He Stopped Loving Her Today

This week George Jones was laid to rest at the age of 81.  His autobiography, published in 1996, was co-written with Tom Carter and titled I Lived to Tell it All.  He may not have lived to tell it all, but he surely lived longer than many of us expected.

Philadelphia in the late '60s and '70s provided the narrowly-defined musical culture in which I was raised.  Folk, folk-rock, and soft rock were the sound track of my adolescence.  Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, and Harry Chapin populated the record shelves of my peer group.  On numerous occasions I heard my grandfather say to my grandmother, wondering what she had in mind for dinner, "Hey, good lookin' - Whatcha got cookin'?"  It would be many years before I knew those words came from a famous song by Hank Williams, Sr.

Then in the early '90s I was driving to work, fiddling with the radio tuner, scanning for music.  I was out of range of Pittsburgh's classical music station, which was the only one that was reliable in offering a soothing acoustic environment for my commute.  I was trying to find a station playing a song with words I could understand.  I found one!

The song was called, "You Know Me Better Than That."  A funny song about a fellow from a rural background whose new girlfriend was urbane but whose old girlfriend came from roots like his and understood him much better.  As I heard the refrain that was the title, I thought, well, she surely knows you better than I, because I have no idea who you are, but I like the song.

That was George Strait.  At the time I didn't know George Strait from George Jones, having no clue whatsoever about country music.  But my radio stayed on that station because all of the songs had words I could understand.  Soon I realized what genre of music this was and found myself more than a little surprised that I liked it so much.  Before I knew it I was buying CDs by George Strait and Reba McEntire, and it just took off from there.

George Jones took a bit of getting used to. He was past 60 then, and his voice had lost a bit of the smooth lustre it had had earlier in his career.  It could be a little reedy, even squeaky.  But the lyrics were compelling.  In time I realized he had been around for many years and had contributed much to the history of country music.  And there would be no retirement for him.  Not only was he still performing on concert tours and recording studio albums, but he was waging a campaign to get older stars the airplay they deserved on the country radio stations that catered to a mostly younger listening audience.  One thing that helped was that some of the young stars understood what they owed to the legends, and they paid tribute in their music.  Alan Jackson's "Don't Rock the Jukebox" was a fine example of this.  He didn't want to hear rock music on the jukebox; he wanted to hear some Jones.

George Jones was serious about this.  And I took him seriously.  I started listening to Hank - Senior, although I listened to Junior a little bit, too.  That's how I found out about the song my grandparents liked.  Hank, Sr. had been born about eight years before Jones but died at the age of 29, having written many songs in his short career, quite a few of which were later recorded by others again and again.  And the list went on from there: Kitty Wells, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Lefty Frizzell, Patsy Cline, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Ray Price....

with Tammy Wynette

Learning that before George Strait in the '80s there was George Jones in the '60s and '70s, and all of what came to be called "traditional" country music before there was "modern," or "contemporary," or "new" country was a remarkably enjoyable odyssey.  The year I started listening to country (1992), Jones released the hit single, "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair."  He certainly didn't need it then, and I'm not sure he spent any time in it over the next twenty years, either.

Hank, Sr. was an alcoholic, and that was largely responsible for his early, tragic death.  Jones wrestled with demons, too, in the form of bourbon and cocaine. When I read I Lived to Tell It All, I frequently had to put it down because the addictions he was fighting seemed to be winning, and the story just got too depressing.  His stormy relationship with Tammy Wynette produced some fine duets, but his later marriage to Nancy Jones seemed finally to put him on a promising path to sobriety, and he was ultimately able to free himself of the vices that plagued his performing life with the nickname "No-Show Jones."

Besides Tammy Wynette, Jones did some fine duets with others, my favorite being Merle Haggard.  In fact, I would say that if you have never been steeped in Haggard and Jones (separately), you don't know country music at all.  And the material they worked on together was sterling.
I especially commend to your ears the album "Yesterday's Wine."

A George Jones musicography would by itself be quite a lengthy essay.  I won't try to write that one.  There were so many songs he sang and recorded that were never big hits that I thoroughly enjoy, and others that were big hits, and still famous, that don't do much for me.  "The Race is On" and "White Lightning" are two examples of the latter.  But there was one, the name of which I took for this essay's title, that was wildly popular, about a man's enduring love for a woman, that ended only when he died.

Now, like the man in that song, Jones is gone.  But not from my memory.  I will load up my car's CD player with some of my favorites among his albums and fill my commuting to and from work with his extraordinary twang.


Country music is full of themes of love and loss, faithfulness and infidelity, and wrestling with inner demons. George Jones did not really live long enough to tell it all, notwithstanding the title of his autobiography.

He had planned a Grand Tour of concerts in 60 cities during 2013, and no doubt his fans were eager to hear him use his music to tell his story.

And then he was going to retire at the age of 82 to spend more time with his family.  I am saddened that he didn't live long enough to do that.  But he did live long enough to win all of life's important battles, and for that I am grateful.