black pop vocal star who recorded for Columbia).
The father-son relationship between Fred Rose and Hank Williams lasted until Hank’s death, but any similar dynamic between Pappy and George, if it existed at all, was showing signs of wear. It was probably inevitable. George, amid his drinking and hell-raising, was getting harder for Pappy to handle. As Pappy grew fed up with his star’s misbehaving, he sought out an old face from Starday: George’s old Houston buddy Sonny Burns. Now on the wagon, Sonny had quit music to drive a truck. Pappy signed him to United Artists, thinking his return would bring George into line by making him feel Sonny would be competition. It’s not clear that gambit could ever have succeeded in taming George. He and Pappy would work together for another decade, but he had far fewer illusions about his old benefactor.
Why was George becoming so obstinate with Pappy? It’s not clear. He didn’t always pay close attention to contracts and money, but his growing antagonism may have stemmed from doubts about some of his old benefactor’s business dealings. Pappy tied George to a contract that not only made him George’s producer, it allowed him to move to any label willing to meet Pappy’s terms. After selling his stake in Starday, he’d moved George to Mercury, then to United Artists, where Pappy produced George and other singers.
The best Nashville producers, Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley in particular, held the reins in the studio. They selected songs, sometimes in conjunction with the singer, and booked the session musicians. They might work with the musicians and singer to create an arrangement, or leave it to the musician in charge, the “session leader.” In 1961, Pappy wasn’t even that hands-on, and in later years George wasn’t shy about making that clear. In a 2001 interview he explained what other Nashville musicians confirm: during his seventeen years in the studio with George, Daily at best played a peripheral role in production, regardless of the label. “A lot of people think he was the producer, but he really wasn’t,” Jones said. “He timed the songs in the studio and he wrote out the paperwork. That was about all he did. I worked with the musicians myself and we worked out the arrangements. I basically left it up to the musicians after we ran through the songs. I wanted them to be more a part of the production.” Pig Robbins agreed. “Pappy was just the paper guy, you know. I’m sure Pappy was payin’ for it in the end, but yeah, Pappy, he’d sit in there and hit the intercom every now and then and say, ‘All right, boys, come on! I gotta get back to Texas here!’”
The bottle remained George’s other collaborator. His reputation as one of Nashville’s great drinkers was a given. The amount he consumed before and during a recording session could affect his performances in positive or negative ways. Too few drinks didn’t loosen him up enough to delve into a lyric; too many left him sloppy or uncontrollable, to the point the session would have to be scrubbed. The right amount of alcohol, combined with his ability to interpret, unleashed every bit of his vocal power.
When he entered Bradley Studios on January 4, 1962, with many of his regular accompanists—Pig Robbins, Buddy Harman, and the Jordanaires among them—“She Thinks I Still Care” was the first song on the agenda. As the Jordanaires harmonized, George created another intensely focused, deeply emotional performance. With amazing precision, he gave the correct amount of emotional weight to every word, his performance adding up to a cathartic tale of a man’s loss, masked by bravado. It may have been outside the composers’ original vision, but with Cleme
nt’s reworked melody, the performance became one of his finest. A second standout: D.T. Gentry’s “Open Pit Mine,” a dark tale of a western copper miner’s adultery, murder, and suicide. A departure from George’s usual honky-tonkers and laments, it had the feel of a nineteenth-century folk ballad, enhanced by George’s solid confessional performance. In 2001 he said, “That was a true song. The boy that wrote it, he worked in the copper mines. Every time I’d go out to Arizona or New Mexico, the Indians, that’s the first thing they want to hear.” By day’s end he’d recorded his first UA single and one entire album: The New Favorites of George Jones.
WITH THE ALBUM DONE, GEORGE, ALONG WITH PATSY CLINE, JOHNNY CASH, Carl Perkins, Gordon Terry, and Johnny Western, headed into the Midwest for an extended tour that would take up most of the month. George Riddle was along to sing harmony. After having no major hits since her 1957 groundbreaker “Walkin’ after Midnight,” Patsy was starting a roll, revitalized by her 1961 hit “I Fall to Pieces.” Aggressive and profane enough to face down any alpha male, she held her own in such company. Also along on the tour was thirteen-year-old West Coast singer and pedal steel guitar prodigy Barbara Mandrell.
George and Riddle hit the road in a camper. Cash’s Tennessee Three made up the core band, augmented by a couple West Coast pickers, one of them the respected Bakersfield guitar man Roy Nichols. Mandrell played steel guitar behind the others. George and Patsy (who affectionately called him “Jones”) got on well, and his motorized digs allowed him to party with musicians and women as long, loud, and hard as he wanted without risking any shit from hotel desk clerks. He invited everyone, including Patsy and the teenage Mandrell, to join him at the camper to party. George’s intentions were likely innocent, but the invitation sent Patsy into protector mode. She made sure Mandrell traveled and roomed with her from then on. Years later, Mandrell, a lifelong friend of George’s, considered touring with Patsy and playing steel for George a double honor.