The Grand Tour (5 page)

That desire caused him some grief at Moffett Field. He later admitted to going AWOL. It's not clear if that was the specific offense that on April 21, 1952, after a summary court-martial, earned him ten days in the brig. It didn't stop his extracurricular performing. He met Cottonseed Clark, a popular Bay Area disc jockey and promoter based in nearby Oakland, who'd started promoting country and western swing dances there in the forties. Clark began doing shows at the Foresters of America Hall, better known as Forester's Hall, a popular gathering spot in nearby Red
wood City, where George earned the nickname “Little Georgie Jones, the Forester Hall Flash.” At least once he traveled to Los Angeles, where some accounts have him appearing as an occasional guest on Cliffie Stone's Saturday-night
Hometown Jamboree
TV show from El Monte Legion Stadium. On October 27, he wound up in the infirmary at Moffett Field with some unspecified malady.

His marine buddies, who'd heard him sing around camp, knew how much he admired Hank Williams. Much had changed for Hank in the years since George had met him. He'd become one of the nation's top country stars, charismatic onstage when able to sing, but too often he either took the stage drunk or not at all. Pain from back surgery had got him addicted to chloral hydrate prescribed by a quack “physician.” After he missed various broadcasts and stage appearances around the nation, the Opry suspended him in 1952, but the Louisiana Hayride quickly took him back. Many hoped a New Year's Day 1953 gig in Canton, Ohio, would begin his redemption and eventual restoration to the Opry ranks.

When George came into his barracks New Year's morning, one of his friends told him, “Your buddy's dead,” and handed him the morning paper, revealing Hank had died in the backseat of his baby-blue Cadillac en route to Canton. The coroner's later findings of a simple heart attack were, of course, bullshit. Hank had been whacked out of his gourd on booze and chloral as eighteen-year-old Charles Carr chauffeured him north. During a stop in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Carr found his passenger cold to the touch. Reading the story, a devastated George sat on his bunk crying over the loss of a hero he'd actually met. The image of Hank stoned in a Caddy would haunt George for decades.

As her son had never been a letter writer and perhaps felt no
great desire to stay in touch with his family, a worried Clara had to write his superiors to get him to communicate at all. On April 18, 1953, he got another leave. He came back to Beaumont dragging along a woman he claimed was his wife, and hung out with friends before returning for his last few months of service. At some point another letter arrived from Beaumont. This one wasn't from Clara, but from Jack Starns. Aware of George's singing and impending discharge, Starns told him about a new record company he'd cofounded and urged him to get in touch when he returned home that fall. His separation from the Marine Corps began October 28, when he was reassigned to a facility in Oakland, California. He was back in Beaumont in November. He had to keep eyes in the back of his head and maintain his support payments, lest the Bonvillians and the courts wind up nipping at his heels. Nonetheless, buoyed by the note from Starns, George Jones was ready to resume his music career.

E
ast Texas was the last place Bobby Black expected to be at this point in his life.

The twenty-year-old steel guitarist had left the San Francisco Bay Area to join Blackie Crawford and the Western Cherokees, Lefty Frizzell's former backup group. Fronted by singer-guitarist Crawford, they were a large, versatile unit capable of backing honky-tonkers of Lefty's stripe or playing hot, danceable western swing of the type Black played in the California dance halls. One day, Black and Cherokees pianist Burney Annett arrived at Beaumont's Railway Express to take delivery of a custom-built pedal steel Black had ordered from builder Paul Bigsby before he left California. Anxious to see the new instrument, the two men enthusiastically tore open the wooden crate, removed the hard-shell case, and opened it. As a crowd gathered around the rich,
curly maple guitar with its stainless-steel hardware, Black heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, what are
you
doin' here?”

He turned and saw a smiling, newly civilian George.

“Man, what are
you
doin' here?”

“This is where I live, man! I'm not in the marines anymore!”

Black asked if he was still singing. When George replied he was, Black said, “You should go to Nashville.”

“Yeah,” George answered. “I'm thinkin' about it.”

The Cherokees had more to do than play dance halls. They were the house band for Starday, Beaumont's new record company, a partnership of Jack Starns and Houston jukebox kingpin and record retailer Harold Westcott Daily, known to all as Pappy. The label's name was a mash-up of the names
Starns
and
Daily
.

Even when managing Frizzell, Starns was far from a longtime country music fan, but he succeeded in part due to his wife Neva's experience in the business, booking acts and running her Beaumont club and dance hall. The family lived next door. In May 1951, with Lefty riding high, the Starnses added a second dance hall by purchasing the legendary Reo Palm Isle in Longview, Texas. Jack had guided Frizzell for about a year before the two fell out over a two-year option to renew the management contract that Lefty claimed had been added without his approval. After legal parrying, it cost Lefty $25,000—all the cash he had—to get Starns out of his life. The Western Cherokees, however, decided to stick with Jack, not Lefty. Jack had an idea how to use that windfall. With Neva handling her end, he'd launch a record company focused on Texas talent. To make it work, he'd need someone with hands-on record company experience.

Born in Yoakum, Texas, in 1902, Pappy Daily, was a former marine and baseball player who'd worked for the Southern Pacific
Railroad in Houston. In the early 1930s, with the nation laid low by the Great Depression, he began distributing jukeboxes through his Southcoast Amusement Company, an increasingly lucrative field despite the dire economic times. He expanded into retailing after World War II with Daily's Record Ranch, a Houston retail store that also featured live performers, as Nashville's Ernest Tubb Record Shop later did. His connections led him to become the Texas distributor for California-based Four Star Records, who recorded West Coast country acts like T. Texas Tyler and the Maddox Brothers and Rose. Four Star owner Bill McCall, notorious for his slippery business dealings, wanted to tap the Texas market and needed a talent scout and producer who could find regional acts, record them, then ship him the finished recordings.

Daily came up with an impressive list of local honky-tonk talent: Smilin' Jerry Jericho, Eddie Noack, Hank Locklin, and, from Shreveport, Louisiana, Webb Pierce. His amiable, supportive nature led Locklin to nickname him Pappy, but relations between Daily and McCall turned less cordial. McCall's reputation for not paying people applied to Pappy's efforts as well. He never got a dime for his Four Star production work or expenses. When they parted ways, Pappy could add record production to his extensive music portfolio. The only Four Star employee in California he got along with was Don Pierce, also no McCall admirer.

Exactly how Starns and Daily connected isn't completely clear, but they were planning Starday by 1952. Having jumped ship at Four Star, Pierce, still in LA, helped the partners create the Starday Recording and Publishing Company with a music publishing company known as Starrite.
Billboard
's June 27, 1953, edition announced the new label, identifying the founders as “well known c & w manager Jack Starns, Jr., and his wife, Neva.” After Starday's first three singles, one of them by Crawford and the Cherokees,
were ignored, fortunes suddenly changed when Jack and Neva discovered Arlie Duff. The twenty-nine-year-old Warren, Texas, schoolteacher, songwriter, and singer had a raw, nasal voice and a number of original tunes including the exuberant “Y'All Come,” inspired by a phrase his grandmother used. Starns recorded Duff, accompanied by the Cherokees, at a Houston studio. Soon after the late 1953 release of “Y'All Come,” it became Starday's first national Top 10 country single. The song's stature grew when Bing Crosby's cover version reached the pop Top 20.

Starns had set up a makeshift studio in his home. Some recall it located in the living room; others in an enclosed back porch. He purchased a Magnecord portable tape recorder and microphones and fastened egg cartons to the walls to deaden the sound. His fourteen-year-old son Bill would work the recorder, flipping a light switch on and off to signal the singers and musicians when to begin and end a take, a quick and dirty way of getting records done and ensuring a steady flow of releases. By year's end, George Jones, back on the local honky-tonk circuit, was ready to record.

HE AND HIS GUITAR ARRIVED AT THE STARNS HOME ONE DAY IN JANUARY 1954.
The Western Cherokees were there to back him, although Jimmy Biggar had replaced Bobby Black, who'd returned to California. Also at the session was Big Thicket native Gordon Baxter, a local broadcaster and author who chronicled the Thicket and had his own musical aspirations. George brought five original songs: “No Money in This Deal,” “For Sale or Lease,” “Play It Cool,” “You're in My Heart,” and “If You Were Mine.” After working out loose arrangements and making sure everyone was ready, Bill Starns hit the light switch. George kicked off “No Money,” the Cherokees falling in behind him, Burney Annett energetically pounding the
piano as fiddler Little Red Hayes played rhythmic double-stops. George's animated vocal wasn't quite enough to mask his nervousness. It was a start, but not a terribly good novelty song. Even a shout-out to twin sisters Joyce and Loyce couldn't save it.

It was glaringly apparent on the remaining numbers that the advice Hank Williams gave George about finding his own style had gone out the window. The wry “Play It Cool” and the ballad “You're in My Heart” were blatant Hank imitations, with Biggar reproducing the high-register licks of Hank's longtime steel player Don Helms. On “For Sale or Lease” and “If You Were Mine,” George unabashedly channeled Lefty, and Biggar imitated the steel-guitar flourishes Jim Kelly had made a trademark on Lefty's early hits. The egg crates may have helped dampen the echo, but they didn't filter all outside sounds. George recalled hearing eighteen-wheelers flying north and south on Voth Road during the session.

Starday wasted no time trying to generate interest.
Billboard
's January 23 “Folk Talent and Tunes” section announced George and Baxter had been signed (no Baxter recording was ever released). When “No Money” was released, the March 6 issue, ignoring the technical flaws, declared, “Lively country novelty has a good catch-phrase.” “You're in My Heart” elicited a more accurate evaluation: “Country weeper derives directly from the Hank Williams school . . . Jones belts it out with fair effectiveness,” essentially (and justifiably) damning the performance with faint praise.

When George met Pappy in person, the old man asked him to sing some other material. He obliged, invoking all his musical heroes, which led to Daily posing a now immortal question, worded slightly differently depending on the source:

“George, you've sung like Roy Acuff, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and Bill Monroe. Can you sing like George Jones?”

“I don't understand,” George cluelessly responded. “Those guys are who I like.”

Finding his own singing style may not have been his priority at the moment, yet George, elated to have a record out, visited local radio stations with copies of “No Money.” Dropping by KLTW in nearby Pasadena, Texas, he asked disc jockey “Tater” Pete Hunter to play it. Hunter obliged without comment. Off the air, George asked Hunter what he thought. Hunter wasn't impressed. George, not offended, kept the comment in mind.

Starday wasn't enough for Jack and Pappy. With weekly barn-dance stage and radio shows like the Opry and Hayride going strong around the country, on March 13, 1954, they launched the Grand Prize Houston Jamboree. Broadcast from City Auditorium over KNUZ radio and TV, the sponsor was Grand Prize Beer, a product of Houston's Gulf Brewery, founded by industrialist Howard Hughes. Among the cast: Hank Locklin and the rest of the Starday roster—Blackie Crawford and the Cherokees, George, Arlie Duff, Sonny Burns, and Patsy Elshire. George's exuberant performances made him one of the show's more popular acts. When he wasn't working honky-tonks and dance halls, he earned extra money accompanying other Starday singers, contributing a flat-picked acoustic solo on Duff's recording of the traditional “Salty Dog.”

In May 1954, nineteen-year-old Houston-born John Bush Shinn III, later known as Johnny Bush, was living in San Antonio. He was visiting Houston to see his uncle, Smilin' Jerry Jericho, the popular local singer Pappy recorded for Four Star in the late forties. More recently Jericho had recorded for Starday, and was en route to perform at the Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Festival in Meridian, Mississippi. Before they headed east, Jericho and his nephew stopped by City Auditorium, where Jericho was to play the Jamboree.

“I saw this young man who was literally tearin' the crowd up. He would bounce out there and do about five lines of a song and just walk off. And people would just scream and holler and do everything but tear the seats up. I thought, ‘Who in the world is this?' I've never seen anything like it. At that time, he was apin' Lefty Frizzell and Jimmy Newman. He hadn't quite gotten into his own yet, but it was phenomenal how he was goin' over, and I said, ‘Man, this guy has got to go!' He was knockin' people out. He was getting standing ovations. He'd sing a few lines of a song, leave the microphone, run back into the wings, and they'd have to bring him back. He never would finish a song. He had 'em in the palm of his hand and he knew it.”

Backstage, Bush asked Tommy Hill, the Western Cherokees' guitarist, about the young singer.

“That's George Jones,” Hill replied. After the show, Bush accompanied Jericho to a gig at Cook's Hoedown. “George come down after the show, and that's when my uncle introduced me to him. He came down there and sat at a table with a friend, didn't get up to sing.”

GEORGE FOUND A NEW BEST FRIEND AT THE JAMBOREE: GALVESTON NATIVE
and Starday artist Clyde Burns Jr., known to all as Sonny. A year older than George, he first gained attention around Houston. He signed to Starday, and his energetic rendition of “Too Hot to Handle” did well enough for Starns and Daily to take a greater interest. With “Y'All Come” now yesterday's hit, Sonny's records began catching on regionally while George's languished. Thinking Sonny's stronger sales might boost George's visibility, Pappy teamed them for harmony duets on “Heartbroken Me” and “Wrong About You.”

While their duet singles sputtered and died, the Burns-Jones camaraderie did not. The bottle became common ground. “George didn't need any encouragement on the drinking,” Starday and Jamboree artist Patsy Elshire told Andrew Brown. But the George-Sonny bond seemed to kick George's boozing into overdrive. When he and Sonny began working together, George got a better perspective on the Houston club scene. As he drank harder, the results began reflecting George W. Jones at his worst: paranoid, aggressive, and belligerent. George's diminutive stature and height of five foot seven didn't prevent him from squaring off with anyone of any size he thought was getting on his case.

One night at Lola's and Shorty's, it nearly got him killed.

George was onstage with a fiddler when he spied a solitary man in the crowd. Being two car payments behind, he sensed the stranger's reason for being there. On a break, George confronted the man, who admitted what George suspected: he was there to repossess the car. George proceeded to pound the shit out of him. Landing punch after punch, he didn't see his adversary pull the razor that sliced through George's leather jacket into his torso. He didn't realize he was bleeding until two of his friends yanked the man off and pummeled him. George left in an ambulance; it took ninety stitches to close the lengthy wound.

With monthly support payments a priority and income from singing in joints anything but steady, George began spinning records fifty-five minutes a day over at KTRM in Beaumont. The radio station was as much frat house as radio station, where on-air pranks between staff were common. George, anything but a polished personality, habitually broke reel-to-reel tapes and mispronounced words when he read commercial scripts on the air. The job allowed him to advertise his upcoming local appearances. Johnny Bush, who heard him on KTRM, remembered him imi
tating Simon Crum, singer Ferlin Husky's comedic hillbilly alter ego. “Between records, he would ape Simon Crum. He would do that laugh and you'd swear he was Simon.” George found another new buddy in the station's top personality: beefy twenty-four-year-old Jiles Perry Richardson, from Sabine Pass, south of Beaumont. Like George, Richardson had lived in Multimax as a kid and knew his way around a guitar. During high school he parlayed a part-time KTRM announcing job into full-time employment.