Stereo Review, February 1980

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Stereo Review

US music magazines

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George Jones: the Best


Noel Coppage

Who do the best singers say is the best singer? In or near country music, the answer is always, resoundingly, GEORGE JONES! Now some of the best singers (and writers) both in and not very near country music have backed up that abstract tribute with a tangible one. Its name is My Very Special Guests and it is very special.

Waylon Jennings, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck, Elvis Costello — Elvis Costello!? — Dennis Locorriere and Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook, and Pop and Mavis Staples take turns singing duets or harmony with Jones, and in some cases laying tailor-made songs on him. Outstanding among these — and outstanding period — is the Taylor-made one, "Bartender's Blues," which Jones first recorded a couple of years ago and took for a nice run on the country charts. It is one of the best genre songs ever written by an outsider. It simply shows you the very essence of honky-tonk music — and I mean it shows you, puts pictures in your head — and it sounds even better with Taylor singing harmony.

Also striking, though, is Costello's "Stranger in the House," a country song clear through: the melody is straight-ahead and simple (it also slyly reminds you of the semi-classic "Stranger in My Place"), and the real action is in the words — with a twist: the stranger in my house is me. It includes some country-style phrasemaking ("there's no welcome in the window") and Costello almost comically trying to adopt a country singing style by opting for a kind of cloying growl, sort of like Joe Cocker and Mickey Newbury squashed together.

Almost all the songs, however familiar a few of them are, are welcome. The only really trivial one is "It Sure Was Good," which producer Billy Sherrill helped write. It's a formula song aspiring to go out like the tag line of a TV commercial: "We don't know what it was / But it sure was good." It's the one George does with Tammy Wynette, and no doubt somebody's instincts dictated including some such song to soften the emotional impact the ex-spouses still have on each other. Some think Jones' best duets were with Melba Montgomery, but this will show you that nobody sings more understanding and sympathetic harmony with him than Wynette. And, in spite of its generally trivial air, the song does have words you can apply to George and Tammy.

Samplers of this sort are prone to suffer from a too-informal, too-tossed-off quality, but with Jones singing you never have to worry about that. "Tossing off" a song is simply not in him. He gets totally inside the thing, often sounding driven if not possessed, as if the act of singing is his only real emotional release. And it may be. He has lived what the late Jimmie Rodgers would have called a checkered life, and most of his acclaim has come only in the last few years.

Growing up in an urban part of Gulf Coast Texas (made urban by the country people flocking in for jobs during the war years), Jones developed a knack for imitating other singers. A Nashville producer says he can imitate anybody. His first favorites were Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff, and historian Bill C. Malone says, "The phrasing of Acuff can be heard when Jones reaches for the higher notes." At one point the young Jones was into sounding exactly like Hank Williams. Then there were the rockabillies; Jones had such a traditional hard-country sound that he had to wait until the rockabilly craze died down before he was really noticed in the Sixties. And then there was the drinking. Jones is as much a legend for his drinking sprees (and the chaos that often ensues after them) as he is for how many good singers say he's their favorite singer.

Drinking, unfortunately, doesn't have a calming effect on him. Quite the opposite. "When he's sober," says a long-time picker on the Nashville scene, "he's as nice a man as you'd ever want to meet. When he gets drunk, he gets into things. Sometimes he gets mean, or wants to fight, and sometimes he doesn't — but he always gets into trouble." And it's all so public, of course, true-life soap opera for Nashville and beyond. Say this for the country-music community, though: it does not seem to judge Jones so much as feel for him. It takes as a given the assumption that there's something real behind the drinking, and that it may be largely the same thing that's so special behind the singing: George feels the world more than most of us do.

That translates into what we call soul when he's singing, and soul is an important thing in the voices of all his helpers in this album. Soul and body in the case of Linda Ronstadt; few female singers would want their bit to follow the deliciously surprising and appropriate phrasing of Emmylou Harris, but Ronstadt, joining Jones in a Jim Rushing song, shows what body in a voice can do. Her part in this reaffirms that the core of her appeal is in her earthiness; she's still one of the sexiest singers around.

But they're all impressive, Willon and Waylie and the boys and the girls. They all obviously came to the project with respect and a sense of purpose, and they don't fool around none. They sing.

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Stereo Review, February 1980


Noel Coppage reviews George Jones' My Very Special Guests.


Armed Forces gets an Honorable Mention in Record Of The Year voting.

Images

1980-02-00 Stereo Review page 114.jpg
Page scan.

Cover and page scan.
1980-02-00 Stereo Review cover.jpg Armed Forces gets an Honorable Mention in Record Of The Year voting.

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