The Grand Tour (8 page)

GEORGE'S TV VISIBILITY STEPPED UP WITH OCCASIONAL APPEARANCES ON
Town Hall Party
, the weekly Compton, California, stage show hosted by Tex Ritter that was filmed and syndicated nationally as
Ranch Party
. He made a February 1957 appearance on
Ozark Jubilee
, the ABC variety show broadcast from Springfield, Missouri, hosted by former Opry star Red Foley. The road was a constant as he performed on so-called package shows with a specific group of stars at stops around the country. He generally got along well with his costars, yet the amounts of booze ingested by all could change that. Sober, he had Clara's noblest attributes. A binge summoned forth the obnoxious, abusive spirit of George Washington Jones. If he realized what he'd done after sobering up, remorse set in and apologies flowed—until the next whiskey was poured. He and fellow Opry star Faron Young proved to be
natural combatants. Both were short and slight; the liquor could turn them aggressive, hostile, and foulmouthed. Each could easily provoke the other. They took a crack at the same groupie during one tour. At another stop, they got into a verbal battle as a local radio personality interviewed Faron live on the air, with the local mayor and his wife standing by. Backstage at another show, Faron got into it with the equally feisty Little Jimmy Dickens. George jumped to Dickens's defense, and in seconds, George and Faron were battling as the audience heard pounding and screaming. Afterward, both appeared onstage in what was left of their fancy, expensive Nudie suits. Most of the time, Faron came out on top in these confrontations.

Still writing songs, George created a few with up-and-comer Roger Miller, one of Pappy's Starday hit cloners, now recording for Mercury. Miller, who was about to establish his compositional genius with hits for Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, and Jim Reeves, cowrote two of George's more cheerful, effervescent recordings from this period: “Nothing Can Stop My Loving You” and “Tall, Tall Trees.” Neither were hits, but they reflected his continued evolution into a vocalist able to evoke emotions across the spectrum. He rolled around the country in the fall of 1957 with Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, still appearing at country concerts despite his success as a rocker. Later that year, George joined Rusty and Doug Kershaw, Lone Star honky-tonk fountainhead Floyd Tillman, and Canadian singer Wilf Carter for a swing through New Jersey.

Among his close friends within the Opry community was Stonewall Jackson, the onetime Georgia sharecropper who carried that moniker as his legal name, not a stage identity. Stonewall, too, had had a horrific childhood and abusive father, and he also sensed he had what it took to appear on the Opry. In early November 1956, just a few months after George joined the cast, Jackson
drove his truck into Nashville hoping to land a spot on the Opry. In pure storybook fashion, the dream came true in days. He connected with Fred Rose's son Wesley Rose, who'd taken over the Acuff-Rose music publishing firm after his father's death. Jackson went from being an Opry guest to a member and, soon after, a Columbia recording artist. Both from the backwoods, Stonewall and George had much common ground, and that included heavy drinking.

Neither felt any pain after playing a club in either Albuquerque (George's memory) or Texas (Stonewall's recollection). They stopped at a bar to pick up some six-packs for the road when a huge cowboy, walking into the place as they left, hurled a bottle toward them that barely missed Stonewall. George, already well lubricated, turned around in a fury. “Did you throw that bottle?” he snarled at the cowboy. “Yes, I did,” the man admitted. That did it. As usual, ignoring his weight disadvantage, George took a swing at the guy and missed. The cowboy threw a punch that landed George facedown in a mud puddle. Other men began kicking him. Stonewall came to his aid and yanked George out of the mud before he drowned. For his trouble, the cowboy and friends beat Stonewall so badly that his eyes swelled shut. Both recovered, but yet another stage outfit was trashed; they had to buy civvies to finish the tour. On another tour, George heaved the coffee table in his room through a plate-glass window. Stonewall had fun of his own, sweeping up the glass and scattering it inside George's room with a large rock that made the destruction look like an outside job.

Stonewall had a bigger problem. So far, his records for Columbia weren't moving. George changed that in 1958 when they appeared together with Ernest Tubb at a fiddlers' gathering in Crockett, Texas. A few inmates from a nearby prison had permis
sion to attend, one a convicted murderer George and Stonewall chatted with. They asked how long his sentence ran. His reply, that he had been inside eighteen years and “I still got life to go,” registered with both. George claimed he wrote it and earmarked it for Johnny Cash; Stonewall later claimed they cowrote it but agreed that Stonewall would record the song and George would take sole writer credit and not record it. “Life” became Stonewall's first hit single, saving his recording contract.

George's responsibilities at home increased in July 1958 when Shirley gave birth to a second son, Bryan Daily Jones, named for Shirley's father, Bryan Corley, the middle name inspired by an obvious source. George's chart successes continued. “Color of the Blues,” written by Lawton Williams, composer of the country standard “Fraulein,” became a landmark of sorts. The plaintive number, reflective yet unabashedly pained, reflected the stops-out vocal expressiveness that earned George the admiration of his peers.

His early hero Acuff had a similar skill. In the early 1940s, Fred Rose, his future partner in Nashville's Acuff-Rose song publishing company, was known as a successful pop songwriter. After watching Acuff sing “Don't Make Me Go to Bed and I'll Be Good,” a maudlin tune about a dying child, Rose later recalled, “Suddenly I said to myself, ‘Are those tears splashing down the guy's shirt?' They were, and that's when I got it—the reason people like hillbilly tunes. ‘Hell,' I said to myself, ‘this guy
means
it.'” In the same way Hank Williams had cultivated a deeply emotional, Acuff-inspired skill, so did Little Jimmy Dickens. Known primarily for sassy novelty hits like “A-Sleepin' at the Foot of the Bed,” Dickens was admired by fans and artists alike for his ability to deliver raw, emotional ballads in a style clearly inspired by Acuff.

George kicked the bar up several notches. He discussed this in
an extended 2006
Billboard
interview with Ray Waddell, explaining, “When I sing a song, whether it's in the studio or onstage, I try to live the story of that song in my mind, my heart and my feelings. That's why [the songs] come out like that. I feel the hurt that people have, especially everyday working people. I'll be in the studio and just get so involved in it I almost have a tear come out.” There's no reason to dispute this simple explanation, which has precedent in the field of drama: a technique known as Method acting, or just “the Method.” It's been used by some of America's greatest actors, among them Marlon Brando, James Dean, Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Shelley Winters, and Marilyn Monroe.

The concept, often credited to Russian actor Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski and later refined by American actor and acting teachers Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, involves actors focusing on and drawing from their own past real-life experiences relevant to a scene, reliving them in a way that brings greater passion and authenticity to their performance. While it's unlikely George, despite his love for movies and TV, had any awareness of the Method concept, he had resources to create his own variation of the idea. The pain and occasional joys he had with George W, the virtues Clara ingrained into his personality, his goofy, ornery sense of humor developed in childhood, and other life experiences gave him a deep wellspring he could draw from. That sensitive, empathetic side and lifelong identification with the underdog permitted him to do precisely what he conveyed to Waddell. He would immerse himself in a song's lyric and context, drilling so deeply into its emotional essence that he would become the person in the song, living the scenario in his mind. The result: decades of emotionally moving and memorable performances. It's present on the darker ballads but also on more upbeat fare like “Gonna Come Get You” and
“Tall, Tall Trees.” Both were love songs with proud, unabashedly rural lyrics, reflecting a cheeriness that felt neither forced nor contrived. He could infuse a novelty with a loopy vocal edge that put the madcap comedic intent right in the listener's face. Certainly he didn't bat a thousand or achieve emotional nirvana on every number he recorded. But when the song and his psyche were at one, whether straight or enhanced by intoxicants, he offered performances that inspire and amaze decades later.

As his recorded triumphs continued, the Mercury-Starday merger proved less successful than everyone had hoped. Many of their other releases didn't sell. Some acts moved on to other labels. Mercury decided they would pursue country acts on their own. Starday would revert to independent status, but without Pappy, who would retain George and keep him on Mercury. He'd sell his shares to Pierce, and they'd divvy up the master recordings and songs. As sole owner, Pierce would keep Starday independent and move the entire operation and himself to Nashville. Pappy already had a new company in Houston with the single-letter name of D Records. Like Starday in the early days, it would focus on regional talent. One early signing: J.P. Richardson, who'd recorded the boogie-driven “Chantilly Lace,” released under the name the Big Bopper. Pappy sold the master of “Lace” to Mercury, whose rerelease took it to the pop Top 10 and made it a standard of early rock 'n' roll. Another Richardson original, “Running Bear,” an upbeat tale about a love affair between two Indians, went to singer Johnny Preston, who recorded it in Houston. Behind Preston, Richardson and former Jones manager Bill Hall sang backup as George added rhythmic “Ooh-uhh ooh-uhh” chants.

George and Richardson remained friends, cowriting country songs like “Treasure of Love” and “If I Don't Love You (Grits Ain't
Groceries).” George took both, plus “White Lightning,” to his September 9 session at Bradley's basement studio, arriving well juiced up and ready to go. Buddy Killen, who played bass on the Opry and was vice president of the nascent Tree Music publishing company, had been cutting demo recordings with local session players, most of them very capable second-tier musicians. One was guitarist Floyd Robinson, able to play deep, twanging boogie licks; the other, Hargus Robbins Jr., was a gifted Tennessee pianist affectionately known as Pig, blinded by a knife mishap when he was three.

For Robbins, recording with George became a step up in a career that would take him to the select group of Nashville studio musicians known as the A-Team. “I'd been doing some demos for Buddy and he called me one day and said, ‘Hey, can you cut with George Jones?' I said, ‘Why, hell, yeah!' So I showed up and we got lucky,” he said.

They needed the luck. George arrived able to sing yet thoroughly hammered. After finishing two numbers, the band dug into “White Lightning,” J.P. Richardson's frantic, madcap chronicle of a backwoods moonshiner being tracked by lawmen that included “G-men, T-men, revenuers, too.” George's condition slowed down the progress. The drunker he was, the more takes he would foul up, requiring everyone to start over. Killen, who developed a punchy, aggressive bass intro, wore the skin from his fingers as the false starts continued. The hastily created arrangement, reminiscent of a Chuck Berry song, was effective, enough to make the song a smart country-rock hybrid. With Robinson's throbbing guitar moving along, Robbins played swirling piano chords not unlike Lafayette Leake's accompaniment on Berry hits like “Nadine.” George doubled down on the lyrics, his boozy performance enhancing the song. As much as he had pissed and moaned about Thumper Jones two years earlier,
any reservations he had about recording a more polished rocker like “White Lightning” were muted.

Given the condition his hands were in after the session, Killen wasn't pleased with what it took to nail down the song. Robbins, by contrast, was more than satisfied at the outcome. “I was so thrilled just to be on [a session with] a name artist. I didn't stop to analyze it or anything. I just did my job best I could do and was thankful.” For over two decades, Pig would play piano on nearly every Jones session for Mercury, United Artists, Musicor, and Epic.

As Mercury prepared to release “White Lightning” in February 1959, the dead of winter, Richardson toured the Midwest in a bus with Bobby Vee, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens. He, Holly, and Valens, wanting off the bus, boarded a chartered plane out of Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 3. All three and the pilot died when the plane crashed in a field shortly after takeoff. Six days later, “White Lightning” was released and exploded across the country, Richardson's death making it a bittersweet triumph. As George's first No. 1 single, it stayed atop the
Billboard
country chart five weeks and made a showing in the lower reaches of the pop charts.

His success kept him on the road constantly, away from Shirley and his sons at home, feeding Shirley's misgivings about the marriage and her largely justified suspicions about what was going on with the women he (and nearly every other star) encountered on the road, where every male singer pretty much had his pick of groupies (referred to by some as “snuff queens”) wherever he played.

The money was now good enough to buy his first home in Vidor, across the Neches River from Beaumont in Orange County, notorious as a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity and known as a “sundown town”—at one time there, signs graphically warned blacks,
NIGGER, DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN VIDOR
. In other words, be out
by sundown or face unspecified and possibly lethal dangers. Segregation was a way of life throughout the South, and East Texas at that time was a hotbed for it. Vidor became a destination for many Beaumont residents anxious to escape the changing racial population, a phenomenon known as “white flight.” George's parents had lived there for years, but for George, it was more than that. After growing up in a virtual time warp in the Thicket and pinching pennies in their days living in Beaumont, he finally had the money to give his family the suburban living so many aspired to in the 1950s.