The Grand Tour

by Rich Kienzle

  Opponents clearly had the edge. Commissioner Marcelle Adams advocated naming something else for George, noting that retaining the existing name for the bridge would end the controversy. Orange County judge John McDonnell claimed his messages ran three to one in favor of retaining the existing name. In an interview in the Enterprise, George fondly remembered fishing along the Neches and declared Beaumont his hometown, reiterated his triumphs over his addictions, and hinted he might decide to retire to the Beaumont area. But he clearly lost little if any sleep over the matter, declaring it an honor to even be considered. None of it mattered. Bradford made a motion for the renaming. It died for lack of a second. The view seems small-minded but not surprising, given Orange County’s ultraconservative nature. Memories of George’s local behavior clearly remained: the drunk driving, the stories about the alleged gunplay involving J.C. Arnold, and similar issues. At best it was a minor blip. He was about to face his biggest personal hurdle since freeing himself from cocaine.

  Late in August, he appeared at a two-day Nashville talent showcase at Opryland, designed to showcase acts available for concert promoters and booking agents. On the first night, George grew more and more frustrated with a sound system that, to him, seemed seriously out of kilter. Finally, he stormed over to the sound board and attacked his sound man. It was the sort of episode that might have happened in the seventies. The media were all over it, sparking speculation that he’d fallen off the wagon again. He returned the next night and played without incident.

  Nancy threw him a lavish sixty-third birthday celebration at their home in Franklin, with three hundred friends present, including Little Jimmy Dickens, Connie Smith, and others. George, not feeling well, made a brief appearance, then retreated to his bedroom. On September 11, he visited a local hospital for tests. Some ominous readings sent him to Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, where doctors found three blocked arteries requiring surgery. George, no fan of surgery, dismissed the idea until doctors explained he had no choice if he wanted to live, but he still had misgivings. Since Waylon and Cash both had similar procedures at nearly the same time in 1989, Nancy thought advice from a friend might help. She got a message to Waylon on the road. He called in from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and later remembered Nancy telling him, “George isn’t going to stay in the hospital unless he talks to you.” When George got on the phone, Waylon alerted him to the realities of the situation. George agreed to go ahead with the operation.

  On September 12, his sixty-third birthday, George underwent triple bypass surgery. The hospital waiting area was filled with family, including his sister Helen, friends, and fans. Georgette, a registered nurse, had a level of expertise that helped everyone understand what was happening. A week later, he was home. Given a regimen of diet and exercise, he battled to regain strength and it returned slowly. Getting him to exercise proved challenging. Again Waylon, who’d been through the same thing, offered encouragement. George had been drug-free for a decade, but surgeons had cracked his chest and spread the ribs, which meant he had to deal with pain medications. After decades of running at the edge, he faced his own mortality in a way he never had before. In November, he battled through his first concert in Davenport, Iowa, and clearly needed more recovery time.

  When MCA released The Bradley Barn Sessions, the album was not a huge seller despite the album’s diverse blend of personalities. But the remake of “Golden Ring” with Tammy generated enough buzz to inspire another idea: a George and Tammy reunion album twenty years after the divorce, in an era when both watched the country music industry, to which they had dedicated their lives, pass them by as new voices emerged. Tammy faced her own severe health issues. Her recording career had taken a precipitous dive just as George’s was tacking upward in the seventies and eighties. The couple had resolved their longstanding differences and entered into an easy friendship, so the idea of teaming up made solid commercial sense to them and to their respective spouses, Nancy and George Richey. After George recovered, they recorded One, a new duets album and their first since Together Again in 1980. With Tony Brown and Norro Wilson coproducing, the notion was to combine new material with a couple of oldies.

  Brown explained the rationale for the album. Tammy’s hits, he said, “had completely gone away, basically. And in a sense it made more sense for her to do this with George . . . But the two together were such a force to be reckoned with . . . And they agreed to do it. It wasn’t a great record, and they weren’t both at the top of their game. And the songs—we got some good songs, but we didn’t get the best songs.”

  For Brown, who’d performed with Elvis, recording these two icons proved both exhilarating and daunting. “I was so intimidated by the fact I was workin’ with George and Tammy. Thank God Norro was there, because he knew them both . . . There was a little bit of a rub going on . . . because I don’t think their heart was in it as much as [MCA’s] heart was in it. It came off a bit [for them] like, ‘We’ve done this. Why are we doin’ this again?’ . . . But they gave it their all, I will give them that . . . I don’t think they had near as much fun as I did trying to cut that record.”

  At the time, George was still dealing with aftereffects from his heart surgery, and Tammy’s health was failing in general. “They were really frail, and . . . Tammy was like skin and bones and just real fragile, not only physically but I think even mentally. That’s why it was so hard for me. I was in awe of them . . . There was a dichotomy of Norro, who was friends and had a working relationship [with both], and me being the new guy who sort of luckily got to slip in on the project because of Norro. They weren’t at their best. You can hear it in their voices, too . . . They both were not at one hundred percent of their game, but I’m glad we did [the album], because it was at least one last documentation of the two together.”

  Wilson had similar sentiments, noting, “They’d been split up, of course—she’d been sick and he’d been sick. It was kind of a tough project. Tony and I had such respect for them, and I’d known them longer. I was a little bit of a comfort zone [for them]. We did better by recording the [backing] tracks and gettin’ one at a time and puttin’ them on the record. And for some of it we actually got ’em [together] in one day. We did everything in our power to make that project easy. There’s some discomfort with people when they’ve been married and had this happenin’ to them in their lives. You just have to be careful.” With George and Tammy recording most of their vocal parts separately, hearing the other only through the headphones, Wilson saw the continued respect they had for each other’s talents. “If we got him on first or her, the cool part of it was, when each of them would hear the other sing, even though they weren’t there, that was a turn-on [for them]. Once again, it was that admiration society. They admired each other so very much. I’m really happy I got to work on that project.”

  Brown said the relationship between Nancy and Tammy was never an issue, but when Richey entered the picture, that dynamic changed. Richey “didn’t hang around, but you could tell there was a little oil-and-water thing going on with George and him and Nancy and him. He was just the opposite kind of person as George. His presence—when he showed up, the air got a little bit stiff. George Richey was a flashy guy. And Billy Sherrill wasn’t a flashy guy . . . and I think that went against the grain of George Jones.”

  MCA released the album on May 30. On June 6, 1995, George and Tammy performed together at Fan Fair, and a concert tour was announced. The couple did joint interviews, noting their new maturity. The album cover was carefully designed in an attempt to mask the frailty Brown and Wilson noted. George was white-haired and bespectacled, Tammy bewigged and heavily made-up. Masking their frailty proved more difficult onstage. The shows received a mixed reception. The Hartford Courant’s Roger Catlin noted an “uneven show” in Wallingford, Connecticut, mentioning the presence of teleprompters and the weakness of the new songs. Catlin criticized the entire premise of the show and the idea of two divorced people singing hits relevant only to the time when they w
ere married. “Time has taken a toll on their voices,” he commented. George got the better end of Catlin’s review, which noted that his voice was far stronger than Tammy’s and that his solo spot came off considerably better than hers did.

  George had other problems. Terms of his divorce from Shirley required him to share 50 percent of his songwriting royalties from 1954 to 1968 with his ex-wife. Bryan and Jeffrey would split that money upon her death, which took place in 1991. The royalty payments ceased in 1992, with Broadcast Music, Inc. claiming the payments reverted fully back to George. On September 5, 1995, both sons filed a lawsuit to regain their half of the royalties.

  Following the bridge-renaming debacle, Beaumont officials, still anxious to honor George, decided on something requiring no input from Orange County. On October 1, the 300 block of Fannin Street, in front of the Jefferson Theater, where George did some of his first street singing over half a century earlier, was renamed George Jones Place. George, Nancy, and Tammy were present for the ceremony.

  After George’s Hall of Fame induction, Nashville author Tom Carter began urging George and Nancy to consider writing an autobiography. At first reluctant to do one, George eventually entered into a collaboration with Carter, who’d worked on memoirs with Glen Campbell, Reba McEntire, and Ralph Emery. Jones talked freely about his ups and downs and seemingly drilled deep into his drunken behavior from the start. He had no inhibitions about relating tales decidedly unflattering, like the incident with Porter Wagoner in the Opry restroom. I Lived to Tell It All was released in May 1996. Carter did his own research and interviews. Reviews were mixed. Jack Hurst, who had traveled with and interviewed Jones during the bad times, verified many of the stories, including those about Dedoodle and the Old Man. Others were less charitable. Candice Russell of Florida’s Sun-Sentinel concluded, “The self-condemnatory writing gets old upon repetition. Even diehard Jones fans are likely to tire of the umpteenth remembrance of another blown show date, another rash of firings of band members and managers, another self-pitying binge.”

  Russ Corey of the Times-Daily in Florence, Alabama, wrote an article addressing the stories in the book regarding drug dealers, in collusion with local lawmen, forcing George to snort cocaine. Peanutt Montgomery, asked to comment, begged off, noting, “Some things are best left alone,” and adding, “A lot of people have been killed around George.” Billy Wilhite went on record as noting some Alabama cops were friendly with George and had brought him beer confiscated at the Tennessee state line. Lavern Tate, the former Lauderdale County district attorney who had charged him for shooting at Peanutt but later dropped the charges, claimed he’d never heard of George partying and doing coke around local cops. Rick Singleton, then Florence’s acting police chief, expressed “serious doubts” about the stories. A particularly scathing review came from Alanna Nash in Entertainment Weekly, who noted the lack of serious discussion about his music and declared, “Throughout these tales of self-destruction, and eventual sobriety, Jones comes across as alternatively despicable and selfish—walking offstage and causing riots, leaving his family stranded by a rural roadside and more wasted and pathetic than he ever let on.”

  Another hero of George’s youth went down that fall when Bill Monroe, who’d suffered a stroke that ended his performing career, passed away in a nursing home. Ties with other old friends deepened as time passed. Since the nineties, George and Buck Owens had been laughing about their onetime rivalry. Like George, Buck was born into rural Texas poverty, yet his career had been the inverse of George’s. Sober, reliable, and professional onstage and in the studio, he developed formidable business skills. He amassed wealth not only through records and concerts, but by owning a successful song publishing company and several radio stations. Still based in Bakersfield, in 1996 he opened Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, a supper club, performing venue, and museum. He had nine statues created to grace the club: himself, Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Hank Williams, Bob Wills, and George, who played the Crystal Palace a number of times.

  In the meantime, George and Nancy were involved in another commercial venture, summed up with a thirty-second TV spot titled “George Jones Talks about His Greatest Lines.” He cited “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “The Race Is On,” adding, “They’re all good! That’s why they’re hits, but I’m about to come up with the greatest line I ever had.” That line turned out to be George Jones Country Gold Dog Food, in three varieties: milk coated, bite size, and gravy style. (He’d lend his name to Country Gold Cat Food as well.) The ad ended with him smiling, holding two puppies, and saying, “You thought I was talkin’ about a new song, didn’t ya?”

  George would do two more MCA albums, both with Norro Wilson. I Lived to Tell It All, in 1997, was clearly named for the book. Buddy Cannon joined Wilson to produce It Don’t Get Any Better Than This, recorded in 1997 and released in 1998. Wilson remembered the sessions as easygoing, even as the reality was clear that George would never again dominate either record sales or radio. He quickly figured out how to determine George’s feelings about a given tune. “If you played him a song, you knew when he didn’t like it. He’d start suckin’ his teeth. It was hilarious. And you’d say, ‘Okay, I know where we are on that one!’ He asked me, ‘How do you know?’ And I said, ‘’Cause you suck on your danged teeth!’”

  As he admitted in his autobiography, George had never totally quit drinking. He insisted he would have a beer or two here and there, and with Nancy around he was able to better regulate things than he had in earlier times. That applied to recording sessions as well. Wilson recalled one of the sessions he produced when Pee Wee Johnson was still working for George. “I remember bumpin’ up against Pee Wee. I went to get a drink of water and he’s comin’ out of the bathroom. I bumped him by accident, not hard, but he clanged. It was little bottles of vodka in both [his] pockets. We’d be in the control room and George’d be doin’ something and he’d say, ‘Where’s Pee Wee, Norro?’ And I’d say, ‘He’s right here. What you need?’ He’d say, ‘Tell him to bring me some water!’ So Pee Wee’d go out, go to the water [fountain], get a little [water], pour a miniature in there, and that’d be it.”

  The year 1997 was a quiet one. He toured and sang with Patty Loveless on her Top 20 single “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me.” But It Don’t Get Any Better Than This became George’s final MCA effort. It was impossible for his singles to get airplay on radio. The growing emphasis on image consultants to build a facade around young stars continued to disgust him. Without a recording contract for the first time since 1954, he felt the loss as a painful blow to his self-esteem despite all the honors he’d been enjoying. He knew the changes in the business were to blame, and he began to feel cast off, even as he continued to deliver professional performances on the road. It gnawed at him that the country sounds that defined his era were a thing of the past. And it scandalized him that so many of the younger acts following Garth seemed less about singing and emotion, more about dazzling audiences by setting off smoke bombs as they performed music full of rock clichés from the seventies. “It was too late,” Wilson concluded. “You’re dealing with that wall of new leadership from radio.”

  The Nashville Network, however, saw the potential to give George a broader audience when it launched production on The George Jones Show, a musical program where he’d feature various artists, many of them good friends from several generations: Marty Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Connie, Dickens, Loretta, Haggard, his ex-backup singer Lorrie Morgan, Loveless, Trace Adkins, and so on. It wouldn’t resemble Nashville Now, the Tonight Show–based format Ralph Emery had used with a desk, couch, and live band. This version would be more intimate.

  The show debuted February 17, 1998. Aware George lacked the hosting skills of a Cash or Glen Campbell, producers came up with a more amenable setting. George would sit in a comfortable living room set talking and joking to his guests, reminiscing with singers of his generation, like Haggard and Loretta, and chatting with the y
ounger acts. It was never going to be a ratings blockbuster, but it put George in a carefully framed setting where he could relax and be himself.

  ON APRIL 6, 1998, GEORGETTE WAS CALLED FROM WORK TO HEAR HER MOTHER had died after lying down at her Nashville home. Tammy’s body lay for hours on the couch where she drew her last breath. Instead of a local physician pronouncing her dead, her personal physician flew in from Pittsburgh to handle the task, an unusual move. George was there for their daughter and—given the rapprochement of the past few years—he was devastated by Tammy’s unexpected passing. In a time of unsettling transition, and despite the negative comments he’d made in his book, his public words were eloquent. In a prepared statement, he said, “I am just very glad we were able to work together and tour together again. It was very important to us to be able to close the chapter on everything we had been through. Life is too short. In the end, we were very close friends. And now I have lost that friend. I couldn’t be sadder.” He attended the April 9 funeral with Nancy, but he neither sang nor spoke.

  The past fifteen years had been a time of rescue, redemption, honors, and growth as George, despite occasional ambivalence, settled into the role of Elder Statesman. But Tammy’s death and his disgust at the changes in the industry he loved, including the loss of his MCA deal, gnawed at him. Nancy was dealing with some health issues as well. It all took a toll. George found himself falling into depression. He began drinking more steadily. Realizing the reputation he and Nancy had rebuilt brick by brick could collapse, he did it in secret. Instead of fifths of whiskey, he stuck to vodka in easily concealed pint bottles. This relapse, however, scared the hell out of him. Knowing what was at stake, he walked into the yard behind his home and prayed for guidance. “I said, ‘Lord, I don’t care what it takes. Make me straighten up once and for all and get my life together.’ I said, ‘Hit me in the head with a sledgehammer if you have to.’”