The Grand Tour (22 page)

Before long, however, these smoother sounds began to bore fans. Country radio dutifully played this bland, predictable music, but fewer people seemed to be listening or buying records, which left executives and record companies increasingly worried. A measure of how quickly the bottom fell out came in 1985 when the
New York Times
ran a page-one story by their respected music critic Robert Palmer. He reported, “Nashville's country music stars are really wailing the blues these days. Audiences are dwindling, sales of country records are plummeting and the fabled Nashville Sound, which defined country music for decades and made this comfortable, tree-shaded Tennessee city one of the world's leading recording centers, may soon sound as dated as the ukulele.” In the story, veteran singer Bobby Bare noted, “Country records are getting plenty of radio airplay, but they all sound alike and nobody's buying them.” Such listener fatigue scared the shit out of status quo advocates on Music Row. A quick shift in direction was the only strategy.

It involved a modernized, updated version of basic, bare-bones country: George's style, performed largely by baby boomers who'd also grown up with the Beatles and the rock music of their generation. Ricky Skaggs, John Anderson, and George Strait had already succeeded with such a sound. Others now emerged, signed by the major labels as part of a movement dubbed New Traditionalism. It spawned several new stars: Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, Vince
Gill, Keith Whitley (who'd played bluegrass with Ricky Skaggs in Ralph Stanley's band), Reba McEntire, and Patty Loveless. To most of these younger performers, George was the gold standard, just as he was to his peers in the business and his fans. Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, and other veterans were the touchstones for this new breed. George clicked with these younger artists in a way that would slowly and deliberately elevate him to levels of prestige that seemed impossible just a few years earlier. On April 1, 1987, the Texas Legislature that in 1963 had honored him as an admiral in the Texas Navy proclaimed it George Jones Day.

Health issues occasionally forced a slowdown. At the end of July, after taking a break from a forty-seven-city tour, he entered the University of Alabama Medical Center to be treated for bronchitis, which was plaguing him with increasing frequency, complicated by prostate and kidney infections and exhaustion. He left a day later—his stubbornness did not diminish with his improved mental state—and returned a day after that, now also suffering from stomach issues. He was discharged August 8.

The New Traditionalist movement may have given him hope for the future of his own music. One reality, however, loomed over everything when it came to recording. The Top 10 and No. 1 singles that once came routinely were dwindling. In 1987, only “The Right Left Hand” reached the Top 10. Two other releases, “I Turn to You” and “The Bird,” got no higher than the Top 30. Younger artists who drank deep from the Jones catalog were carrying on his style, but for George, it was a disheartening transition even if successful touring helped ease his debts, with Nancy taking a greater role in his management. Late in 1987, he settled with Linda Welborn. Despite the fact his hit records were trailing off, he continued redeeming himself on the road.

But he hit occasional speed bumps in his attempts to stay reliable. Sometimes they involved health problems. On other occasions he fell back into old, bad habits, as he did at a December 3 concert at the Charleston Civic Center in West Virginia. Obviously drunk, he remained onstage too long, singing so poorly that most of the audience cleared out in disgust. The fiasco was duly reported in an Associated Press story by Steven Herman including candid comments from Jones Boys drummer and road manager Bobby Birkhead, who called the performance the worst he'd seen in five years and noted the singer had been shaky since a show two weeks earlier in South Carolina. George didn't try to cover it, admitting he wasn't up to par. He told what was left of the audience he'd sing “The Bird”—“if I can remember the words.” No less candid, longtime Jones Boys bassist-backup singer Ron Gaddis told the reporter, “[George] goes through periods of time where he's OK, but he just fell off the wagon.”

In Iowa for a May 4, 1988, show, he felt so badly he pointed the bus toward Birmingham and the University of Alabama Medical Center. Admitted two days later, he was diagnosed with double pneumonia and released after four days. Set to perform in Tennessee in August, he canceled because of a headache and ringing ears and again headed for Birmingham. This time the diagnosis was a serious sinus infection. He remained several days before being discharged on August 19.

His singles continued to stall. “I'm a Survivor,” cowritten by Jim McBride and singer-songwriter Keith Stegall, peaked at No. 52; “The Old Man Nobody Loves” halted its rise at No. 63. The song that returned him to the Top 10 was a familiar number, one of the hit covers he'd recorded under a pseudonym for Pappy in the mid-1950s: Johnny Horton's venerable “I'm a One Woman
Man.” The record reveals George clearly enjoying himself, jaunty, laying on the twangy tenor and playfully swooping down into a lower register, the way he'd done on “You Gotta Be My Baby” over thirty years earlier. Billy Sherrill produced it with stripped-down instrumentation propelled by a straight-ahead Ray Price shuffle rhythm, the kind of sound heard on George's Epic albums but rarely on his earlier singles for the label. It had the feel of Dwight Yoakam's 1986 hit revival of Horton's “Honky Tonk Man.” Another New Traditionalist scored with a Jones oldie when Patty Loveless achieved her first Top 10 by reviving “If My Heart Had Windows.”

Offstage, George had other issues. In 1989 Georgette was engaged to one Billy Wayne Terrell, and she wanted her dad to give her away at the altar at the ceremony on March 5. But she claimed that she contacted George, who begged off, saying he'd be tired since he was doing a show the day before. It was the beginning of a complicated relationship between father and daughter that would last for years.

With his days at Epic working with Billy slowly coming to an end, George's follow-up to “One Woman Man” was an odd choice: the quirky, tongue-in-cheek Roger Ferris ditty “Ya Ba Da Ba Do (So Are You),” a surreal yet amusing description of a man lamenting his lost woman, who took nearly everything. Left were a Jim Beam whiskey decanter in the shape of Elvis Presley and a Flintstones jelly bean jar. As the lonely narrator drank whiskey from the jar, a conversation took place between all three. Clever as the song was, a legal problem surfaced when Hanna-Barbera productions, creators of
The Flintstones,
objected to the use of their trademarked “Ya Ba Da Ba Do,” Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation. The song was retitled “The King Is Gone (So Are You),” but it never left the Top 30.

Epic would release two more singles. “Radio Lover,” the final one, told the story, with vocals and spoken recitations, of a disc jockey deeply in love with his wife of one year, who takes advantage of his air time to cheat on him. Billy added his more elaborate production values to the recording. Despite the ups and downs, the Epic era defined much of George's legacy to the world. Mary Ann McCready, who'd left Columbia in 1988, agreed, saying, “Everything goes back to Epic Records.” The healing that began when George and Nancy moved back to East Texas six years earlier had seemingly done its job. In May 1989, they closed down Jones Country, sold the Texas property, and returned to Nashville.

T
here'd been no serious documentary made about George, but in the wake of his turnaround, producer Gregory Hall and Charlie Dick, Patsy Cline's husband and a longtime buddy of George's, secured George's and Nancy's cooperation and began assembling other stars and old friends, as well as new and vintage video and film clips, for the documentary
George Jones: Same Ole Me: The Authorized Video Biography
. It included new concert footage, comments by Loretta Lynn recounting George singing Buck Owens's entire show (she was present at the time), and George Riddle recalling his days touring with the Jones Boys. Johnny Cash, at the time in a creative funk of his own, declared that his answer to the question of his favorite country singer was always “You mean aside from George Jones.” The film included scenes shot in desolate Saratoga and the infamous clip of Tommy Campsey putting
a sputtering, drunken George in the police car after the traffic stop on I-65.

But as far as recording went, things were not so steady. Two years earlier, “One Woman Man” became his final Top 10 single. Subsequent singles barely broke the Top 40. His final Epic album, 1991's
Friends in High Places,
was actually made up of duets done years earlier with Emmylou Harris, Shelby Lynne, Charlie Daniels, Buck Owens, Ricky Van Shelton, Ricky Skaggs, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, and Randy Travis. The Travis performance, “A Few Ol' Country Boys,” a Troy Seals–Mentor Williams composition, was the most significant. Travis's label, Warner Bros., had released it as a single that reached the Top 10 in the fall of 1990.

Figures from George's past were fading away. On February 20, 1991, Bryan and Jeffrey lost their mother when Shirley, happily married to J.C. Arnold until his death in 1985, died in Vidor. She was buried next to her husband in Restlawn, the final stop for so many Joneses.

Another New Traditional voice emerged with Alan Jackson, a Georgia native who'd worked around Nashville as a songwriter for Glen Campbell's publishing firm. Jackson wound up with Arista Records, his 1990 single “Here in the Real World” and the acclaimed album that followed epitomizing the continuing popularity of the New Traditional form. His producer was Keith Stegall, who'd written tunes for George. In April 1991, Jackson's label, Arista, released the single “Don't Rock the Jukebox,” with its memorable line “Don't rock the jukebox/I wanna hear some Jones/My heart ain't ready for the Rollin' Stones.” The catchy, twangy single stood as yet another homage to George, one he deeply appreciated. It would lead to a close friendship with Jackson that lasted until George's death. That same year Lorrie Morgan, George's former backup singer and the widow of Keith
Whitley, successfully revived “A Picture of Me (Without You).”

Another musical sea change was looming. A new breed of younger singers, younger than most of the New Traditionalists, had musical visions blending some aspects of country with larger influences from rock and pop. Garth Brooks, an Oklahoma native whose mother sang and recorded country for Capitol, emerged in 1989 with a debut album that did well. Equipped with a degree in advertising from Oklahoma State University, Brooks had a better handle on the business aspects of his career than many of his peers. His first two albums of the 1990s,
No Fences
and
Ropin' the Wind,
became successes beyond nearly anything the country music field had ever seen, taking the notion of crossing over from country to pop success to unheard-of levels. A highly visual performer who took his stage-presentation ideas from, among others, the rock band Kiss, Brooks inspired an entirely different school of country acts, less interested in preserving the twang of the past. Always savvy in the very political atmosphere of Nashville's Music Row, he frequently and publicly expressed his admiration for George's music even though his sound and rock-pop-flavored songs were the antithesis of both George's music and the New Traditional sound.

GEORGE WASN'T WITHOUT A RECORDING CONTRACT FOR LONG. AT MCA
Records, executives Bruce Hinton and Tony Brown, the former keyboard player for Elvis Presley, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell, set their eyes on signing him. Hinton handled the business end. Brown, one of Nashville's most successful musician-producers since Billy Sherrill, Owen Bradley, or Chet Atkins, saw George as an important get for the label. “I think Epic lost interest and were lookin' for new blood, and somebody mentioned that we
could sign George. I was thinkin', ‘My God, why would we not do that?' Bruce felt the same way 'cause he was such an icon and he still had music left in him. He still could sing good. And I think he'd been sober for a while when he came to MCA and he was still singin' real good and showin' up for his concerts. We signed him because we thought there was still life in radio for George.”

The first album would be
And Along Came Jones,
produced by Kyle Lehning, who'd produced Randy Travis's classic singles like “Diggin' Up Bones.” MCA released three singles: “You Couldn't Get the Picture,” in 1991, and “She Loved a Lot in Her Time” and “Honky Tonk Myself to Death” in 1992. None performed well on the charts, not a great beginning.
And Along Came Jones
went no higher than No. 22 while the Epic material continued to sell. In February 1992, the Epic singles collection
Super Hits
earned a gold album.

Behind the scenes, Country Music Hall of Fame electors, whose votes would determine the 1992 inductees, were at work. No one doubted George would someday be inducted, but when that would happen was anyone's guess. The CMA's byzantine selection system, always highly political, left many things to question. Worthy artists like Webb Pierce, who tramped on too many toes around Music Row despite monumental musical achievements that more than justified his induction, languished for years. Pierce died in 1991. George was viewed differently. Loved by nearly everyone at his worst, through years of screwing up, leaving friends in the lurch, and dragging himself through the mud, the man and his talents were still revered by friends even if they hated his bad behavior.

MCA created a ball buster of a vocal event, defined as a single performance featuring one or more additional stars and staged to generate both buzz and record sales. In this case, taking a cue
from the Epic singles that seemed to parallel his life, George recorded “I Don't Need Your Rocking Chair,” a defiant refusal to be worn down by age, custom written by Frank Dycus, Kerry Kurt Phillips, and Billy Yates. George, nearly sixty-one, would be joined on the record by fellow MCA artists Mark Chesnutt (a New Traditionalist newcomer from Beaumont), Vince Gill, and Patty Loveless. Added to that group were Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Pam Tillis, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson, T. Graham Brown, and newcomer Joe Diffie. Tony Brown saw it as a gesture of defiance to anyone thinking Jones was a mere relic, calling it “one of those marketing ideas that was like a no-brainer. It was like [flipping the] bird to the critics.” Released in September 1992, the single barely broke the Top 40, but it was the perfect lead-in for George's September 30 Hall of Fame induction, when George and BMI executive Frances Preston received the honors.

George suffered a major loss a month later when brother-in-law Dub Scroggins, his longtime mentor, died on June 1 in Woodville, Texas, at seventy-five. His health had been failing for some time, in part due to his years working with chemicals at a Beaumont concrete plant. Dub and Helen had lent unflinching support when George and Nancy returned to East Texas in 1983. He'd lived long enough to see George inducted into the Hall of Fame, but the loss deeply pained George as another of his touchstones fell away. He lost another mentor on November 23, when Roy Acuff died of pneumonia at eighty-nine after a long battle with congestive heart failure. A month before, Acuff left his bed at Nashville's Baptist Hospital, intent on one final Opry performance with his Smoky Mountain Boys. Standing on a stage he'd virtually owned for fifty-four years, he managed one final time in the spotlight. Per his instructions, he was buried within hours of his death.

November also brought a second traditional Jones album,
Walls Can Fall,
produced by Emory Gordy Jr., who'd worked with Tony Brown in the Hot Band. The Jones renaissance continued. The Academy of Country Music, originally a West Coast–based counterpart to the CMA, presented George with its Pioneer Award in May 1993. That fall, the CMA awarded “Rockin' Chair” its Vocal Event of the Year Award, an increasingly important award in an era defined more and more by studio collaborations, some of them worthy, others, regardless of the artist, little more than filler.

George remained busy touring, continuing to build a reputation for reliability, having fun singing “No Show Jones,” and leaving audiences amply satisfied. When he was off the road, MCA kept him busy. His third MCA album,
High Tech Redneck,
was released in November 1993. With Norro Wilson producing George for the first time, the goal, given the high number of novelty tunes, seemed to be to give him a chance for more radio airplay. To some degree, it succeeded. Released as a single, the title song told the tale of a good ol' boy who'd embraced the fledgling digital technology of that era and became his best-selling MCA single to date. But the album charted lower than the other two.

Tony Brown had another concept album in mind:
Rhythm, Country and Blues,
a sincere if somewhat self-conscious effort to find common ground between country stars and R&B vocalists. George was teamed with blues icon B.B. King on what became the album's powerful closing number: “Patches,” a dramatic song that had won a Grammy for R&B singer Clarence Carter in 1971. George added effective vocal touches, though King's voice and guitar dominated the performance. Released in March 1994 to general acclaim, by May the album had achieved platinum status, an increasing delineator of success in the Garth-dominated 1990s.

Brown decided to revisit the duet concept with George on an
album pairing him with a variety of singers at Bradley's Barn, a studio in Mount Juliet, east of Nashville. The original barn was on the property of Decca Records executive Owen Bradley, who'd opened a small demo studio in a barn in the sixties so his eldest son Jerry could do some recording work. When Columbia Records, who owned the original Bradley Studio complex and rented it to acts from any label, changed their policy and made the studios available only to Columbia artists, Bradley quickly upgraded the barn to a full-featured facility open to everyone. Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Bob Wills, Webb Pierce, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, and rock bands like the Beau Brummels recorded there. Eventually, the place gained a mystique not unlike the Quonset Hut. After a fire destroyed it in 1981, Bradley, long retired from Decca, rebuilt it.

To produce the duet collection, Brown enlisted Canadian-born producer Brian Ahern, ex-husband of Emmylou Harris, to handle what became
The Bradley Barn Sessions
. His work on the first three Harris albums led Brown to offer him the job. “I put [George] with Brian Ahern strictly because three of the greatest country records ever made, to me, were Emmylou's first three [Warner Bros.] records. And I just thought that Brian wasn't being used by anybody here in Nashville.” On the album, George would revisit classics from the past with carefully selected guests, some of them former duet partners: Emmylou had already worked with George on the
Special Guests
album, and Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, and Mark Chesnutt were part of the “Rockin' Chair” single. His partners, in most cases, were given the option to pick a Jones classic to sing with him. Three hadn't recorded with him before: Dolly Parton, Trisha Yearwood—one of the new female voices in Nashville—and Rolling Stone Keith Richards, who became a fan after hearing George onstage thirty years earlier in San Antonio. The album included another
significant voice: Tammy Wynette, who reprised “Golden Ring” with him.

Ahern brought his Enactron Truck to the sessions. This forty-two-foot mobile control room on wheels was something he devised in the 1970s and used on Harris's first three albums and many others, Willie Nelson's
Stardust
among them. That arrangement made making the album challenging, since George had issues with Ahern's entire approach to recording. In a 1995 interview, he complained in detail about the process. Unfamiliar with the Barn, where he'd never recorded, he was also uneasy with Ahern's mobile setup despite its stellar pedigree. Far more disconcerting for George were the rough mixes he received at the end of each session that he called “the worst, worst,
worst
mixes on take-home copies that I ever got in my life from any recording.” He cited inaudible instruments and complained his voice was buried on some tracks. Pleas to Ahern, he said, brought no improvement, souring him on the entire process. Nevertheless, in the end he proclaimed himself quite satisfied with the result. His frustration, by his own admission, led to his approaching the ongoing sessions with wariness and plenty of attitude that threatened the relationship with Ahern.

Brown, who'd enlisted Ahern, saw George's frustration stemmed in part from his preference for the way Sherrill had recorded him. “Every producer records different,” Brown explained. “Brian cuts the way that I record. He cuts a basic track and then he starts coloring the tracks with background singers and strings and whatever later on. I think George was used to having everything [recorded] live on the date, and [Sherrill's rough mixes] sounded like a record when he'd take it home to listen to it. Where Brian was like concentrating on making sure that the tracks were really good and probably didn't stick George's vocal out, so I bet Brian's
approach to producing was a totally different thing for George and it probably threw him for a loop.”

Only one person could keep George sufficiently focused, Brown said. “I remember Nancy calling me one time when George was really kind of getting frustrated with Brian's way of working. And she said, ‘Now, why did you talk me into doing this record with Brian Ahern and George?' I said, ‘Because I think he would take care of the music with kid gloves because he's such an artistic kind of producer, and I think if anybody is worthy of working with George Jones it would be Brian Ahern.' I did it thinking it was creatively a great idea, and the end result was good, but I think Nancy really had her hands full during the cutting of that record.”