JOURNAL CULTURE
SOUND CHECK WITH VINCENT HARRIS
Stopping time Fans never stopped loving legendary George Jones
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It is a song that seems to stop time. A shattered, indescribably sad voice opens the song as alone as the listener feels: “He said, ‘I’ll love you ’til I die.’ She told him, ‘You’ll forget in time.’” The singer continues on, with a resigned despair that tells us he knows that this wretched man will do no such thing. As the instruments slowly join the singer at their own deliberate pace, the story goes inside the man’s home, painting a portrait of pure heartbreak that isn’t really country, pop, blues or soul. It simply IS. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” will always be the late George Jones’ most affecting, most chilling, and most wellknown song. It is an impossibly melodramatic song that somehow doesn’t seem overstated. It is drenched in cascading strings, yet never seems overarranged. It is as slick as the shallowest pop song, but never feels contrived. There is never a question that the man singing this song is as caught up as the listener; he feels this song down in his bones. What’s stunning is how often George Jones, who passed away on April 26 at 81, was able to conjure up this kind of seemingly once-in-a-lifetime performance. A cursory listen to his other landmark recordings – among them “The Grand Tour,” “A Good Year For The Roses,” and the immortal “She Thinks I Still Care” – reveals an interpreter who, at his best, was among the best to ever step up to a microphone. At his peak, Jones’ emotional investment in the lyrics to his songs rivals that of Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. Much like Holiday and Sinatra, Jones’ private life once he began charting hit singles in 1959 was rarely private. He had more brushes with the law and with marriage than most men could survive, forming a short-lived union with the Queen of Country, Tammy Wynette, and famously resorting to a riding mower when Wynette hid his keys in a futile effort to curb his search for alcohol. At his most dissolute, in the late 1970s and early ’80s, he missed so many concerts that his nickname, originally “The Possum” due to his curiously upturned nose, became “No-Show Jones.” Perversely, or perhaps fittingly, it was during that time that Jones produced the majority of his most lasting, heartbreaking work, including “He Stopped Loving Her Today” in 1980. Jones married Nancy Sepulvado in 1983, and through changing musical tastes and health scares and relapses, she managed to keep him (mostly) on the straightand-narrow path for the remainder of Jones’ life. He settled into legendary status in country music, inspiring countless vocalists and gaining lyrical shout-outs from Waylon Jennings and Alan Jackson, among others. It was the older, wiser, and steadier Jones who was scheduled to perform at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium on May 18 as part of what he said would be his final tour. He doubtless would’ve included “He Stopped Loving Her Today” on the set list, and I can’t help but wish I’d seen him stop time and let us all feel that exquisite sadness one last time. Contact Vincent Harris at vharris@communityjournals.com.
MAY 3, 2013 | THE JOURNAL 33