Music

THE GRIZZLED CONSCIENCE OF COUNTRY MUSIC

Country-music legend George Jones's trawl through the 1990s was not easy.
Entering the fifth decade of a mammoth career that has produced more chart
singles than any recording artist in history, Jones found himself in a
commercial and artistic no-man's land. Though he still came up with a great
single now and then, and 1994's "Bradley Barn Sessions" was a triumph, an
increasingly indifferent public and little radio airplay pushed the Ol'
Possum (so named by a 1950s Houston disc jockey for his close-set eyes and
turned-up nose) to the margins. And that's not a place George Jones is
comfortable with.

Of course, a raft of accolades befitting a legend did roll in, for Jones's
stature as one of America's greatest singers is assured. But when
lifetime-achievement awards crop up -- like Jones's 1992 induction into the
Country Music Hall of Fame -- it's often a signal that the vitality of an
artist's career is dwindling.

In fact, Jones did consider retirement before his manager, Evelyn Shriver,
coaxed him back into the fray. The two formed a partnership, Bandit
Records, and began looking for a springboard back onto the charts. In a
fervent, perhaps unprecedented hunt for quality material, Jones and his
associates sifted through some 500 songs before settling on the 10 that
would constitute his stunning 1999 comeback album, "The Cold Hard Truth."

Then, with "Cold Hard Truth" in the can, Jones, a tumbler of vodka in hand,
drove his Lexus off a bridge near his Tennessee home. It was a calamitous
event and nearly took his life, but it was not out of character. Jones's
epic (and very public) personal life, pockmarked by drug abuse and an
absurd appetite for drink, made it almost inevitable.

"That accident put the fear of God into me," Jones later told reporters. "I
realized I was getting to the age that I had to quit all that mess, and
smoking was hurting my lungs and affecting my voice. So, I just quit it
all. Within months I was hitting higher notes than I ever hit before and
wishing I had done it years ago."

George Glenn Jones was born in the rural, east-Texas town of Saratoga in
1931 and grew up dirt-poor near the booming oil fields of Beaumont. He was
a singer even in childhood, lending his voice to the gospel choirs of his
upbringing. His formative years found him glued to WSM Radio on Saturday
nights for the Grand Ole Opry, where pioneering stars like Roy Acuff and
Bill Monroe starred. As a teenager, Jones cut his teeth in the Texas
roadhouses, sometimes backing the husband-and-wife act Eddie and Pearl. But
it was in the mid-1950s, after a stint in the Marines, that the Possum's
career began to take off.

Jones's earliest records illustrate a clear debt to icons such as Acuff,
Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. In fact, Frizzell's celestial singing
style, slyly and dramatically bending notes around certain lyrics for
emphasis, was all the foundation Jones needed to expand and refine the
honky-tonk sound. The 1955 smash "Why Baby Why," Jones's first chart hit,
and the rockabilly-flavored moonshiners' tale "White Lightning," a 1959 No.
1, began a relentless string of hits that continues to this day.

Jones's early, rambunctious, neo-novelty hits for Starday, Mercury, Musicor
and United Artists (such as "The Race Is On") were neatly balanced by some
of the most sublime ballads ever recorded. On "Walk Through This World With
Me" and "A Good Year for the Roses," among dozens of others, Jones evolved
a remarkable singing style -- bending and lengthening notes, modulating
from high wail to low moan -- that was startling in its dedication to the
mood and nuance of the song. That distinctively earthy, emotional style
defines the country genre and has influenced generations of artists ranging
from Johnny Paycheck to Randy Travis to Brad Paisley.

In the late '60s, Jones hooked up with upstart producer Billy Sherrill,
fatefully wed rising star Tammy Wynette in a doomed match of Music City
royalty (they split in 1975) and began an astonishing string of chart
smashes, both solo and duet ("The Grand Tour," "Golden Ring"), which
culminated with 1980's "He Stopped Loving Her Today," a monumental tale of
unrequited love so anguished that it's the most heart-wrenching three
minutes in country-music history. That artistic pinnacle, ironically,
coincided with Jones's free-fall into addiction, and while the hits
continued, Jones never quite recaptured the timeless misery of those
postdivorce hits.

Nearly three years after his accident, though, Jones has stubbornly rebuilt
his career and reclaimed his place as the soul and conscience of country
music. As has happened often in Jones's dizzyingly prolific career, he
found a song no one -- not even the bean counters in Nashville -- could
deny. "Choices," a chart-topper and Grammy winner, was a chiseled,
plaintive look at the road map of life; it encapsulated the intimacy,
regret and gut-wrenching pain of so many Jones classics over the years. The
song resonates on many levels, not the least of which is the strange way it
humbly echoes the grandiosity of the singer's life. Like so much of Jones'
work, "Choices" walks the fine line between autobiography and universality,
though ultimately the artist's soulful phrasing and utter connectedness
with the song help it transcend concrete interpretation.

Jones's recent follow-up, "The Rock: Stone Cold Country 2001," doesn't
quite reach the lofty heights of "Cold Hard Truth," but it does consolidate
Jones's newfound strengths. His voice, frayed around the edges, conveys
more in a simple twist of phrase than many singers' can on an entire album,
and the songs, despite the lightweight novelty duet with Garth Brooks --
"Beer Run" -- are uniformly strong. From the gospel-influenced title cut to
the heart-tugging Vietnam-vet lament "50,000 Names" to Jones's sweeping,
spectral interpretation of Billy Joe Shaver's "Tramp on Your Street,"
Jones's down-home voice is as affecting as ever. Producers Keith Stegall
and Emory Gordy Jr. rightly cast the artist in an array of weeping fiddles
and silky steel guitar, eerily echoing Sherrill's earlier production magic.

Jones's return to the limelight represents a rare reversal of trends
because, in the years since his glory days, Nashville's chase for the
almighty buck has led it further and further away from country music's
indigenous impulses. The music's distinctively rural Southern roots and its
preoccupation with songs about drinking, cheating and crying in your beer
have given way to glossy pop and soft-rock influences.

"They've tried to choke this crap down people's throats," Jones told
Billboard magazine back in 1998, referring to the slick, saccharine sound
that passes for country these days. In an acid-tongued call to arms from
traditional country's truest believer, Jones reiterated his allegiance to
the kind of blue-collar drinking and cheating songs that define the genre.
"I'm gonna stay in their front yard as long as possible, and raise all the
hell I can," he said. "I'm gonna stay in this business and haunt them until
we get it back."