Not enough can be said about this man. He is country music, the very definition. His life and art converged into a peculiar wholeness where life and song were the same, the highest compliment that can be attributed to any artist of no matter what pursuit. The lonely do know his secret.

Often, you’ll recall where you were and what you were doing when someone of significance wins the privilege to swim across the River Jordan.

I crashed my death into George Jones death. My death was a murky flu like sickness whilst inebriated with an unhealthy dosage sourcing from a lack of sleep. I was about to head to Boston to play a so-called two day “noise” fest in a dusty, dim basement. We broke into “He Stopped Loving Her today” after suddenly jettisoning the feedback swarming out of 4 broken amplifiers.

Those cocaine helicopters were following him in Alabama. He owned many houses. The “agents” would get him and hijack him bursting out of the shadows with shovels of cocaine. Somehow the mafia was involved. I guess there are many realities. Old No show Jones would sink into his perverse Donald duck voice to maneuver the heavy violent winds of a mysterious supernatural cocaine snow drift no man’s land. He claimed that voice was proof of multiple personalities. Really, he was astral traveling the dimensions of heaven, hell and purgatory.

Once seven in the morning on a Christmas day I was still drunk. I went to the waffle house with my father. Things git strained between blood too similar. I played George Jones on the jukebox. Things got peaceful and made emotional sense. The possum brought rebuilt a bridge over a dark deep depressive river. We two fools got reminded less bridges were burned then believed.

George can be summed up and saddened down in many ways. He performed and recorded over thousands of songs, so favorites comes to the wacky tacky whims of personal preferences. At the moment, I prefer the morose sentimental and nietchizean loser of “Golden Ring,” “The Lonely Know my Secret,” “The Grand Tour,” “The King is Dead” and “She Stopped Loving Him Today.” His straight faced cannibalism ode “I’m a People” often confuses folks I know. Some don’t know guitars are making those weird booming sounds in that black humored audio cavern.

“White Lightning” took over twenty takes. George Jones was really drunk at the recording session. He smashed Billy into the rock. Blood and moonshine mix well. Magic happens. Ferocious energy churns changes lives. There’s a way of life in the hopped up teetering taunt twang.

It took over two years go get a good take of “She Stopped Loving Him Today.” He also thought the song was too morbid. The song corrals a bucking horse of despair and despondency. A song of love is often a song of death. Where the two intermingle we wander this world found and lost. The time is always dusk and dawn overlapping. I will meet you lost on the found road.

Back in my younger days I did a medley of country songs combined with my own material (a song Georgia Blood) into a vast epic. I recall playing this epic down in a railroad tunnel down in South Atlanta. Claude King’s Wolverton Mountain” would segue into “She Stopped Loving Him Today.” I played this song in that ancient soot stained underworld many a times with a dedication to the Late Great Ricky Tripp.

What else can a fool say to summarize the shaman of twang and sorrow? I leave you with this excerpt from George Jone’s autobiography (with Tom Carr) I Lived To Tell It All. This is a story from the early days (page 92). This says a whole lot!

“We killed a fifth of whiskey and got into another. And then I got out of my mind.
I threw an ashtray at a mirror behind the bar, and glass flew in all directions. The club owner came out of his chair.
“What are you going to do, tear the place to pieces?” he shouted.
“Only before I whip your ass!” I said. And I meant it.
He pleaded some more, then ran from the room, scarred to death by the man going crazy in his nightclub. I broke glasses, smashed mirrors, bent metal chairs, broke the legs off tables, tore down curtains, shattered whiskey bottles behind the bar, and more. I was out of my drunken mind.
The club owner, hysterical, ran back into the room and jumped on me. I knocked the shit out of him several times. I’m glad I had already gotten paid for my week’s work. He ran out of the room once more, and I never saw him again. I was never invited back to play his club.”