The Grand Tour (4 page)

Hank's rising fame took a drastic turn after he recorded a song he'd picked up from fellow Alabama singer Rex Griffin. “Lovesick Blues” was a 1920s pop number that Rose saw little value in recording. When an obstinate Hank stood firm, the producer relented. In May 1949, it knocked George Morgan's ballad “Candy Kisses” out of the No. 1 spot. The single was still riding high when MGM issued a new single May 13: “Wedding Bells,” a ballad that Hank didn't write. Neville Powell, KRIC's program director, knew Hank personally, and when Powell heard he was
playing Beaumont's Blue Jean Club, he invited Hank to swing by Eddie and Pearl's broadcast to promote the new record. For George, it became a life-changing experience: a chance to meet his hero, man to man.

Hank, advised that George was an Acuff fan, gave the kid a tip or two that George recalled years later. “When he found out that I loved him and was singin' his songs—you know, someone put it to him I sounded just like him—he said, ‘I'll tell you. I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, because he was my favorite, but I soon found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin' like myself.'” George, who intended to be at the Blue Jean Club, asked Hank to sing “I Can't Get You Off of My Mind,” a tune he'd recorded about two years earlier. Hank agreed. The point of the KRIC visit, however, was to promote “Wedding Bells.” He sang it accompanied by Eddie, Pearl, and George. Anxious to play the song's guitar intro, George was disappointed when Hank barreled right into the vocal. Any disappointment was mitigated that night when about midway through the show, George remembered, “He said, ‘I want to do this song for a young man, George Jones, who wanted to hear it' . . . and I just couldn't believe it.” Hank achieved his own goal on June 11. Invited to the Opry as a guest, his showstopping performance of “Lovesick Blues” landed him a place in the Opry family.

George, after the better part of two years with the Stevenses, was ready to perform on his own in 1949, working the same clubs he'd played with Eddie and Pearl. He picked up his own lead guitar man: Luther Nallie, now fifteen. “He was really a very nice person,” Nallie said. “He always wanted to be a singer. He was what he was; he never did change what he was. I'll say to this day he was the best country singer I ever heard. Of course he . . . loved to sing Hank Williams songs. He liked Acuff and he liked Lefty
Frizzell . . . George could imitate some of those guys.”

The two had one minor point of contention. George had never studied guitar beyond the simplest licks and chords. When Nallie, who'd learned to play the complex, jazzy western-swing guitar favored by bandleaders like Bob Wills and Cliff Bruner, played rhythm behind George, it sometimes led to oil-and-water moments onstage. “I'd make one of them jazz chords, and George'd go, ‘What was that funny sound?' Our playin' was a little out of phase, but at that time, we needed each other. I needed a job and he needed me. And we made it through. I was young but every now and then I'd sip on a beer and we'd be ridin' along somewhere, and we'd go to singin' and we'd do it sometimes out playin'. George used to like ‘Maple on the Hill.' We did it high [in harmony] and he had me singin' that high part to it.”

While admiring his friend's singing, Nallie felt sympathy for George's offstage life, saying, “He'd stay with one family and then another, but he didn't actually have a home.” George Washington Jones also became an occasional irritant. “I never met his mother,” Nallie added. “But his dad used to come out and he was an alcoholic. He'd come around tryin' to bum money from George to buy some booze. And George'd get upset.

“George never really had a home. That's what was bad.”

Nallie remembered the pair had a regular circuit, starting with Lola's and Shorty's on Pine Street.

“Lola's and Shorty's was right there by the shipyard, right by the Neches River. And it was a knock-down, drag-out place. We played another place out there on Highway 90, just a little ways out of Beaumont, called Miller's Café. It was kind of a drive-in beer joint. We played inside but we had the speakers goin' outside because people would sit in their cars and drink beer and listen to the music. They had carhops that would go back and forth and
they had people inside, too, and they'd serve hamburgers, stuff like that. They had another place a half mile further down called Glenn Vista. We'd play on Sunday from one to five at Miller's Café, and then we'd go over at Glenn Vista from six till closin' time. I was flat worn-out. But we made a little money. George was pretty good. They'd put money in the kitty and we'd split it up. They paid a little something, like five dollars, which wasn't bad back then. I was livin' at home.”

George's guitars, Nallie remembered, were catch-as-catch-can. “He kind of borrowed guitars. I don't know if he had one of his own or not. He had friends that he stayed with that were musicians and he'd use one of theirs. We were still playin' beer joints and then later on we added a fiddle player, Robert Shivers, and another one by the name of Lloyd Gilbert, and later on as time went on George got up a band with the drums and the whole shot.” He enjoyed creating onstage comedy, sometimes at Luther's expense. He'd cede the microphone to his partner, whose specialty vocal was the dramatic 1950 hit ballad “Cry of the Wild Goose,” a pop hit for Frankie Laine and a country success for Tennessee Ernie Ford. As he sang, “Tonight I heard the wild goose cry,” George started honking, goose-style, behind him, cracking up the crowd and deflating Nallie's presentation.

George drank during this time, but Nallie insisted it wasn't yet a major problem when they were performing. Offstage was another matter. George and Nallie joined the owners of Lola's and Shorty's for a day of fishing on their small boat, equipped with an outboard motor and an ample supply of beer. Fortified with more than a few beers, George took the wheel only to hit something that damaged the propeller. When Luther raised the motor from the water to effect a temporary fix, a laughing, drunken George began rocking the boat.

It was at Playground Park that George first encountered the Bonvillian family: the patriarch, known as Willie; his wife, Claudia; and their daughter, Dorothy Ann, who'd come to Beaumont from Houston. Dorothy had been born in Houston in 1929. For Willie, going to bars and enjoying live country music on weekends was a respite from his job as a superintendent of the painting division of G. Sargl, Inc., a large Beaumont general contractor Nallie knew well, noting, “They would do like big buildings and they must have had thirty, forty painters, people workin' in that department.”

The entire family seemed fascinated with the young singer. Willie liked his voice enough to buy him a portable PA system and a decent guitar. Overwhelmed by the attention, George took a liking to Dorothy. When he proposed, she accepted, but their wedding on June 1, 1950, proved awkward. The upwardly mobile Bonvillians seemed discomfited by Clara Jones and her backcountry ways, and by George's insistence that Brother Burl, a true backwoods preacher, officiate. Since he and Annie were doing revival meetings in Port Arthur, the wedding was held there. Even in the wedding photo, with both mothers separated by the happy couple, the more urbane Claudia Bonvillian looks uncomfortable.

The disconnect became all too clear when the couple moved in with the Bonvillians. Willie might have loved his son-in-law's singing, but he also knew music wasn't going to support a wife, much less a family, on hit-and-miss payments from Playground Park, Yvonne's, Miller's, or anywhere else. He laid down the law. Playing music in bars was fine on weekends, but his new son-in-law needed a day job with steady pay, and he happened to have one in mind: work as an apprentice housepainter for Sargl. George tried it, hated it, and quit, leaving Willie highly displeased. He landed a job driving a delivery truck and moved Dorothy and himself into
an apartment. George's job history became even more checkered when he bailed on the delivery position and, later, a job at a funeral home. Soon the couple returned to the Bonvillians. With Dorothy pregnant by early 1951 and the marriage in free fall, George was back playing clubs, which disgusted his in-laws and ramped up the tension. As the conflicts escalated, George moved out.

George and Dorothy's parting ways benefited Nallie on two levels. “Willie had bought George one of those Bogen PA systems, the kind where the two speakers fit together and the amplifier fits in the middle and you take it apart, spread the speakers out. When George quit and left and all that, Willie took [the PA] back. Well, I was still playing out there with somebody else, and the first thing, I got George's job paintin'. Willie put me to work. I said, ‘That PA system, I'd like to have that. How much do you want for it? I don't have any cash.' And he said, ‘Well, I'll take $120 for it, and you can pay me ten dollars a month.' That's what I did, and I had that set for a long time. Willie was a real nice guy. But he didn't take any baloney from anybody.”

George occasionally headed elsewhere. In Houston, he showed up at Cook's Hoedown, a dance hall known for presenting local western swing acts like Dickie McBride's Ranch Hands. He didn't leave a great impression. George Ogg, who played sax and clarinet with the band, told researcher Andrew Brown about seeing George with his guitar, singing on the bandstand steps during intermissions. Calling him “the sorriest presentation I ever saw in my life,” Ogg noted, “you could insult him and he'd smile at you.”

His pantheon of musical heroes increased by one in 1950–51, this one born not far away: Lefty Frizzell, from Corsicana, Texas. In the fall of 1950, his raw Texas honky-tonk swept America with the hit single “If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time,” a lively drinking song, and the single's B-side, the ballad “I Love
You a Thousand Ways,” Frizzell originals recorded at Jim Beck's studio in Dallas. George became enamored of Frizzell's phrasing, the way he'd stretch out certain one-syllable words for effect—“way” became “way-a-hey,” and so on—and worked to master Lefty's vocal style as well. For a time, George played guitar and sang with the Rowley Trio, who later worked with Lefty. Jerry Rowley; his wife, Evelyn; and his sister, Vera “Dido” Rowley, had an early-morning show on Beaumont's KFDM that often took requests on the air for songs, listeners choosing who would sing them. George stuck around for a while, but the early-morning hours were more than he wanted to handle.

Lefty had Beaumont ties. His new manager was a local businessman, Burl Houston Starns, known as Jack, who knew little about country music. His wife, Neva Starns, however, had considerable experience managing and booking local country acts. They owned Neva's, a dance hall/café on Voth Road in the northern end of Beaumont. Starns guided Frizzell's career, which included an entire stage show with supporting acts and his own band. He kept Lefty touring constantly, traveling to distant shows in his own plane.

Meanwhile, George's domestic situation worsened. On July 23, 1951, Dorothy Bonvillian Jones filed for divorce in the District Court of Jefferson County, citing George's drinking and propensity for violence. Four days later, the court ordered him to refrain from bothering his wife and set support payments for the unborn infant at thirty-five dollars a week, with an added $466 for medical bills relating to her pregnancy. When he failed to fork over the required amount, the judge jailed him on August 24. Five days later, his sister Loyce bailed him out. A month later, the scenario repeated itself when he was jailed again on September 28. Dorothy gave birth to Susan Marie Jones in Beaumont on October 29.

With two jail visits under his belt, George finally had to face the reality Willie Bonvillian knew from the start: singing in East Texas beer joints wouldn't cover child support, and sure as hell wouldn't keep him out of jail. The judge hearing his case offered one sure solution: enlisting in the military, where family-support payments were automatically deducted and forwarded. It was, however, not the optimal time to sign up. Since June 1950, America, along with the United Nations, was in an undeclared war—or “police action”—in Korea battling the Communist North Koreans. The military draft was in full swing. It wasn't what he wanted, but given the realities, namely the fact that the Bonvillians and Jefferson County courts and sheriff were set to pounce at the first late check, he had little choice. George was amazed to find waiting periods for the army and navy, but not for the marines. On November 16, 1951, George Glenn Jones enlisted for two years in the United States Marine Corps with nary a bit of enthusiasm. He'd left in anguish, Dido Rowley remembering him in tears before his departure. Little wonder. The odds he'd wind up in Korea were high.

Assigned the serial number 1223231, he underwent his basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and dodged a huge and literal bullet. The Corps sent him not to Korea but to Moffett Field, a naval air station near San Jose, south of San Francisco. His MOS (military occupation specialty) was that of basic infantryman. Despite the war, he'd spend his entire enlistment there, holding no rank higher than Private First Class, with the classification of Rifleman. He lived for leaves and weekends, when he could take his guitar to the area's clubs and dance halls. One of his early favorites: Tracy Gardens in San Jose, where nineteen-year-old steel guitarist Bobby Black and his guitarist brother Larry spent their Saturday nights playing as members of the house act, Shorty Joe Quartuccio's western swing band the
Red Rock Canyon Cowboys. Local musicians and even strangers who felt they could sing routinely asked to sit in with the band, who were happy to oblige.

One night George, in uniform, approached the bandstand wanting to sing. Black never forgot the crowd's reaction. “Right away, he was a hit because he sang the songs they were playin' on the radio, mostly Frizzell and Hank Williams. I remember him singing ‘Always Late,' ‘Mom and Dad's Waltz,' ‘Cold Cold Heart,' and all that kind of stuff. He sounded like Hank and Lefty, another reason why people liked him. There wasn't anybody around these parts that could do that. You had to have a certain quality to your voice, and George had it.” His lack of ego also impressed Black, who called him “kind of quiet and unassuming—just a good ol' country boy, and although we didn't suspect at all that he would someday be a star, it was obvious that he had what it took to become one. I recall [him performing] maybe three or four times,” Black continued. “It wasn't every Saturday. We'd get him up to sing a few numbers and everybody always wanted to hear him . . . He would just sort of vanish. We just called him ‘George the Singin' Marine,' and later ‘Burr-head.' At that time, he was lookin' for a place to go, to hear a country band, and maybe just get up to sing with somebody.”