George Jones Salutes Hank Williams
| George Jones Salutes Hank Williams |
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| Studio album by George Jones | ||||||||||
| Released | May 1960 | |||||||||
| Recorded | April 21, 1960 Bradley Film & Recording Studio, Nashville, TN |
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| Genre | Country | |||||||||
| Length | 29:42 | |||||||||
| Label | Mercury | |||||||||
| Producer | Shelby Singleton | |||||||||
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George Jones Salutes Hank Williams is the 1960 country music studio album released in May 1960 by George Jones. The album was the ninth studio LP release, and was recorded in one session. The album has been reissued multiple times since its release, including the tracks being reused on many compilations.
The album was his second album release of the 1960s, and is one of the best sounding albums recorded with Mercury Records. Though the album didn't chart, however, it became one of his best sellers. All of the songs included were recorded by Hank Williams at some point in his short-lived career, and during this time of Jones' career, he had incorporated much of Williams singing style into his style.
George Jones very often would cite Hank Williams and his biggest musical influence. Jones listened to him any chance he could get, and bought many of his records. He would even meet Williams during a radio show on KRIC in Beaumont, Texas where a young teenage Jones secured a gig backing old-timer country duet act Eddie and Pearl. In the liner notes to Cup of Loneliness: The Classic Mercury Years, Colin Escott quotes Jones telling his version of events to Ralph Emery: "Hank was appearing at the Blue Jean Club on the Port Arthur highway. A dee-jay on KRIC was a good friend of Hank's, so he asked Hank to come by that afternoon before the dance. I had an electric guitar. I knew he was coming by, and I had learned 'Wedding Bells'. He gets up to the microphone with the guitar, and he didn't let me kick it off. I had done all that figuring out. When he started singing, I loved his singing so much that I was dumbfounded. I never hit one note. My fingers just froze to the neck of the guitar."
In the 1989 video documentary, Same Ole Me, Jones admits, "I couldn't think or eat nothin' unless it was Hank Williams, and I couldn't wait for his next record to come out. He had to be, really, the greatest." In his memoir, Jones recalled learning about Williams death on New Year's Day 1953 while he was serving a stint in the marines stationed in San Jose, California. After a friend showed him the headline in the paper, Jones wrote that he "lay there and bawled", adding that "Hank Williams had been my biggest musical influence. By that thinking you could say he was the biggest part of my life. That's how personally I took him and his songs."
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