by Rich Kienzle
On March 5, George Glenn Jones married Nancy Ford Sepulvado at Dub and Helen’s home. The wedding dinner took place at the Burger King in Jasper, the town where he’d hung out with Dalton Henderson over thirty-five years earlier. But later that same month, he canceled shows. John McMeen, his booking agent, claimed the singer was severely stressed and fatigued, “brought on by a heavy concert schedule.” He added that since September 1982, George had performed eighty-eight shows as an attempt to restore good faith with his fans. A seven-show European tour set to begin March 30 was also canceled. Clearly, George was still in flux. A show at the Armadillo Palace in Athens, Georgia, went sour when the club owner claimed he did only twenty-nine minutes onstage, walking off as soon as his road manager was handed the $10,000 fee. That brought another lawsuit. He left the road again on May 11, citing problems with bronchitis, laryngitis, and a virus. Still a smoker, he was plagued by respiratory problems on and off for the rest of his life. He recuperated at home, and on June 2 fulfilled his obligations regarding the Nashville DUI by playing a benefit in Franklin, Tennessee.
Health problems aside, with Nancy’s tireless support and growing role in his career, he seemed to be gradually halting—even reversing—his decline. Offstage, a desire older than cocaine again reared its head, one that first struck him seventeen years earlier in Vidor, then in Lakeland. He had his brother-in-law scout land for yet another outdoor music park, this one set up to accommodate recreational vehicles. Again he seemed bent on cutting back on tours, spending more time close to family, and bringing in friends from Nashville and Texas who would draw consistent crowds. To pay for it, George performed around Texas and Louisiana for the door receipts. He and Nancy scaled back their expenses in ways George hadn’t seen since the days when his mother seized upon any way to save a few cents. They maintained a garden near their large modular home, which George had no inhibitions about calling a “trailer house.” The couple’s goal: raising money to buy land for the park. By the spring of 1983, they accumulated enough funds to purchase sixty-five acres near the town of Colmesneil.
Again he planned the facility and did much of the work, clearing the land and doing the construction himself, assisted by Dub, Helen, and their children. There was none of the lavish spending that characterized the park in Lakeland. George recalled, “We built an economical stage and put a sheet metal roof over it. We had electrical hookups for recreational vehicles and another area where folks could camp in tents. There was a concession stand and a restaurant too, and Nancy and I pretty much lived on the property after building the facility.” Jones Country Music Park was ready that fall, slated for a formal opening in the spring of 1984.
On September 16, he performed an hour-and-a-half show in Jackson for an audience of six thousand, raising $18,000 for local charities. Onstage, he was solid and professional. A little over two weeks earlier, he’d appeared on 20/20, the ABC news magazine, calling himself “a changed and happy man” since his marriage. He’d given up cocaine on his own, claiming he’d simply lost any interest or desire for it.
As for the drinking, it was now under control. Even so, George Jones had not, despite what anyone assumed, embraced total abstinence. He still drank, but with Nancy at his side overseeing things, he was better able to control his intake. Finding the self-discipline to avoid the binges of the past, he slowly regained a level of self-esteem that allowed him to handle his responsibilities, both personal and professional, with greater confidence and consistency than he had for over two decades. Occasional slips happened, and not all of George’s no-shows involved alcohol. Past indiscretions, however, continued catching up with him. A few years earlier, George had been chartering planes to handle some of his shows, and the bills weren’t being paid. Wake County sheriff’s deputies were present when he and the Jones Boys rolled into the North Carolina State Fairgrounds near Greensboro to play Dorton Arena. Before the show, the authorities seized his Martin D-41 guitar to satisfy a judgment of $5,295 in favor of the aviation company. George was civil and courteous, but the guitar, valued at $4,000, didn’t quite satisfy the debt.
He joined the platinum record club in late December when I Am What I Am, the Epic album containing “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” earned him his first RIAA Platinum album for sales of a million. Billy had him back in the studio in early 1984 to record another duets collection, this one teaming him with female singers on Epic and other labels. Ladies’ Choice teamed him with Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris, Lacy J. Dalton, Barbara Mandrell, Terri Gibbs, Janie Fricke, Leona Williams, and Deborah Allen. George kicked off the album with a solo performance of “She’s My Rock,” a 1972 single by country singer Stoney Edwards.
Jones Country Music Park officially opened on April 1, 1984, with Johnny and June Carter Cash headlining. Other stars would follow. Tyler County was a dry county, so no alcohol was permitted on the premises. On the road, George began to build a reputation for reliability, more often than not offering sober, good-natured shows. The couple built a large log home on their land. On occasion his bronchitis resurfaced, sometimes forcing him to cancel concerts during tours.
As he began putting the dark years behind him, however, he absurdly opted to retaliate against one of his critics. In July he filed a $30 million libel suit against columnist Orley Hood, claiming Hood’s 1983 column about the cocaine incident impugned George’s reputation and “generally exposed [Jones] to ridicule, contempt, disgrace, embarrassment and humiliation.” Considering the years of media coverage of George’s misdeeds, it’s no surprise the suit was dismissed. George’s attorney asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to reinstate the case, a futile effort. In his later autobiography, George all but admitted Hood cited facts everyone knew were true.
Texas remained home base as he and Nancy toured or traveled to Nashville for business or recording. In August, he played Pee Wee Johnson’s Nashville Supper Club, joined by longtime friend and Opry veteran Connie Smith. Three days later, Epic released “She’s My Rock” as a single. The lyrics clearly alluded to his new beginnings with Nancy. It reached No. 2. Speaking to Jack Hurst that fall, George spoke glowingly of his marriage, describing his wife as “down to earth. She ain’t no phony. She’s just a good ol’ country girl. She cuts up a lot, got a good personality.”
GEORGE’S NEW AMIABILITY HAD LIMITS. CABLE TV’S THREE-YEAR-OLD NASHVILLE Network, TNN, was taping Radio City Music Hall Welcomes the Nashville Network in Manhattan in March 1985 for broadcast a month later. George was to host the event, showcasing Epic Nashville artists Mickey Gilley, Ricky Skaggs, Lacy J. Dalton, Charly McClain, Exile, and Mark Gray. While George was gaining strength, his insecurities and sensitivity to slights remained intact. A number of things about the event ticked him off. He objected to singing in front of the full orchestra booked for the show, and he was supposedly upset with the catering in his dressing room and his transportation from his hotel to Radio City and back. When he angrily walked out before the taping began, producers pressed Skaggs into service as the host.
At his lowest, George had traveled the back roads with a cardboard cutout of Hank Williams in his car. Sober, he was in a perfect position to record a song about past heroes that looked both forward and ahead. “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes,” cowritten by Troy Seals and Max D. Barnes, was an elegiac number lamenting the passing of many legends, questioning the future of traditional country as the number of stars dwindled, and wondering who would succeed them all. The list was lengthy, encompassing Waylon, Willie, Twitty, Cash, Haggard, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, and Jerry Lee Lewis, with allusions to the departed Elvis, Marty Robbins, Hank Williams, and Lefty Frizzell.
The accompanying music video, the first ever produced for a George Jones record, centered around George’s tour bus stopping at a decrepit rural gas station, where the elderly owner asks him to sign a guitar signed by other stars. What could have been trite and gimmicky turned out to be a powerful, moving performance, one that more than merited the CMA Video of the Year Award it won t
hat October. Issued that summer, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” became George’s first solo hit of 1985. He may have been nervous at Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic nine years earlier, but he had no problems performing at Willie’s inaugural Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois, on September 22. A rock club like the Bottom Line might have spooked him at one time, but now he thought nothing of performing alongside the heaviest of heavy hitters: Willie, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and Tom Petty.
A few days later, the Nashville law firm that represented George sued for $124,000 in back legal fees. At a time when George was pulling out of such problems, albeit slowly, he found himself in deeper by failing to appear at a November 1 court date in Nashville. Dan Alexander, Jones’s lawyer, noted that George spent time at his East Texas home and in Nashville. Robert S. Brandt, the chancellor overseeing the hearing, wasn’t appeased, chewing out Alexander over his client’s failure to appear, stating he didn’t know of “any other entertainer of any note” with a worse reputation for not “being where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be here.”
George’s loyalty to longtime friends remained strong. On December 19, 1985, Johnny Paycheck walked into the North High Lounge in Hillsboro, Ohio. When a male fan started chatting him up at the bar, Paycheck begged off. When the guy persisted, Paycheck pulled his .22 and shot him in the face. The victim’s injuries weren’t severe, but the circumstances of the incident were not favorable to the singer. Paycheck, who contended the shooting was an accident, was found guilty of aggravated assault and tampering with evidence on May 17, 1986. He was sentenced to nine and a half years in a state prison, three of those years mandatory since he’d used a gun in a crime. George and Haggard put up $50,000 bond to get him out of prison as he appealed his sentence. When appeals were exhausted, Paycheck entered an Ohio penitentiary. Before Paycheck served even two years, Ohio governor Dick Celeste pardoned him.
Linda Welborn, calling herself Linda Welborn Jones, filed a lawsuit in Alabama that July asserting that she and George had a common-law marriage. The suit, filed in Colbert County Circuit Court, requested alimony payments and a property settlement. One of her attorneys, James Hunt, told Florence, Alabama, Times-Daily reporter David Palmer that “she didn’t realize her rights until she talked to an attorney.” One element cited to support her case: two life-insurance policies on George listing Linda as beneficiary. The suit stated that the two had parted ways on July 15, 1981.
George and other veteran country singers had despaired that in recent years, the music had ventured too far into a sound that was little more than easy-listening pop. During his worst years, even as “He Stopped Loving Her Today” took him to another level, the dominant artists embraced the so-called Urban Cowboy sound inspired by the Travolta film, a ballad-heavy style marked by dull, symphonic string arrangements and bland, subdued performances. The chief exponents were Kenny Rogers, Johnny Lee, Crystal Gayle (Loretta Lynn’s younger sister), and even Dolly Parton, then hitting her stride as an A-list feature film star. With radio and fans embracing the smoother sound, it dominated the early 1980s.
Before long, however, these smoother sounds began to bore fans. Country radio dutifully played this bland, predictable music, but fewer people seemed to be listening or buying records, which left executives and record companies increasingly worried. A measure of how quickly the bottom fell out came in 1985 when the New York Times ran a page-one story by their respected music critic Robert Palmer. He reported, “Nashville’s country music stars are really wailing the blues these days. Audiences are dwindling, sales of country records are plummeting and the fabled Nashville Sound, which defined country music for decades and made this comfortable, tree-shaded Tennessee city one of the world’s leading recording centers, may soon sound as dated as the ukulele.” In the story, veteran singer Bobby Bare noted, “Country records are getting plenty of radio airplay, but they all sound alike and nobody’s buying them.” Such listener fatigue scared the shit out of status quo advocates on Music Row. A quick shift in direction was the only strategy.
It involved a modernized, updated version of basic, bare-bones country: George’s style, performed largely by baby boomers who’d also grown up with the Beatles and the rock music of their generation. Ricky Skaggs, John Anderson, and George Strait had already succeeded with such a sound. Others now emerged, signed by the major labels as part of a movement dubbed New Traditionalism. It spawned several new stars: Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, Vince Gill, Keith Whitley (who’d played bluegrass with Ricky Skaggs in Ralph Stanley’s band), Reba McEntire, and Patty Loveless. To most of these younger performers, George was the gold standard, just as he was to his peers in the business and his fans. Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, and other veterans were the touchstones for this new breed. George clicked with these younger artists in a way that would slowly and deliberately elevate him to levels of prestige that seemed impossible just a few years earlier. On April 1, 1987, the Texas Legislature that in 1963 had honored him as an admiral in the Texas Navy proclaimed it George Jones Day.
Health issues occasionally forced a slowdown. At the end of July, after taking a break from a forty-seven-city tour, he entered the University of Alabama Medical Center to be treated for bronchitis, which was plaguing him with increasing frequency, complicated by prostate and kidney infections and exhaustion. He left a day later—his stubbornness did not diminish with his improved mental state—and returned a day after that, now also suffering from stomach issues. He was discharged August 8.
The New Traditionalist movement may have given him hope for the future of his own music. One reality, however, loomed over everything when it came to recording. The Top 10 and No. 1 singles that once came routinely were dwindling. In 1987, only “The Right Left Hand” reached the Top 10. Two other releases, “I Turn to You” and “The Bird,” got no higher than the Top 30. Younger artists who drank deep from the Jones catalog were carrying on his style, but for George, it was a disheartening transition even if successful touring helped ease his debts, with Nancy taking a greater role in his management. Late in 1987, he settled with Linda Welborn. Despite the fact his hit records were trailing off, he continued redeeming himself on the road.
But he hit occasional speed bumps in his attempts to stay reliable. Sometimes they involved health problems. On other occasions he fell back into old, bad habits, as he did at a December 3 concert at the Charleston Civic Center in West Virginia. Obviously drunk, he remained onstage too long, singing so poorly that most of the audience cleared out in disgust. The fiasco was duly reported in an Associated Press story by Steven Herman including candid comments from Jones Boys drummer and road manager Bobby Birkhead, who called the performance the worst he’d seen in five years and noted the singer had been shaky since a show two weeks earlier in South Carolina. George didn’t try to cover it, admitting he wasn’t up to par. He told what was left of the audience he’d sing “The Bird”—“if I can remember the words.” No less candid, longtime Jones Boys bassist-backup singer Ron Gaddis told the reporter, “[George] goes through periods of time where he’s OK, but he just fell off the wagon.”
In Iowa for a May 4, 1988, show, he felt so badly he pointed the bus toward Birmingham and the University of Alabama Medical Center. Admitted two days later, he was diagnosed with double pneumonia and released after four days. Set to perform in Tennessee in August, he canceled because of a headache and ringing ears and again headed for Birmingham. This time the diagnosis was a serious sinus infection. He remained several days before being discharged on August 19.
His singles continued to stall. “I’m a Survivor,” cowritten by Jim McBride and singer-songwriter Keith Stegall, peaked at No. 52; “The Old Man Nobody Loves” halted its rise at No. 63. The song that returned him to the Top 10 was a familiar number, one of the hit covers he’d recorded under a pseudonym for Pappy in the mid-1950s: Johnny Horton’s venerable “I’m a One Woman Man.” The record r
eveals George clearly enjoying himself, jaunty, laying on the twangy tenor and playfully swooping down into a lower register, the way he’d done on “You Gotta Be My Baby” over thirty years earlier. Billy Sherrill produced it with stripped-down instrumentation propelled by a straight-ahead Ray Price shuffle rhythm, the kind of sound heard on George’s Epic albums but rarely on his earlier singles for the label. It had the feel of Dwight Yoakam’s 1986 hit revival of Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man.” Another New Traditionalist scored with a Jones oldie when Patty Loveless achieved her first Top 10 by reviving “If My Heart Had Windows.”
Offstage, George had other issues. In 1989 Georgette was engaged to one Billy Wayne Terrell, and she wanted her dad to give her away at the altar at the ceremony on March 5. But she claimed that she contacted George, who begged off, saying he’d be tired since he was doing a show the day before. It was the beginning of a complicated relationship between father and daughter that would last for years.
With his days at Epic working with Billy slowly coming to an end, George’s follow-up to “One Woman Man” was an odd choice: the quirky, tongue-in-cheek Roger Ferris ditty “Ya Ba Da Ba Do (So Are You),” a surreal yet amusing description of a man lamenting his lost woman, who took nearly everything. Left were a Jim Beam whiskey decanter in the shape of Elvis Presley and a Flintstones jelly bean jar. As the lonely narrator drank whiskey from the jar, a conversation took place between all three. Clever as the song was, a legal problem surfaced when Hanna-Barbera productions, creators of The Flintstones, objected to the use of their trademarked “Ya Ba Da Ba Do,” Fred Flintstone’s signature exclamation. The song was retitled “The King Is Gone (So Are You),” but it never left the Top 30.