George Jones
| George Jones | |
|---|---|
George Jones performing at Country Fever in Pryor Creek, Oklahoma in 2005
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | George Glenn Jones |
| Also known as | Thumper Jones, The Possum |
| Born |
September 12, 1931 Saratoga, Texas, US |
| Origin | Vidor, Texas |
| Died | April 26, 2013 (aged 81) Nashville, Tennessee, US |
| Genres | Country, rockabilly, gospel |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter |
| Instruments | Acoustic guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 1953–2013 |
| Labels |
Starday Mercury United Artists RCA Records Musicor Epic MCA Nashville Asylum Bandit |
| Associated acts | Jennette Hicks, Melba Montgomery, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Alan Jackson |
| Website | www |
George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", as well as his distinctive voice and phrasing. For the last 20 years of his life, Jones was frequently referred to as the greatest living country singer.Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved." Waylon Jennings expressed a similar opinion in his song "It's Alright": "If we all could sound like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones." The shape of his nose and facial features earned Jones the nickname "The Possum."
Born in Texas, Jones first heard country music when he was seven and was given a guitar at the age of nine. He married his first wife, Dorothy Bonvillion, in 1950, and was divorced in 1951. He served in the United States Marine Corps and was discharged in 1953. He married Shirley Ann Corley in 1954. In 1959, Jones released a cover version of "White Lightning" by J. P. Richardson, which launched his career as a singer. His second marriage ended in divorce in 1968; he married fellow country music singer Tammy Wynette a year later. Many years of alcoholism caused his health to deteriorate severely and led to his missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones." After his divorce from Wynette in 1975, Jones married his fourth wife, Nancy Sepulvado, in 1983 and became mostly sober. Jones died in 2013, aged 81, from hypoxic respiratory failure. During his career, Jones had more than 150 hits, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists.
George Glenn Jones was born on September 12, 1931 in Saratoga, Texas, and was raised in Colmesneil, Texas, with his brother and five sisters. His father, George Washington Jones, worked in a shipyard and played harmonica and guitar while his mother, Clara, played piano in the Pentecostal Church on Sundays. During his delivery, one of the doctors dropped Jones and broke his arm. When he was seven, his parents bought a radio and he heard country music for the first time. Jones recalled to Billboard in 2006 that he would lie in bed with his parents on Saturday nights listening to the Grand Ole Opry and insist that his mother wake him if he fell asleep so he could hear Roy Acuff or Bill Monroe. In his autobiography I Lived To Tell It All, Jones explains that the early death of his sister Ethel spurred on his father's drinking problem and, by all accounts, George Washington Jones could be physically and emotionally abusive to his wife and children when he drank. In the book George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Bob Allen recounts how George Sr. would return home in the middle of the night with his cronies roaring drunk, wake up a terrified George Jr., and demand that he sing for them or face a beating. In a CMT episode of Inside Fame dedicated to Jones' life, country music historian Robert K. Oermann marveled, "You would think that it would make him not a singer, because it was so abusively thrust on him. But the opposite happened; he became a chronic singer. He became someone who had to sing." In the same program, Jones admitted that he remained ambivalent and resentful towards his father up until the day he died and observed in his autobiography "The Jones family makeup doesn't sit well with liquor...Daddy was an unusual drinker. He drank to excess but never while working, and he probably was the hardest working man I've ever known." His father bought him his first guitar at age nine and he learned his first chords and songs at church and there are several photographs of a young George busking on the streets of Beaumont.
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