According to Waylon Jennings, “If we country singers all could sound like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones.”

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Born in Saratoga, Texas, and raised in Colmesneil, George Jones grew up under the shadow of an abusive, alcoholic father who would sometimes burst in late at night, wake him, and demand that he sing. Despite music being forced on him, Jones continued performing. At age nine, his father bought him his first guitar, and he began busking on the streets of Beaumont. He left home at sixteen for Jasper, Texas, where he sang and played on local radio.

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Jones scored his first hit, “Why Baby Why,” in 1955. That same year, while touring with the Louisiana Hayride, he crossed paths with Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash—performing shows with them and forming a lifelong friendship with Cash.

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His first No. 1, “White Lightnin’”—written by J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson—arrived in 1959. In 1962, Jones released one of his signature songs, “She Thinks I Still Care,” even as he gained a reputation as a volatile hell-raiser. Merle Haggard once recalled an incident where Jones staggered into a venue drunk, demanded to know who was singing onstage, and later folded Haggard’s steel guitarist into a rollaway bed and pushed him out into the street.

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Throughout the 1960s, Jones dominated country music. He divorced his first wife and married fellow star Tammy Wynette, and the pair became known as “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music.” But Jones’ alcoholism and drug abuse created chaos at home, including an incident in which Wynette claimed he fired a shotgun at her. Even after their divorce, they reunited professionally, scoring a 1980 hit with “Two Story House.” That same year, Jones won a Grammy, Single of the Year, and Song of the Year for “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” a song he famously hated.

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In 1983, Jones went on a drunken rampage in Alabama and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. A year later, at fifty-two, he performed his first sober show in over a decade. He spent years making up missed concert dates—often performing for free—and even opened his shows with “No Show Jones,” a humorous nod to his own troubled reputation.

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Jones continued recording and touring through the 1990s. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992, named number 43 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. Among country purists, his voice is often considered the finest the genre has ever known.

 

He toured almost until his death in 2013. George Jones is an inductee of the Museum of the Gulf Coast’s Music Hall of Fame.