Episode Transcript
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The Michael Berry Show. So we'vestarted these archive interviews or archive podcasts because
we get requests for interviews that weaired in the past, and we find
it fun to get to share somethingbecause most of our content is created live
on the air, So if youmissed that show and you're not a regular
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podcast listener or you're newer to theshow, you don't know some of the
stuff that we're proud of. Soone of the interviews that is our most
requested is with the biographer of areally, really good biography about George Jones.
And funny story. When I didthis interview, sorry, when I
read this book in preparation for theinterview, I was in Aspen and I
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had been skiing. I think Iwas that somewhere in Colorado. I don't
know if we were in Aspen,but my back, oh no, I
was in snow mass I remember whereI was. I had injured my back
and I was going to be havinga back surgery when I returned to Houston,
but I didn't want to blow thefamily's ski vacation, so I would
do the show in the morning inmy studio, which was our hotel room,
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and the minute I was finished Iwould lay out on the bed flat,
I'm sorry, lay out on thefloor flat, because that was the
only way I could relieve some ofthe pain on my back. I was
an excruciating pain, and then Iwould take a painkiller to get through till
the next morning when i'd have toget up and do the show again.
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Years later, I met the guywho for ten years had been my kid's
ski instructor, named Howie Orkhart,and we finally meet and he says,
man, you're nothing like what Ithought you were based on what the kids
told me when they were growing up. And I said, what does that
mean? He said, well,I thought you were this big, fat
guy and I said, well,I've just lost a lot of way.
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He goes, okay, and Ithought that you couldn't move because you just
laid flat all the time because you'reback hurt. And I said that was
one trip and by the way,I was on the verge of having surgery
in excruciating pain. He goes,yeah, You're just different than I thought.
So anyway, I was reading thisGeorge Jones biography and I found it
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to be fascinating. So this emailwas from Jacob Zarre years ago. You
talked to a man who wrote abiography about George Jones. I'll admit I
wasn't really into George Jones when itaired, but I've been enjoying his music
of late. Would it be possibleto get that interview? So here is
that interview again, Rich Kinsley,I think was how you pronounced his name.
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It's from back in twenty sixteen.The book is called The Grand Tour,
The Life and Music of George Jones, and I can't say it's a
really, really good book. Idon't know that I have been this excited
to do an interview in years.Most of you are tired of hearing me
talk about this book I've read,which is finally which has finally hit the
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market. It's called The Grand Tour, The Life and Music of George Jones.
It's by a fellow named Rich Kinsley, who has forgotten more about music
than any one hundred of us combined. Will know it's a very well told,
incredibly well researched story. And becauseyou've heard me talk about it so
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much, you know how into itI am. And I am honored to
have the author of that book,Rich Kinsley, as our guest. Rich
first of all, you have sucha rich and varied experience in country music
as a journalist over all those years. How did you choose to do a
biopic on George Jones? Well?I had written Michael quite a bit about
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him over the years, largely inthe form of liner notes for reissues of
a lot of his old recordings.Had done some studies about his music and
how it evolved, and I hadspoken to some of the people who played
on some of his records. AndI did have the good fortune to speak
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to George once in the fall oftwo thousand and one when he was coming
to the Pittsburgh area to perform.And the way I approached him is I
asked him the obvious questions about comingto town and everything, and then I
started talking to him about his favoriterecords and the records that satisfied him the
most of all the things he hadrecorded, and we talked about his history
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and you know, some of therock and roll record he did that he
despised and all that, and hewas pretty much on the money. He
was in good shape. He hadnearly died in that car crash two years
earlier, and he was still tryingto get his voice back from that,
and of course he had respiratory problemsby that point, but he still could
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sing pretty well. And so youknow, I had an agent and we
talked to HarperCollins about some book ideas, and they floated the idea of a
George Jones biography, because there hadn'tbeen an actual biography except for George's own
life story that he told for quitea long time. So it was a
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chance to come in and do somethingthat was cradle to grave and take kind
of a big picture of view withoutjust concentrating on the crazy stories and looking
at the totality of what he achievedand how he achieved it, and in
some cases why he did the thingshe did. Rich You talked, I
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wish I had my marked up version, but you'll know what I'm coming.
You talked about a book that hadbeen written, maybe in the mid nineties
or so, about him and thecriticism that it focused too much on his
drinking and not enough on him music. There was kind of a reference to
all that, do you remember thiswell? He did his own autobiography in
nineteen ninety six called I Lived toTell It All? Yes, And I
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talked about the fact that a lotof the reviewers were very adverse to it
because it seemed like it was justone long litany of misdeeds and bad behavior
and things like that, and henever really got off of that. My
own feeling was that probably had moreto do with the publisher, But George
later complained, there's not much inthere about the music. But in his
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introduction he said, you won't findmuch in here about my records. And
I think that that book kind ofit's still in print today. It told
that side of things, but itdidn't tell the whole story. You focus
extensively. While obviously you know themusic, you understand the music. You
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explain a lot of the influences,particularly the early years, and I want
to get to that, but youspend a lot of time in the book
talking about his actual habits, ofhow much he drank the cocaine, and
including the no Show aspect, andeven getting into the business side of how
he was constantly being sued. Whydid you do that? What did you
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want the listener? What did youwant the reader to know? I wanted
people to realize that beyond the headlinesand the tabloids and everything about No Show
Jones, there was a lot ofreal penalties hanging over his head as far
as legal judgments and things like that. I mean, the no show thing
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has kind of a level of amusementfor some people, but there were real
consequences to what he was doing,and I wanted to make sure that that
was clearly understood. It's not justsomething that anybody can throw off. And
I think had he not been someonewhose fans loved him so much, I
think he would have pretty much tankedhis career. Rich Kinsley is our guest.
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The book is The Grand Tour.It is brilliantly written. I could
not endorse this book more the lifeand music of George Jones. You seem
to offer the thesis that because ofthe music, the fans keep coming back,
and that the skipping out on shows. How many shows he showed up
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drunk, he walked off after twosongs, he smashed a guitar, he
couldn't remember the words, they turnedthe lights out on him. It's just
as litany over decades that he's doingthis. You know, in today's world,
being a bad boy, and thishas been the case I think for
a long time, especially with rockbands, being a bad boy almost adds
to the image. You never seemto suggest that. You seem to say
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that it's purely the music as towhy we kept coming back, and not
because he was this bad boy.I think there's another factor there in One
of the comments I make in theintroduction was that he was a man with
an uncommon talent. He identified hewas his fans as a whole. This
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is a guy who got a kickout of going out on his riding lawn
more and mowing the grass. Thisis somebody who enjoyed sitting around watching Gunsmoke
reruns on a big screen TV.He never in his life put himself above
his fans, and I think theyknew that, and I think that's why
they were so forgiving of him andforgiving of his misdeeds, because it was
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just old George. That was oldGeorge. You took your chances. I
think they were delighted once he gothis act together and was able to come
back and make all his shows andentertain But I think they just they fell
to love for him, that hereally was one of them, and I
think that sustained him to a greatdegree. Aside from the fact he was
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such a magnificent vocalist, so manypeople when they reach a level of stardom,
they separate from the fan. They'rebetter than the fan. There's a
distance between them and the fan.They are elevated, they're rich. But
you talk throughout about this common threadof no matter who loved him, James
Taylor wrote a song for him,Little Richard wanted to hang out backstage with
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him. Keith Richards loved him.Everybody loved George Jones, including the industry,
and yet if he was to playat Madison Square Garden, or he
was to play at a major event, he was still this insecure kid who
didn't think he could get up thereand play. I'm glad you brought that
up, because in nineteen seventy seven, the idea was for him to go
and play The bottom Line in Manhattan, and Epic Records put a lot of
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effort into making that happen. AndI mean they invited all the media,
big wigs, Walter Cronkite, thecast A, Saturday Night Live and all
this, and George knew about it, and he talked about this. He
talked about this in his autobiography.He said, I really did not want
to do that. I didn't feelcomfortable around those people. They had a
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plane ready to take him to NewYork from Nashville, and he took off
and they had a heck of atime finding him. And the woman who
put it together was a woman namedMary Anne McCrady, who was handling media
at Epic Records in Nashville, andshe was up in New York and she
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was just devastated because she said,this is just such an embarrassment. But
to her amazement, the next day, the New York media jumped on it,
not as a scandal. It hadadded to George's cashet as a bad
boy, as somebody who was goingto do what he wanted. Not an
outlaw in the sense of Whalen andWillie, because that was basically about creative
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control of their music, but aboutthe idea that George Jones was his own
man and he was going to dowhat he wanted. So actually the no
show added to the mystique. Butlet's talk about that, Rich Kinsley as
our guest. The book is theGrand Tour Life of Music of George Jones.
The Outlaw Country was not just aboutcontrol. I mean whalon and Willie
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uh And I guess to some extent, Chris Christofferson and and they and you
know, if you want to putDavid allen Coe to some extent out there
in Johnny Cash, those were guysthat you know, and and even the
music of Merle Haggard, it wastough. It was it was gritty,
it was balled up fist and youknow, rough and tumble. But George
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Jones seems to have been separated fromthat. It was never I'm going to
punch you in the face with mymusic and my lifestyle. It was always
a guy that just wants to drinka lot and is troubled. Well.
The thing with with with Whalon andWillie, they when they became stars,
was when they were allowed to dotheir music their way and to produce their
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own records, and their music was, as you just said, a lot
more in your face. With George, he didn't want to produce his own
records. All he wanted to dowas what he wanted to do, make
the records that satisfied him. Heput a lot of trust in Billy Cheryl,
and I think with good reason,because Billy took him to a level
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he would have never gotten to otherwise. As far as a different sound around
him and something like he stopped LovingHer Today, which has become a signature
song. But George never was outsidethe Nashville establishment. But because people loved
him there so much, again,they accepted a lot from him that they
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may not have tolerated from other people. Tell the story, if you would,
about the making of Loving Her Todayand how he would go into the
Chris Christofferson song, and how longit took, and how Billy Cheryl had
I was fascinated by that piece ofthe book. Well, the song itself
had been around for a while.In fact, someone else, I think
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was Johnny Russell had recorded version ofit. But with Billy, he tended
to craft every single that he wanted. He didn't worry too much about album
cuts, but he crafted every singleand he was a devotee of Phil Spector,
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and Phil Spector controlled every aspect ofher production. So he had the
two co writers if he Stopped LovingHer, Curly Putman and Bobby Braddock rewrite
that song several times to get thefeel that he wanted in there. But
it still had this melody which wasa little bit similar to help Me Make
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It through the Night by Chris Christofferson. George was put off by that,
but then he was also put offby the fact that he felt the song
was too modeling and he was inrough shape. It took Billy a while
to sort of piece together a vocalusing the technology to get a little bit
here, a little bit there,and put it together other so that it
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worked. But basically George says,nobody's going to buy that thing. It's
too modeling and nobody's gonna want itnow. He had done a record a
few years quite a few years before, called when the Grass Grows Over Me,
which was a similar theme, butit didn't have the drama that He
Stopped Loving Her had, and Georgejust dismissed it. And I don't think
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anybody was more surprised when the recordtook off than George Jones. Well,
you said, he bet Billy Sherylone hundred bucks it would never be a
hit. Yep, he just Butthis happened a couple other times with George
where there were songs he did notwant to record that he relented and they
ended up being big hits. Thatwas a Walk through This World with Me
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was another one. You note thatit was I think he was vocalist,
or maybe it was Song of theYear and eighty one, and Song of
the Year and eighty two, andhe was Vocalist of the Year in eighty
one. Has it ever been thecase that a song one two years I
don't recall anything. Was that eightand eighty one? Okay? The bad
behavior in the prologue that where weopened up the book was eighty one.
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He had already won the year before. Now that record had such an impact.
I know Tony Brown, who wasa great side man and later on
became the head of MCA Nashville andsigned George to the label. In the
nineties, he was playing with EmmyLou Harris's band when he stopped Loving Her
Today first came out and Emmy Loutold him go to the jukebox and put
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this record on. You'll be knockedout by it. They were on a
tour. I think you said so, yeah, and Tony. Tony was
a very very smart musician, andhe sensed immediately what was there. I
mean, that song, even,my god, we're dealing with like almost
thirty thirty six years afterwards, ithas lost absolutely none of its power.
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And plus he took a he tookit traditional because right in the middle of
the song. There's a recitation.Recitations used to be the big thing in
country music when Porter Wagner did them, and here's George doing something like this
in nineteen eighty and in a wayit was a mainstream record, but it
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was kind of radical in a sense. And with that orchestration behind it and
that very smooth sound of the stringsand everything, it actually accentuated the rawness
of George's performance. It wouldn't havesounded quite as raw fy'd had the fiddle
in the steel guitar, but itprovided such a contrast. That's why I
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said it was like having a pieceof driftwood. Put it against the background
of concrete, you're not going tosee all the details. But when you
put it against velvet or satin,its roughness and its beauty comes through all
the much better. It's killing menot to interrupt you, because every time
you mentioned Porter Wagner, I wantto talk about the story in the bathroom.
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I want to get to those Butthere is a story that you did
not tell in the book that Idon't know if it's lore or not,
but you would know that on theday he is making the final cut.
Tammy Wynett walks in and he looksacross at her, and that's the take
that Billy Cheryl went with. Nowthat would what you've written wouldn't seem consistent
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with that, But is there anytruth to that. I'm not sure.
I know they there were times whenthey met in the studio. As a
matter of fact, they hadn't recordedtogether, and she showed up in one
of his sessions and they started torecord again. But Billy has told the
story repeatedly that George was in suchbad shape that he had to have him
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come in and recorded a number oftimes and just sort of splicing tape.
Now you could do it digitally,but then splicing tape to get together something
that was releasable. No, I'mnot really sure that that's not a story.
I've heard a lot, but it'suh. There's a lot of things
get confused sometimes as far as Georgeand Tammy, But I don't think at
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that point they were together much,except that George was being managed there for
a while by her husband, herher husband and his brother Paul Richie,
and that eventually fell apart when theytried to get George to move to Houston.
Rather, that wasn't a Houston thatwas for for where he was a
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billy with Billy Bob Barnett. ForWorth, Yeah, for Worth, and
that was supposed to be his newhome base and that just fell apart.
Is George Jones, in your opinion, the greatest country singer of all time?
I think he is arguably yet thegreatest. Uh. You know,
Hank Williams would would maybe come behindhim, and Cash and Merle he's up
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there at the pinnacle. You talkin the book about Merle Haggard saying for
a video they did that George Jonesis the greatest, and I guess it
was Johnny Cash. They asked JohnnyCash, who's your favorite? And he
said, you mean after George Jones. There seems to be that the industry
sort of coalesced in the way thatin the seventies, if somebody was good
looking, he say, look likesRobert Redford, and that was there lots
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of handsome men, but Robert Redfordwas it. It almost seems that he
became It became unacceptable to say anythingother than that George Jones was the greatest.
Why is that? I think becausehe took what Hank Williams had done
and what Lefty Frizelle had done andwhat roy Acuff had done. He took
everything they did as far as theirability to project heartbreak and various forms of
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emotion, including something goofy if itwas one of the novelty tunes like I'm
a People or four thirty three.He took it to a level beyond anything
any of them had or anybody elsehad been able to achieve before. And
in doing so, he set agold standard that every one of those singers,
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in one way or another, aspiredto. They knew how great he
was. Buck Owens told me,I thought George was the greatest thing since
sliced bread. And if you listento his early early hit records for Capital,
you can hear that George overtone inthere. And he became somebody that
everybody wanted to emulate. Cash certainlysaw it, Whalen certainly saw it.
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Willie. They realized this was somebodywho was beyond anything that had come before.
And I would say he's going tobe very difficult to surpass by anyone
in the coming generations. Let's talkabout Tammy Wynett and Wow special that that
pairing was. You spend a lotof time on, you know, sort
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of golden ring and in their duetperiod, and it almost seems that,
you know, obviously her her careerpetered out in his went back up,
but it almost seems like that wasa lifeline for him. At a point
late sixties, early seventies, whenhe was in a lot of trouble,
well, he met Tammy I thinkher first husband or her husband, Don
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Chappell, not her first husband andher second husband. He was a singer
and a songwriter in Nashville, andhe was writing some songs for Pappy Daily
and who owned music or records andwho had discovered George years earlier, and
Chapel and Tammy came to see Georgeand Dawn dropped off a couple of songs.
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At the time, he didn't evenknow who she was. She hadn't
had a record deal or anything yet, but they were really able to click.
In sixty eight, after he leftVider and moved to Nashville, because
she was starting to get her namearound it. She was still married to
Don Chappell, and then she hadgotten a deal with Epic Records, and
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she was starting to have her ownhits. So they got together during that
period and of course her marriage toChapel win Kerfluey, and George was already
divorced, so but I think theyboth admired one another. Tammy had grown
up as a George Jones fan whenshe was a teenager and all that,
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and George heard something in that voice, the same way that Billy Cheryl had.
She was able to project a levelof emotion, a sab, a
tear, what have you. AndI think he had an affinity for that
sort of thing. And I thinkthey just managed to click personally, at
least for a while. And thenthings started to get bad. They got
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married, and of course he tookoff on her out in Las Vegas and
she had to play out there herselfuntil he came back. It was an
up and down thing with both ofthem. And Tammy had problems of her
own. I mean, you know, I think she had problems with the
prescription medication. Yeah. You almostseem to suggest she was more of a
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wreck than he was during his worsttimes. Rich Kinsley as our guest,
The book is the grand tour ofthe life and music of George Jones.
It's just hit the market and it'sfantastic. I very rarely get to read
every single word of a book beforeI interview an author, but I did
this time, and it's it's justbeen wonderful. Rich Let's talk I'm originally
from Orange and now in Houston.Let's talk about where George Jones was from.
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You make much of the Thicket,and you make much of Saratoga and
vit Her and Beaumont and Houston andCoonts and what that soil, what that
community, what that affectation and hisfamily and all that meant to this musician.
Was that a greater influence on himthan your typical musician Where he was
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from. Well, for one thing, Michael, he stayed down there a
long time. He didn't actually moveto Nashville until nineteen sixty eight, I
think, right, Yeah, hewas he was yeah, when he was
thirty seven. He was there whenhe wasn't on the road. He you
know, he started in the Thicket. That was a very rough place to
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grow up. And he moved atleast once in around Saratoga, and then
they went to Koons and that's wherehe met brother Burle and sister Annie Stephen,
and they were evangelists and he sangwith them. And then come the
war George Washington Jones takes the familyto Beaumont because there's work in the shipyards
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and that area was was such apart of him. And then, of
course he was pretty much in Beaumontall the time until he ended up getting
thrown in jail for non support ofhis first daughter. He was divorced by
then. He went to the Marinesfor two years. He spent those years
during the Korean War out near SanJose in a little air base. And
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he came back to Beaumont and theyhad a record label, their start A
Records, and that's where he gothis start. So he lived in Houston
for a while. He worked onthe radio. He also worked in Beaumont
on the radio. He was adisc jockey, which I can imagine was
something because apparently that station they pulleda lot of on air pranks, and
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that was Gordon Baxter's station too,wasn't yeah, And George was around and
he was carrying on there in Beaumont, and then, you know, I
don't think surely his second wife reallyliked him living there. And then once
he started to make money, hemoved over to Orange County into Vider and
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he built a house and he broughthis parents over and he did everything he
could there, so that I thinkthat that was a big factor in his
life that he kept to those rootsand he saw his family and his brother
and his sisters and everything. Noneof them went that far away right well.
And and then of course when hehit stardom, and he'd been in
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Tennessee and he'd been down in Florida, and he spent a lot of time
in Alabama later in life, comingback and doing the whole park and all
that and was it in Koot's no, what is it colmbs Colmbsnil. Yeah,
he came back. That's when hemarried Nancy and he started that park.
He lived very frugally and he wasable to get that park going.
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Now, he had had the firstpark in uh In around Orange and then
he had the park in Lakeland,Florida, but he stayed in He stayed
in that area Colembsnil for a whileand he ran that park and that park
was pretty successful. And then finallyby the late nineteen eighties, he decided
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him and Nancy to move back toNashville. But that was therapeutic for him,
and I think it was another waythat with her help, he was
able to start to really get hisact together. I was fascinated by the
story of the young Donnie Young whotoured with him and then turned out I
guess eighty or eighty one hits itbig as Johnny Paycheck. Yeah, Paycheck
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had been Actually he had been arounda while. He had even made some
records for Mercury and some of thesame sort of things George did. And
he was working as a sideman andhe was calling himself Donnie Young. His
real name was Donald Lytel, andthen he ended up in George's band.
And of course George was a hugeinfluence on his singing. And in the
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late sixties when he first started tocall himself Johnny Paycheck, long before he
did take this job and shove it, the George influence in his vocal style
was just overwhelming. And even thenin the early seventies he started to record
for Billy Sheryl and he did somereally nice records like She's All I've Got
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mister Lovemaker. You can still hearthe George flavor in those records, Toy,
even today, it's very very obvious. Well, let's talk about the
George sound. You spend a lotof time early in the book talking about
this young George Jones, his dad, George Washington Jones. You know,
he basically leaves the home and hebecomes a busker. For all intents and
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purposes, he's playing on street cornersas a young kid. You got the
great picture in here. I lovethis picture where he's playing and he's basically
staying on the couches of friends totry to make a to just to just
stay alive and stay afloat, andthat he's bait. All he can do
is channel Lefty Frazell and Hank WilliamsSenior, and that there was a point
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where the music votes said, youhave got to find your own voice.
You're just you're imitating these guys.Well, I think every young performer,
whether they're an instrumental player or asinger, they have their heroes, and
they tend to try to emulate theirheroes. Now some of them. Ray
Price, for example, if youlisten to some of his early records,
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he sounded exactly like Hank Williams,who was his early mentor. And then
he got to the point he realizedhe could not make a career for himself
sounding like Hank Williams, so hebegan to work on his own style.
The same thing happened with George whenhe came back from the Marines in late
fifty three. Pappy Daily and JackStarns were starting a new record company in
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Beaumont called Starday Records. George gota chance to record for them, and
the sessions some of these records,some of these songs have just been released
in the past few years. Hedid no money in this deal, which
was kind of his vocal style,which really wasn't a style yet. He
did two other songs that sounded exactlylike Lefty, and he did two other
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songs that sounded like Hank. Sowhen Pappy heard him sing, and obviously
he had heard the tapes from thesesessions, he said, Georgia, I've
heard you sing like Bill Monroe andLefty Frizelle and Hank Williams. Can you
sound like George Jones? And Georgereally never thought of it that way,
and it took him a while toget away. Even on his first hit
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single why Baby Why, the HankWilliams flavor is real obvious. But then
not too long afterward, he dida song called You Got to Be My
Baby, and he had been singingin kind of a high, twangy voice,
and suddenly he started to make useof his baritone and that gave him
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a level of flexibility as a singer. He also started to sort of clench
his jaw when he sang, whenhe wanted to bear down on something,
and people saw him do this.I mean even at the Louisiana Hay Ride,
he would crane his neck when hesang. He was finding a physical
way to create his own sound.I don't think it was like he sat
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down and mapped out an outline oranything. He just used his talents and
his instincts and his growth as hebecame more active in the business to create
that style. And I don't thinkat the time he had any idea was
going to have the impact it did. What's interesting is I have personally watched
Sammy Kershaw and Mobandy, both ofwhom do great George Jones imitations, and
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they physically contort themselves in that wayto achieve that. I don't know if
that was conscious or that's just theway you get to that sound, uh
they I know Bob Sullivan, whowas the engineer at the Louisiana Hayride at
k W K h Over and Treveport. He talked about this, he the
way he would he would get physicalwhen he sang, and Frankie Miller talked
(33:17):
about it, but the same way, because him and George were very close
in the early days and he reallyreally worked at it, But he never
talked about that in his autobiography.That's the kind of thing where you have
to go to other people, becauseI don't think that he paid that much
attention to what he did. Hejust did it. It was all instinctive
(33:38):
with him. You talked about howhe learned to take a one syllable word
to fill where he had three beatsfrom from Hank Williams or maybe it was
Lefty Frizel, Okay, and thatseemed to have been a hallmark throughout his
career. Yeah, he took hetook ideas from from other singers, and
(34:00):
Lefty was a guy who made thatan art form, and George took it
even beyond what Lefty did. Andof course George had the uh, the
Hank Williams part in there with especiallyon those early records. But then when
that baritone came in, suddenly you'regetting a whole different dimension and suddenly it's
(34:22):
not sounding so much like those otherguys. You're hearing the flavor of George
Jones. I mean, I thinkit all started with You Got to Be
My Baby, and it just grewafter that. By the time he had
done Window up Above and especially TenderYears, you were hearing the direction he
was heading that would eventually take himto the work he did with Billy Sheryl.
(34:45):
Because Tender Years is not a fiddleand steel record. You have voices
on there, you have no fiddle, you have no steel guitar, but
the essence of George Jones remains untouched, and that's the beauty of that record.
Travis, who you probably know,is most recent inductee along with Fred
Foster and Charlie Daniels of the CountryMusic Hall of Fame, I've always heard
(35:09):
you would know better than I would. Randy Travis cannot achieve on a daily
basis the sounds with his voice thathe achieves on an album cut. It's
very difficult. It's unnatural to whatextent was George Jones when he's cutting albums,
To what extent was that and whatnaturally flowed from him the way say
(35:30):
Willie Nelson is and to what extentwas he altering and changing to achieve this
sound he wanted. I think whenhe went in he went over a song
until it's something I refer to asGeorge's homegrown version of method acting. I
don't think he ever paid any attentionto the idea that an actor would inhabit
(35:52):
a character. But in what hewas doing, he was doing the same
thing. And he might try itone way, he might try it another
when he was recording with Billy.Billy might give him some direction on how
to about inflection or something like that. But George tried to inhabit, say,
(36:12):
on the Grand Tour, this manwho had lost his wife, and
the wife had taken their child,and the grief and the depth of that
grief, and I think that hejust was able to inhabit that song and
put it across in such a waythat it would be unforgettable. I remember
the first time I heard Grand Tourin seventy four, when it was brand
(36:36):
new, and I thought, myGod, is that haunting? I thought,
that's eerie. It's almost like RobertJohnson doing hell Hot on my Trail.
There's a sense of pain and forebodingin darkness there that you just can't
get past. You talk about that. While they deny that they were trying
(37:00):
to write songs, the songwriters forGeorge Jones that matched the era he was
in, whether that was him andTammy getting along, or him and him
and Tammy fighting, or him strugglingwith when he went to the cocaine years.
That the songs always seemed to matchwhere he was in his life.
Why didn't he write more songs forhimself? You know, as someone else
(37:22):
asked me that earlier today, heshould have written more songs because he was
a magnificent songwriter, because he keptit simple. His economy of language and
everything was fantastic. And you sawthat on window up above. That was
the most notable thing. But hewrote a number of his early songs.
(37:45):
Some of them he shared credit withother people. But you know, he
wrote you Got to Be My Baby. He wrote just one more back in
fifty six. That was his firstgreat drinking ballad. I don't know why
he didn't do more of that,And it's really too bad because and he
also wrote songs with other stars.A lot of people don't realize he wrote
(38:08):
songs of Roger Miller. He cowrote a song that was a big hit
for Ray Price called you Had DoneMe Wrong. So he had that ability.
He just for some reason, chosenot to push it the way he
could have. But I think inthe long run, you know, he
(38:28):
became a master interpreter. It's thesame sort of thing as Sinatra. They
were not necessarily wanting to do theirown writing, but they wanted to make
the most of the songs that otherpeople had crafted. I've asked Tracy Bird
why he didn't write more of hisown songs because he had hits with other
(38:50):
people with songs other people wrote,and he said, I wrote plenty of
songs. They were just never good. I made the decision they were not
good enough to be on the albums, and when we were in the hit
making phase, I had to putthe best songs forward. Do you think
that, like Woody Guthrie, thereare songs out there that we've never seen
that he wrote that he just wasn'tconfident in. It's entirely possible. I
(39:13):
have never come across anything like that, but it is possible. I mean
now, George and Tammy occasionally wrotetogether. There's a song it's on the
Grand Tour album and It's the lastsong on the Grand Tour album called Our
Private Life, and it is avery wickedly satirical shot at the coverage they
(39:38):
were getting from the tabloids, andit's very mocking about all you have to
do is worry about who got drunkand who got sued and all this stuff,
and all we want to do iscome down and pick and sing for
you. And I think they probablywrote that during one of the good periods
as a commentary on all the tabloidinterest and everything in the marriage. What
(40:00):
was going on with them that wasthere John and Yoko face, Yeah,
pretty much, Yeah, you couldsay that, And because by seventy four,
you know, they were well,you know, those songs a lot
of times are recorded well before writtenand recorded well before they actually hit the
market, but you know, bythe end of seventy four that marriage was
(40:22):
pretty much done. One of thethings that it strikes me, has really
elevated George Jones in the discussion ofis he the greatest or his legend that
continues to grow, is you knowthe Rocking Chair, the whole deal with
the Rocking Chair, and Alan Jacksonand Mark Chestnutt and Travis Tritt and those
(40:45):
guys coming out and singing with him. You talk about as he got a
little older, you know there towardsthe end in the two thousands, in
the New Millennium, he was reallybothered by the bro country, and he
seems to have been wanting to notjust ride out his final years and make
a little extra money, but heseems really to have wanted to have been
(41:06):
a part of bringing back the neotraditionalist singers and really supporting Mark Chestnutt and
Alan Jackson and those guys. Yeah, Alan, Alan came around in the
early nineties, about the time thatGarth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus and all
those people exploded, and George reallydidn't have any truck with that type of
(41:28):
music. But Chestnut and Tracy andAlan Jackson and the people who were in
that mode were people he felt veryclose to it, people like Vince Gill
who had always been traditional. Heloved that sort of thing. But I
think the other problem that happened withhim in the nineties was he did I
(41:50):
don't need your rock and chair.He got in the Hall of Fame,
everybody was happy, but the factwas his records for MCA did not sell
all that well, and they thesingles, if they got on the charts,
were getting in in the twenties andthirties, not in the top ten.
And I think that bosses yeah,and he, as far as he
(42:13):
was concerned, that didn't matter.He thought he made a good record.
He thought it ought to go tothe top. And the idea of a
youth movement really bugged him. AndI know the interview I did with him,
he talked about the idea of theywould bring these young singers in and
they would next thing, you know, they're putting them through like media training,
and they're doing all this work onher cosmetic work on her teeth and
(42:37):
everything like that. And he saidto me, what's that got to do
with singing? For him, itwas about the music, not about the
image polishing. He had no usefor that. And I think he had
a tough time realizing that the businessthat he had had so much to do
with was changing, and I thinkthat hurt him. And I think that's
(42:59):
one of the things in the latenineties when he lost his contract with MCA,
him and Tammy had achieved a friendshipthat acknowledged their past, but they
were now just friends. Both ofthem were married. When she died,
that hurt him a lot because ofthat of that friendship, and because you
(43:19):
know, they had a daughter togetherand everything. And then when Nancy had
some kind of a brief illness whereshe wasn't able to keep an eye for
at least a while, that's whenhe fell off the wagon and started doing
the drinking again, leading to thataccident in nineteen ninety nine had nearly killed
him. But he never stopped drinking. No. I think he may have
(43:43):
stopped after the accident, but youknow, the whole time he was recording
for MCA and that now he stilldrank. He would drink vodka, but
it was controlled. He was notdown on a bottle anymore. He was
not doing the binges and that kepthim on an even keel, and he
wasn't drinking all the time. Hewas able to have a few keep himself
(44:05):
happy. But he was able tomeet all his obligations. I mean so
much so that right before the accidenthe was actually hosting a show on the
old Nashville Network called The George JonesShow. It wasn't like he would stay
that he didn't sit at a desklike Ralph Emery and he wasn't coming out
like Ed Sullivan and saying, ladiesand gentlemen, my next guest. They
(44:27):
had a thing where he sat aroundin a living room set talking to the
people who were going to sing onthe show. They made it comfortable for
him, and I often thought itwas regrettable that the accident happened at all,
And for all the other reasons,the fact is this would have been
a nice show if he'd had keptit going a couple of years. What
(44:49):
do you let me ask? Whatmay sound like a naive question, but
there are so many guys that mademusic, so many guys that wrote songs,
so many guys that tried as hardas he did, and it were
as commit and hung around. Wecould go through the litany of names.
And you know more than I do. What separated George Jones? Why was
he so big? I think hehad a charisma as a vocalist. He
(45:17):
had, as I said, hecould send a chill down your spine in
ways that no one else could.And I think you know, people who
came along and tried to just imitatehim, just like a lot of the
people who tried to imitate Hank Williamsthat's nothing to hang your hat on,
and you're going to be gone ifyou don't find something unique. But he
(45:37):
towered above everyone because of that giftas a vocalist, and I think because
of the excellence of so many ofhis records. Although he did he did
some dogs, like everybody did,but I think he became somebody that was
(45:58):
even in his worst face, hewas put on such a high pedestal that
people just could not think of countrymusic without thinking of George Jones and that
this guy was the greatest country singerliving at the time. And I don't
think that they ever got away fromthat. But you know, he was
(46:22):
not as widely known in his heydayin the pop field as someone like Cash
or Haggard were, because Cash wassomeone who, even in the late fifties,
had a following among folk music fans, and Haggard had this Woody Guthrie
sensibility that was there all along.That's one of the reasons a lot of
(46:45):
people didn't get upset over ok fromMuskogee, because Haggard was always considered a
man of the people, but withGeorge he stayed out of all that stuff.
But people like a Graham Parsons.He knew who George Jones was.
Dylan knew who George Jones was.The people who were musically astute knew those
things. But he didn't have quitethe wide audience at his peak that somebody
(47:07):
like Cash did well. And ifyou look at Willy and Waylon and Cash
they had, it strikes me,as you know, we didn't call him
hipsters then, but hipsters and hippiesand everything in between, rednecks, you
name it, that broad audience,whereas George Jones seems to have been more
kind of a traditionally pure country fanbase, which is why his appearance at
(47:30):
Willy's nineteen seventy six picnic is sofascinating. He really was scared to do
that, just as he was ayear later to go and play in New
York. But he went down tothe site where Willie was having the picnic.
David allen Coe was there, MaryAnne McCrady for Epic Records was there,
(47:52):
and George was with his band,and he was wearing a black leisure
suit and he was terrified to playfor these hippies and redneck crowd. David
allen Co even walked him up tothe mic he got up there and that
crowd, that culturally divided crowd,went crazy for him. And at the
(48:15):
end, I think he did alittle Richard song as his encore and he
was just euphoric. But that wasthe period where he was starting to go
way off the beam and the ideathat he could have that acceptance just didn't
weigh in with him. I thinklater on, when he met people like
(48:36):
Keith Richards and that he realized thathe had that kind of a transcendent following
well beyond. I think there wasone of the heavy metal acts even played
at that memorial concert in Nashville.I don't know whether it was Metallica.
I'm remembering. I've been in thebook more recently than you have. You've
(48:57):
probably moved on to two projects fromthem. No, actually I I have.
I'm not doing a lot right nowexcept trying to promote this thing.
But he had a wide variety ofpeople at that show. Do you remember
who was? I don't know,but he had he had some rockers there,
musicians, And this is one ofthe things that that never ceases to
(49:21):
amaze me. Fans assume that themusicians they love only listened to one thing
and of course that's absolutely not true. And a lot of the people who
would be folks singer well, JamesTaylor, for example, you wouldn't have
assumed James Taylor would have fallen inlove with somebody like Jones, But the
fact is he did. Now hewrote Bartender's Blues for George Jones. Yeah,
(49:45):
okay, and they it ended upBilly was trying to do an album
putting George with different people. That'show George ended up recording with all this
Costello and I love I love Start, but I love the Elvis Costello line
where he said, look, ifI could sing country, I'd seen country.
(50:06):
I'm stuck doing what I do.Well. There's a parallel in that
and something George told me about alot of the younger acts that were bugging
him back in the nineties and intothe first years of the twenty first century.
He said, it really isn't theirfault. He said, some of
these young folks tell me they wouldlove to record a traditional country album,
(50:29):
but the labels in Nashville won't lethim, and that was something that bugged
him a lot. I think thatwas one of the reasons he ended up
starting his own record company. Thatbandit label he had near the end,
and he was able to keep thatgoing for a while. In fact,
that was one of the last timehe ever worked with Billy Cheryl in the
(50:52):
studio was a two CD set calledThe Gospel Sessions, and that's when he
kind of brought him out of retirement. Yeah, Billy said, I didn't
do it for George, I didit for Nancy. But he did that
and then another record I've heard.In fact, you know, if this
was the last record he ever made, it would have been full circle.
(51:14):
When he was young and still inthe thicket. I think the family had
a record player and they had afew Carter Family records. Well, he
participated in the Tribute to the CarterFamily around two thousand and four. He
did the most electrifying version of theold song Worried Man Blues. It takes
(51:34):
a worried man to sing a worriedsong that I ever heard, and I
mean he just ripped it up.If that had been the last thing he
recorded that it would have been perfect. Richard, it strikes me that the
level of research that you did steepedin this obviously coupled with your experience,
(51:57):
but you didn't just write it offthe Kufflin and took years. It was
clear the level of research was wasdeep. When for those people who want
to know more about George Jones,I mean, you put all your sources
and things out there. What arethe places they should visit and the things
they should read and the one ortwo videos they really ought to see?
(52:17):
Well? There the one problem rightnow with music I have. There's four
Spotify playlists up there that I compiledand I'm curating that are going to be
available with all the big hits,and a list of gospel, a list
of duets with Tammy and with someother people, and then a list of
(52:44):
rarities. There's not any real comprehensiveGeorge Jones box sets around right now,
and of course things are in andout of print with CDs and all that.
But I did work on a setcalled The Essential George Jones The Spirit
of Country. I'm not sure whetherthat's available on a download. You might
(53:06):
be able to find it on eBay, and that covers an awful lot of
ground up into to the nineties tothe time that he ended his time with
Epic Records. There are different compilationson a like of MCA did a compilation
(53:27):
of the Mercury recordings, which weremid to late fifties, and there have
been other compilations of the United Artistrecordings, which was sixty two to sixty
five, but there isn't any onesingle package I can think of. Legacy
also did a set called The EssentialGeorge Jones that mostly deals with the Epic
(53:52):
recordings, that basically deals with theBilly Sheryl years. Because there's so many
labels involved, it's not all thateast to put together a compilation of everything,
and somebody should do something like thatnow. I mean, I could
see a point where maybe Legacy dida complete Johnny all the Johnny Cash albums
(54:14):
for Columbia. They could easily dosomething like that with George and focus on
Epic. They just did a completeElvis Presley albums set that's like sixty CDs.
So you know, I would saythe Spotify lists are a good place,
but you know, it's difficult toput it. And also because he
(54:36):
was so doggone prolific, he recordedso much for start A, so much
for Mercury, so much for UnitedArtists, then Music or then Epic.
I mean he was with Epic basicallytwenty years and that's an awful lot of
material. I would just say,you know, look for different hits packages
(54:57):
on the different labels, because it'simpossible to say this is the George Jones
album you should get. It's justa virtual impossibility right now. I wish
it wasn't that way, Believe me. What is the greatest George Jones song
that doesn't get its due? Forsomebody that knows all, what's one of
those that when you you you weredoing this research and you hear it and
(55:20):
you go, no, why wasthis one not a bigger hit? Well,
there's a couple that fall into thatcategory. And one was a song
called open Pit Mine. It wasIt was a hit on United artists,
but not a big one, andit was about a murder that happened in
the you know, the copper mindsof the Southwest. And that's one.
(55:45):
And another one is called uh.This was a music core track. It
was called in the Shadow of aLie and Jones co wrote it with his
steel guitarist Dicky Overbee, and itwas a song about a murder and man
was involved with his friend's wife andthey were fishing from a rowboat and the
(56:09):
married man fell into the water andthe other guy stood there watched him around.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's afascinating and haunted for the rest.
Yeah, and it never became ahit. Maybe country radio back in those
days wouldn't play something like that.There was also a song called barber Joy
(56:32):
That was a song Eddie Noak wrotethe song another Texas Guy, and it
was about a man convicted and condemnedto death basically for forcing himself on a
woman after her husband caught them.Well, let me let me start that
again. It was the sag ofa man who was convicted and condemned to
(56:58):
death. He was with a womanand when her husband caught them, of
course she pointed the finger right,yeah, and that's those are records that.
Again, thinking of country radio inthe sixties, they didn't like to
play anything like that. There wasa more culturally moralistic viewpoint. Some of
those stations wouldn't even play drinking songs, and I think those songs were maybe
(57:22):
a little too far ahead of theirtime. There were some songs I think
that George was fortunate nobody paid anyattention to, and I mentioned one called
Unwanted Babies. It was a psychedelicfolk song that he recorded as it sounded
like a sixties folk rock number.And I think he only did it basically
(57:44):
because a friend of his wrote itand he insisted they release it under the
name of Glenn Patterson. Right,And if I recall, Glenn is his
middle name, which was what hewent by until he was in his teens,
and Patterson was Clara, his wife'sor his mother's made an Yeah,
that was so he said, callit Glenn Patterson. Well it was funny
because not too long after that thesong ended up on a on a George
(58:08):
Jones album and there was no mentionof Glenn Patterson. But I that kind
of cracked me up. And ofcourse that rockabilly record he did, he
absolutely despised, and yet he lovedLittle Richard, he loved Chuck Berry,
and he loved Fats Domino. Youknow what I thought you were going to
say when I went through that wasthe King is Gone. The King is
(58:30):
Gone. I think that I lovedthat record. I remember getting a review
copy of One Woman Man, whichis a song he had recorded. It
was a Johnny Horton hit. Hehad recorded it for a low budget bunch
of record releases where they were sellingcheap o forty fives of hits of the
(58:51):
day with different singers. It didn'teven go by George Jones, but he
recorded the song in the fifties andBilly produced this late eighties for him,
and he did it as almost likea new traditional type of sound had had
the Texas shuffle in there. ButThe King Has Gone was a terrific performance.
And there was a little bit oflegal problem because of Yabadaviadoo. But
(59:15):
I think again that song was somethingthat might might have gone past some of
the program directors in those days.Some people, you know, they're they're
listening for something that they can sellto people, and that was all you
think of. The lyrics of thatsong. They were almost surrealistic, but
(59:36):
they were funny, and he handledthat song very very well. Well when
you're talking about an Elvis decanter andyou're using Looney Tunes, which of course
they sued him and he had todrop all that, I mean, that's
very realistic. You know, it'sPat Green has a song where he talks
(59:57):
about lone Star beer in my inmy cereal and it's keeping me alive.
Everybody's had that experience where serial storiesand decanters breaking open. I mean,
that's that's not pretty, but it'strue. Yeah, I think that.
I think that song was brilliant.I mean, I don't know how many
Roger Ferris wrote that, I don'tknow really how many of his songs George
(01:00:21):
recorded. But at that point Billywas no longer recording with the with the
big orchestrations and everything, because thebusiness had changed, because of Dwight Yoakum
and because of Randy Travis. Billystarted to record George more or less with
the steel guitar and the fiddle theway he had done it all along.
And in fact, people say,Billy, oh, he just buried George
(01:00:42):
and orchestrations. Go back and listento his albums. He would do that
kind of work and that crafting Imentioned before on the singles, but he
pretty much left. The album cutswere more or less garden variety George Jones
at the fiddle and the steel guitar. He didn't worry about those. The
singles are what mattered to Billy.Hmm. Fascinating. Anything I didn't ask
(01:01:05):
that's important to you about the project? Well, it's trying to let me.
Let me think for a second.I think the I think The one
thing that was that may have kindof slipped slipped through the cracks a little
bit, was the way that heworked worked his way back after he after
(01:01:34):
Nancy was able to get him backon an even keel. He would miss
a show, and he would messup every once in a while. But
the one thing that started to surfacein the eighties, and it grew worse
in the nineties and of course upto the time he died, was he
had respiratory problem. You know,the cocaine I don't think did him in.
I don't think the liquor did himin. I think it was probably
(01:01:58):
he must have had a respiratory problemand he smoked a lot, So it
really what what got him as muchas anything was probably garden variety cigarettes,
not the booze, not all theexcesses, same thing it does in a
lot of people. Well, notto quibble rich, but he, as
he said, I lived to tell. Who'd have thought a man that abused
his body would live into his eighties? Number one? In number two,
(01:02:22):
I don't know anybody. Uh,well, that's not true. There are
a few guys we could point toWillie and Merle and Kenny Rodgers for that
matter, but it's it's it's prettyrare for a guy to continue to still
be singing, much less standing uprightin their seventies. Absolutely, that's something
that that I can't stress too strongly. This guy was dead and buried in
(01:02:45):
the in the late seventies and earlyeighties. Everybody said, we're gonna we're
gonna give George's honor, but we'regonna do it posthumously, and there'll be
a picture of him up there andmaybe we'll run some video. Yet he
comes back, He comes back strong, he stays strong, and he manages
to hang on until he's eighty oneyears old. That really shouldn't have happened,
(01:03:10):
given the odds against him, andgiven the other singers, even somebody
a lot younger like Keith Whitley whodrank himself to death, and that was
a tragedy too. George was ableto withstand all that, And I think
there was a once Nancy was ableto get him back on an even keel,
that grittiness from the thicket kicked in, and that sense of self.
(01:03:37):
The only thing, the other thingI can think of would be the Bridge
story. You know, I'm gladyou say that because I'm from Orange,
and I love Orange, and Ilove the people of Orange. But the
politicians in Orange County, some ofthem are absolute clowns. They've done some
things that have infuriated me over thelast few years, and I think that
story brings great shame on the cityof Orange, not the people, but
(01:04:00):
the elected officials. Arguably the greatestcountry singer of all time, and the
opportunity to honor him in Orange County, and they blew it. Beaumont got
it right, or Jefferson County gotit right. Governor Bush got it right.
President Bush got it right. Everybodyelse got it right, but Orange
County blew it. Would you tellthat story? Well, there was a
sentiment in Beaumont that George was reallya favorite sum and by this time we're
(01:04:25):
talking about the mid nineties, hehad been clean and sober for a good
while, and everybody was marveling atit. He had gotten in the Hall
of Fame. So there was theidea to rename the Nesis River Bridge for
George Jones. But by Texas law, Rich, can I interrupt you because
(01:04:46):
our listeners are going to lose theirmind us read next from the Golden Trial.
That'ss Nature's Okay, it might looklike Nesius, but it's Nachus.
I appreciate that. It's the onething I know anything more about than you
believe me. I appreciate the help. But the people in Beaumont had admired
(01:05:08):
George for a long time, fromthe days when he was just singing on
the streets there as a little kid, and being as he had made this
recovery he was a member of theHall of Fame, they felt that there
ought to be something really special donefor him. So their proposal was that
they renamed the Naceous River Bridge,which spans Jefferson and Orange County, for
(01:05:30):
George Jones and Beaumont, and JeffersonCounty was on board with it, but
there was some skepticism in Orange County, and ironically, this is where he
had lived all these years. Thishappened actually in July of nineteen ninety four,
and this is the bridge, ofcourse carried Interstate ten. But both
(01:05:56):
counties had to concur on the renamefor the State of Texas to go ahead
and approve the actual renaming of thestructure. So you had Beaumont, Jefferson
County totally on board, and alsoformer President Bush was very outspoken in his
(01:06:21):
support. But in Orange County itwas a whole different story because the commissioners
over there took it under invisement.There were some residents who spoke out against
it. One group that was veryupset were members of Mothers against Drunk Driving
because they said you shouldn't rename abridge for an alcoholic. There were people
(01:06:45):
who said he didn't really do thatmuch for Orange County for all the time
he lived here, and there eventhere was some resentment over the fact that
Georgie and Nancy had the the countrymusic Park elsewhere and they didn't have it
(01:07:05):
in Orange County. So all thoseresentments kind of added up to this sentiment
in Orange County that we really shouldn'tbe doing this now. There was one
county commissioner who knew George, andhe said, how can we deny this
when Elvis died from drugs and JanisJoplin died from drugs and she's honored in
(01:07:30):
Port Arthur, How can we turnour backs his exact words, turn our
backs on one of our own.Yeah, And he called them bill heads.
Yeah. But it didn't matter.The political momentum was with the opponents
in Orange County, and so inthe end they wouldn't go along with it,
and they ended up naming the littleof a section of the street out
(01:07:56):
in front of what was it thetheater there in Beaumont, they named that
George Jones Place. And that namingceremony happened at a time when George and
Tammy were doing their reunion tour.So when George and Nancy went down for
the dedication, Tammy was in herown bus with her husband and they were
(01:08:19):
all there for that, which waskind of a nice touch. Yeah.
Yeah, and that now later on, I think there was some some honors
given to him, invited her,he was put in a Walk of fame,
and that I think there's been alittle more realization since then that he
deserved more there. But you know, and also when you look at it
(01:08:43):
this way, at his funeral,you have somebody like Bob Sheefer from CBS
News, who's a Texan and aHonky Tonk lover, and he's up there
talking about George and saying, youknow, nobody could sing exactly like George
Jones unless you were George Jones,because you hadn't been through what he'd been
through. That adds another level ofprestige to the whole thing. So I
(01:09:04):
think probably the inhibitions that Orange Countyhad have probably abated a lot. I
mean, you're talking now over twentyyears. Well it's an embarrassment, frankly,
because there was an opportunity to tellthe world that this famous person came
from this soil and these and theidiot elected officials blew it. But I'll
leave that for another day. Well, when you figure buck Owens even had
(01:09:27):
a statue out at the Crystal Palacein Bakersfield that he had a number of
his favorite country singers there, Haggardand Garth Brooks, who was a personal
friend of his, and Bob Wills, and he had a statue of George
Jones out there, and they werethat gun shy in Orange County. It
just didn't make a lot of sense. Not only that, if you drive
through Sherman, Texas today, youwill see the buck Owens Freeway, and
(01:09:49):
people say, while on Earth isthe buck Owens Freeway in Sherman, Texas.
Because buck Owens was born in Sherman, and even though he's identified as
Bakersfield, California and never really cameback, they honored him with a freeway
there, and I think George Jonesdid a tad more than Buck Owens.
But anyway, you've got my danderup. Well, I agree with that
because I've written quite a bit aboutBuck over the years. In fact,
(01:10:13):
there was a box set came outin nineteen ninety two and he owned all
his recordings, he owned all hismasters, smart businessman, and I did
several weeks of interviews with him andwe went over all these things and Buck
was very clearheaded and he put allthe details in there, and it made
for a nice set of liner notesfor this project. So I'm well familiar
(01:10:34):
with the Texas angle, and somepeople forget he lived in Phoenix for a
while before he went to Bakersfield,and they owned a station there, I
believe, or Tucson, I'm notsure which one. He owned a station,
yeah, and then he had stationsin Bakersfield. I guess his sons
sort of oversee that now, butI think they sold the Arizona station,
okay for a ton of money.Well, you're a gentleman and a scholar,
(01:10:57):
mister Kensley. I've enjoyed our timetogether. Well, thank you,
Michael, and it's been a pleasureOn my end as well. We're going
to end the interview there. Butcan I ask for your email address?
Sure? So o L A RA seven to one zero, No,
nothing in between, just and ataol dot com. Okay, And is
(01:11:18):
there a number to reach you?Yeah? Seven two four eight three six
five six eight one. Fantastic.Rich. I have a little project in
mind at our place on September tenth. I don't know if you have your
calendar in front of you. It'sa Saturday, and I'm trying to get
Kershaw to do a September twelfth,of course, would have been George Jones's
(01:11:43):
eighty fifth birthday. Yeah, andI'm trying to get Kershaw to come in
and do a h and there's athere's a tribute. There's a George Jones
tribute that travels the country, andI thought we'd have them open and then
Kershaw would do a set of allGeorge Jones Saw's and he's interested in it.
We're just trying to make sure thatwe can we can, right.
And we have a book club atthe Redneck Country Club called the Redneck Readers.
(01:12:05):
And despite the term redneck, theseare people with private jets. They
just like to use the term redneck, and I would love to see if
we couldn't get you to come inon that date the ninth, have a
book club meeting that afternoon, andyou question an answered, hang out,
have beers with you and then haveyou be there, or we could do
(01:12:26):
it on the tenth. I'm sorry, it may make more sense to do
it on the tenth before the showthat night, but you could come in
and go to a show the nightbefore however you wanted to do it,
but we'd fly you in and allthat good stuff, and you know,
if we can work all that out, I would love to do that.
Let me see what I'm going tobe doing. Then, this book promotion
thing, I've been going since earlythis morning. I just one interview after
(01:12:51):
another. But you know, Ihave to say, everybody's read the book.
I didn't get anybody asking any reallyuninformed question. That I mean not
everybody, though, has studied itas closely as you have. And I'm
very flattered at at your interest becauseit's obvious that know in the area and
(01:13:11):
growing up there, you see thisbook on a totally different level than maybe
a lot of the consumers have.And it's just been great talking to you,
well, I thoroughly appreciate it.Music as a passion for me was
something that my parents passed to me, and my parents were very much I
had a lot of alcoholism in myfamily, pretty pretty hardcore, and so
(01:13:32):
I identify with George Jones on alot of levels. And our family didn't
have anything either, and growing upand I went off and you know,
sort of I wanted to be Atika'sFinch. I wanted to get out of
Orange. I wanted to go makemoney. I wanted to be famous,
and I got into politics and thenfinally it kind of all came back around.
We're not actually even a country musicstation. I'm on talk radio.
(01:13:56):
I'm on Rush Limbaugh station, SeanHannity station. My show was a political
talk show. But what I do, I don't want to talk about politics
all the time, So I talkabout culture and adoption and raising your kids
and fried chicken and country music.Yeah. I mentioned a little bit of
George's political things in there, thegeneral Tart, the Wallace stuff. A
(01:14:17):
lot of people don't remember. Yeah, yep, seventy two and he was
very much a part of that.But he didn't get that involved in politics.
I know, he did a promofor Wesley Clark when he ran for
the Democratic nomination in two thousand andfour. But he was friends with Mike
Huckabee, and he was friends withthe governor of Mississippi and all that.
(01:14:41):
I don't think George really was allthat political. He just he didn't care
if he liked somebody, He didn'tcare who they were. Now, you
did say he endorsed Phil Bryant inMississippi. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's
who I was referring to. AndI know he loved Mike Hukabee. But
you know, I think he hadan appeal that went way by on you
know, political beliefs or anything likethat, probably because you know, he
(01:15:08):
basically kept all that stuff out ofhis music and just dealt with the you
know, basic problems and challenges oflife. Well, I wonder to what
extent that even you know, excitedhim. You know, I don't get
the impression that it did. Ithink it sounded like from your telling,
he'd rather watch Matt lot I thinkhe Yeah, I think Matt Locke,
(01:15:30):
Western movies reruns or DVDs of gunsmoke. That's the stuff that turned him
on. And that's why I thinkhis fans, especially the older fans,
identified with him so much because that'sthe same thing they liked. I love
it. I will be in touch. Okay. It would mean the world
to me if you could make itin and I think you'd love our place.
(01:15:53):
If you want to look it up, it's the Redneck Country Club dot
com. I think you'd enjoy it. They'd probably be I'm hoping we'll have
a thousand people for the concert,but we'll probably have two hundred and fifty
people who will show up that wecommit to buy X number of books to
make sure you know we make itwork for you. We'll cover all your
expenses. I'll whine you and dineyou in our favorite places, and I
(01:16:14):
just enjoy it. Would mean ourreaders club would really enjoy that. And
they're the kind of people that wouldquiz you and be excited and obviously continue
to spread the word. Do youhave a Twitter handle by any chance?
Uh? Not at this point?No, Okay, I sort of.
I'm a little more careful of socialmedia. Some of the stuff people put
(01:16:35):
on there, no doubt, theyget mad and they put something on and
then they have to take it off. We have a news anchor up here
that's in trouble for some things sheput up on Facebook, and you know,
her jobs hanging them in the balance. Yeah. Now are you in
Pittsburgh? Yeah, I'm right outsideof Pittsburgh. Okay. The reason I
asked is you made reference to Pittsburgha minute ago, and then one of
(01:16:58):
the I noticed in the sources thatwas a reference. You'd spend all that
time at the Bowman Enterprise and thenat a Pittsburgh library or something. I
do a blog for the Pittsburgh PostCaasette, which is the main daily paper
in Pittsburgh. I'm not on staffthere. I do it as a freelance
thing. I also do a musicpodcast there once a week, but it's
(01:17:19):
not just country. It's jazz andolder rock and all kinds of stuff,
because you know, it helps tohave a wider context. When I look
at the George and Tammy hit singlenear You, and very few people remember
today that that was a big pophit in America in nineteen forty seven by
(01:17:43):
a big band called Francis Craig andhis orchestra, and their home base was
no other than WSM. How aboutthat? So, if you have a
broader perspective on things. When you'redoing a book like this, it helps
to be able to just pivot andsee where some of these outside influences come
in. You're right, but michaelattalking Yes, I've enjoyed it rich.
(01:18:09):
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