The Grand Tour (13 page)

As 1967 drew to a close, one thing was abundantly clear: George and Shirley's long-troubled marriage was entering the End Times. Thirteen years of her misgivings and hostility to the showbiz life, his perpetual absences, and the boozing and hell-raising on the road and at times when he was home were just part of it. He'd not been there to see the boys grow up, saddling her with most of the responsibility. George's life was inexorably tied to Nashville, to the industry and his fans. The next move was anticlimactic. On April 11, 1968, Shirley Corley Jones filed for divorce from George Glenn Jones. The matter was so casual between them that one attorney represented both (widely discouraged in such matters). George gave her all she demanded, and that was plenty: property and homes around Vidor, his tour bus, musical gear, and, most significantly, half his songwriting royalties for all tunes he wrote and cowrote from the start of his career in 1954 up to 1968. That covered “Why Baby Why,” “Just One More,” “Life to Go,” “Color of the Blues,” “Window Up Above,” and “Four Oh Thirty Three.” The royalties, she felt, would be an annuity of sorts for the boys. A chapter had closed for everyone. Soon after, a tapped-out George and his road manager Billy Wilhite moved to Nashville.

G
eorge left town so broke that Dub had to lend him $1,000. In Nashville, he and Wilhite set up a temporary base at the Executive Inn before George bought a new tour bus and a home on Brandywine Drive not far from Old Hickory Lake. Despite walking away from the Rhythm Ranch, George and Wilhite had a new venture on Lower Broadway. George Jones Possum Holler was a private club located upstairs at 412 Broadway, a building owned by Roy Acuff, whose museum, Roy Acuff Exhibits, occupied the ground floor, displaying rare fiddles and other things he collected in his travels. Tootsie's Orchid Lounge was five doors down, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop across the street, and the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Opry
,
a street away.

With its reasonable cover charge, Possum Holler became a sort of Tootsie's annex. The Jones Boys played there and George occasion
ally showed up to sing, as did many of his friends. Music business functionaries from Sixteenth Avenue South made it a regular watering hole. Even Acuff, despite his puritanical, sanctimonious public image, was a regular visitor who enjoyed a drink or two. Johnny Bush, enjoying his first successful singles for Nashville-based Stop Records, would also drop by. “I'd go into Nashville to record, I'd go up there to sing and have a few. In November, we'd have the disc jockey convention there. The place was packed and I'd go up and sing tenor behind George on ‘White Lightning' and things like that. He said, ‘I was tryin' to throw you and I couldn't.' I said, ‘Man, I know your stuff as well as you do!'” Everyone carried on there to their heart's delight until the night a commode backed up, flooding Acuff's meticulously maintained downstairs museum. Surveying the damage, Acuff told an embarrassed, contrite George and Wilhite they'd have to close Possum Holler. Wilhite pleaded their case, but Acuff, despite his own regrets, stressed the business realities that affected him, declaring, “I can't have turds in my exhibits.”

George remained friendly with Don Chapel, who'd given him a ballad titled “When the Grass Grows over Me.” But he was far more interested in Chapel's wife, the woman who had accompanied him to George's motel room when Don was dropping off songs. Now known as Tammy Wynette, she was the hottest new female singer in the business, and George counted himself among her growing number of fans.

Virginia Wynette Pugh was born in rural Itawamba County, Mississippi, on May 5, 1942. The Pughs, a modest rural family, didn't live quite the hardscrabble life the Joneses had in the Thicket. Virginia's maternal grandfather was relatively well-off. Her father, sharecropper and amateur musician William Hollice Pugh, died of a brain tumor before his infant daughter was a year
old. With World War II expanding job opportunities for poor rural southerners, Virginia's mother, Mildred, who'd worked a variety of jobs before the war, headed to Memphis to work in a factory. Virginia stayed on her grandparents' farm, working in the cotton fields, though accounts of how deeply she got into the actual labor tend to vary. Unlike the shy, solitary George, she was a highly popular student, admired by many of the girls and fascinated with men her own age and older.

Inspired by the father she never knew, she developed her own interest in music with a special affinity for gospel. She sang on local radio with two friends in a vocal trio known as Wynette, Linda and Imogene. When she went to Memphis to be with her mother, Mildred was working at a cleaning business alongside Scotty Moore, the owner's brother and a country guitarist. Moore and his friend, bass player Bill Black, were starting to work with an unknown Memphis singer named Elvis Presley. They rehearsed at the cleaners after it closed, Wynette able to hang out as they worked out songs. But country was her major love. After returning to Alabama to attend high school, where she remained popular, she began dreaming seriously of becoming a singer. She and her mother both loved country music, and like many others they considered George Jones among the greatest of the day.

In 1959 Wynette Pugh married Euple Byrd, a simple man who had difficulty finding work in rural Alabama. The couple had three daughters, Gwen, Jackie, and Tina, and to support them, Wynette took various jobs and studied hairdressing as her husband moved from job to job. His ups and downs caused considerable strain on the marriage since Byrd thought little of Wynette's musical aspirations. Wynette had her own emotional and physical issues. At one point she was hospitalized for depression and received electroshock treatments, the long-term effects of which
weren't clear. She left Byrd and moved to Birmingham, working as a hairdresser to support her daughters. They resided in subsidized housing. Unwilling to settle for that lifestyle for long, she doubled down on her belief she could succeed as a singer.

A glimmer of hope came when she landed a spot singing on
The Country Boy Eddie Show,
a popular local TV program on WBRC. Entertainer Eddie Burns, the host, offered live, down-home music to the region and Wynette gained a following that led to local performing jobs. Dazzled by the possibilities and determined to see if she could succeed on a higher level, she began traveling to Nashville in 1965, hoping to find someone interested in her voice. Staying at the low-cost Anchor Motel, she met Chapel, who between performances worked there as a desk clerk. Mutual aspirations brought them together. Like most aspiring female vocalists who came to town desperate for fame, her visits to various labels large and small brought constant rejections and occasional casting-couch offers from producers who preyed on the desperation of the many young women hoping to be the next Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, or Connie Smith. Chapel, who had connections with Pappy, made him aware of Wynette's talents, but the old man decided to pass. Chapel proved supportive as she made the rounds. The couple began singing together. Frustrated with the rejection and ready to give up, she had nothing to lose when Chapel encouraged her to visit producer Billy Sherrill at Columbia Records, which had a large Nashville office and studio complex.

Even before George came into the picture, Sherrill's and Wynette's stories were intertwined. Born in 1936 in Phil Campbell, Alabama, Billy Norris Sherrill was the son of an evangelist. He played piano behind his father and later worked in R&B bands. Arriving in Nashville, he landed a job at the short-lived Nash
ville studio opened by Sun Records owner Sam Phillips. Sherrill's broader musical perspective gave him a contrarian view of most country music. Well versed in classical music, he also made no secret of his admiration for the work of wall-of-sound pop producer Phil Spector, who produced standards like the Crystals' “He's a Rebel” and the Ronettes' “Be My Baby.” Spector was known for controlling every aspect of the music and surrounding vocalists with near-symphonic backing, a trait Sherrill would adapt to his own purposes.

He joined Epic Records, a longtime subsidiary label of Columbia, in 1964. Initially, he produced records by the Staple Singers and others. It was a time Don Law still ruled the roost at Columbia Nashville, but Law, who produced records by bluesman Robert Johnson in the thirties, was nearing the company's mandatory retirement age. With Law gradually stepping aside, the label brought in Bob Johnston from New York. Johnston, who coproduced Bob Dylan's
Highway 61 Revisited,
continued working with Dylan in Nashville and took on two of the label's other top country acts: Johnny Cash and bluegrass stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. Sherrill's first real country success came in 1966 producing Louisiana singer David Houston's hit ballad “Almost Persuaded,” cowritten by Sherrill and Glenn Sutton. The single reached No. 1 and earned a Grammy that quickly enhanced Sherrill's stature around Nashville.

As Sherrill listened to the young woman, despite some initial skepticism, he heard enough potential to bring her into the studio to record a demo. When she told him her name, he looked at her blond hair and ponytail (the latter was a hairpiece) and, thinking of Debbie Reynolds in the film
Tammy,
suggested Byrd looked “more like a Tammy.” Adding that to her middle name, Wynette, gave her a new identity. In September 1966, Sherrill produced
her first single: the ballad “Apartment #9,” cowritten by Johnny Paycheck. It reached the country Top 50 and impressed many, George among them. Billy teamed her with Houston to record “My Elusive Dreams,” a ballad Sherrill cowrote with master composer Curly Putman, responsible for the timeless prison song “Green, Green Grass of Home.”

As he did with his other artists, Sherrill refined the arrangements to frame Tammy's voice, apparent on her second solo single, “Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad,” which peaked at No. 3 in the spring of 1967. She began touring with Chapel, whom she married in Ringgold, Georgia, in April 1967. Their bus identified the act as the “Don Chapel–Tammy Wynette Show.” They were joined by Don's teenage daughter, singer Donna Chapel. That summer, “My Elusive Dreams” topped the country charts, giving Tammy's career a one-two punch, followed by “I Don't Wanna Play House,” the Sherrill-Sutton ballad that became her first No. 1 and earned Sherrill his second Grammy. Tammy's success reversed the dynamic with Chapel, who hadn't really come close with his own efforts. She continued to rise with two more No. 1 singles: Sherrill and Sutton's “Take Me to Your World” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” a ballad about dealing with children amid a dying marriage. It, too, was a tune that George loved.

For the next decade or so, George would have a virtual merry-go-round of road managers. When Billy Wilhite departed for a time, George turned to a figure from his early career: Bill Starns, the son of Jack and Neva. As George crossed paths with Don and Tammy, he grew more attracted to her. For her part, she was thrilled by the attention from her favorite country singer. His efforts to encounter her whenever possible soon evolved into clandestine meetings. Starns did what he could to divert Don's attention when George wanted to hook up with Tammy. Sometimes
when the Chapels were on a bill with George, she'd ride in his Cadillac instead of in the bus with her husband. Tammy made sure Bill told George that she and Don were playing a Jaycees benefit at the high school in Red Bay, Alabama, the town where she grew up, to raise money for the school's air-conditioning. George, not touring at that moment, arrived to hang out. Don introduced him from the stage and George sang a duet with Tammy. After the show, she kissed him on the cheek and said, “Love ya, George!”

Over time, Tammy's hairdressing experience led her to suggest George grow out his flattop haircut into a longer, slicked-down style. It made sense, since fashions were changing in the country field. Aside from Porter Wagoner, Little Jimmy Dickens, the Willis Brothers, and a few other holdouts, the rhinestone Nudie outfits George and other singers favored were giving way to more subtle, sophisticated western suits. George, too, would begin to abandon sequins in designing his show clothes.

Pappy had more material for him to record, but handled paperwork in the control room while bass player Bob Moore, the session leader, and his fellow musicians did the heavy lifting. As usual, when Moore wasn't available as leader, fiddler Tommy Jackson did the honors. A June 4 session turned out particularly well, with a daring Eddie Noack composition titled “Barbara Joy,” the carefully crafted saga of a man convicted and condemned to death for raping his very willing, enthusiastic paramour after her husband caught them in the act. The standout, however, was Chapel's “When the Grass Grows over Me,” an eloquent weeper about a man so deeply committed to a woman who's left him that he proclaims his love will end only with his death, a theme that would resurface in George's repertoire in a more profound manner later. Chapel's clear, unambiguous lyrics, articulating loss, pain, and undying passion, gave George the optimal framework to do what
he did best, to probe—exhaustively—every emotional facet and deliver a compelling performance. The single topped out at No. 2 in early 1969.

Pappy teamed George with Brenda Carter, who'd recorded for his D Records label in Houston, for “Milwaukee Here I Come,” a lightweight ditty by Hank Mills, who wrote the Del Reeves hit “Girl on the Billboard” and actor Robert Mitchum's 1967 one-shot hit country single “Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me.” Despite being insubstantial, “Milwaukee” was engaging enough to reach the Top 20. George's tongue-in-cheek delivery put it over as he delivered lines about trading a Ford for an Oldsmobile, adding, “I might get all drunked up and trade it for a Rolls.”

Drunked up indeed. George had liquor in his veins at most sessions. The musicians were rarely teetotalers, given their grueling (and very lucrative) schedules of several sessions a day. But as part of the A-Team, they followed union rules and a code. For them, or any musician, the notion of simply walking out of a session was unthinkable. Dealing with George, however, presented challenges they didn't face recording with Loretta Lynn or Eddy Arnold. When George's drinking went into the red zone at one session, Moore set his own line of demarcation. “I made a reputation for walkin' out on George Jones at two o'clock in the morning. We'd been workin' all day long, and I had a nine o'clock session the next morning, and it was quarter till two and we had worked our butts off on this one song. George kept gettin' drunker and drunker and finally got to where he couldn't even get through the first line. But he just raised hell with us and [would] say, ‘Naw, I gotta do one more. I gotta do one more.' I said, ‘I'm gonna give you this one more and if you don't get it, I'm gone!' And he didn't hardly get through the intro, and I picked it up and left. And Pappy was
in the control room, he come runnin' out of the control room applauding, sayin', ‘Thank
God
!'”

Once George and Bill Starns dropped by Don and Tammy's home to find “When the Grass Grows over Me” playing on the stereo. There was already stress in the house after a food-poisoning incident the night before put Tammy's three daughters in the emergency room. Tammy later claimed Chapel couldn't be found (his daughter Donna disagrees) and noted that George and Bill arrived at the hospital to help out. Don was home when George and Starns arrived. Liquor flowed as Tammy prepared to serve dinner. As everyone sat down, it became obvious Tammy and Don weren't in a great place. They began arguing, Chapel agitated enough to direct a torrent of verbal abuse, including the word
bitch
, at his wife. George quietly suggested Chapel shouldn't talk to her that way. “What business is it of yours? She's my wife!” Chapel angrily responded. That was all George needed to hear.