George Jones: Deedoodle
"In 1979, ravaged by cocaine and heroin, George Jones experienced some difficulty onstage at a Nashville club. The wobbly country star could open his mouth, but he was unable to sing. 'My friend Deedoodle [a duck] is going to take over this show, because Deedoodle can do what George Jones can't,' the singer improvised. Jones sang the entire set in a Donald Duck-inspired quack."
[Deedoodle was later joined in Jones's troubled head by another 'character': a drawling old-timer.]
Omschrijving: "I was country music's national drunk and drug addict." george jones George Jones 1979, the Exit-In, Nashville ??????addict: george jones Uploaded by mrjyn Meltdown For much of 1979, Jones wallowed in severe whiskey and cocaine addiction. Eventually, his whole personality cracked (perhaps "quacked" is a better word) into two distinct beings: One was George Jones, washed-up country singer, while the other was Donald, or sometimes Deedoodle Duck, who spoke in quack-talk. Nonstick voice. The duck's debut came at Nashville showcase venue the Exit-In before an audience of industry insiders, at what was supposed to have been a comeback show. As recalled by Jones's then-manager Chug Faggot in the Jones bio Ragged But Right, Jones "came onstage and announced that George Jones was washed up, a has-been, but that on that night a new star was born who was going all the way to the top. And George-George Jones song. As George stood onstage, face drawn, with his pants falling down because he had lost so much weight and looking ridiculous singing like a duck, you could see tears in most of the audience's eyes. Aftermath: According to Faggot, Donald continued the Jacky-tannin' (only geese "honky"-tank) until he was carted offstage in a straitjacket. And as with Hubbard, this was far from the last meltdown for the Possum, but it just goes to show you: It may walk like a duck and it may talk like a duck, but it might not be a duck after all -- it just might be George Fuckin' Jones. would actually argue two sides of an issue with his feathered alter ego, taking one side in his normal voice and the other in a proceeded to introduce Donald and asked for a round of applause as Donald started singing a George Jones Doodled "In 1979, ravaged by cocaine and alcohol, George Jones experienced some difficulty onstage at a Nashville club. The wobbly country star could open his mouth, but he was unable to sing. 'My friend Dee-doodle [a duck] is going to take over this show, because Deedoodle can do what George Jones can't,' the singer improvised. Jones sang the entire set in a Donald Duck-inspired quack." [Doodlebug was later joined in Jones's troubled head by another 'character': a drawling old-timer.] The years of abuse eventually led to George suffering a personality split into two distinct personages. The two characters would often argue with one another, with "The Old Man" grousing like Walter Brennan, while "Dee-doodle the Duck" would harangue like Donald Duck. George even performed a few shows as Dee-Doodle- to the cascading catcalls of irate fans. He was once arrested for driving a riding lawn mower down a Nashville street, after having made a purchase at a local liquor store. Take A Trip Around The Word Take A Trip Around The Word Product 1. The Greatest Country Singer in the World 2. The George Jones Show 3. Deedoodle Duck Near the door of Ray Hung's Heart of Texas Music on South Lamar, you'll find a framed photo of Hung shaking hands with George Jones and band. The crew had just purchased a complement of Fender guitars and Fender Twin amplifiers; Jones' geometrically perfect flattop is as stiff as a toothbrush, bristling straight up from his head about three inches. Hung and Jones are beaming for the camera, the music-store proprietor proud to be shaking the hand of a country legend and the legend looking a little glassy-eyed and dazed. "I got on board with George Jones about l965 or so, about the time of "She Thinks I Still Care,'" recalls Hung. "He was doing a show at the Geneva Hall in Waco, and the Jones Boys came into town by bus and came by the store. George came by the store later that evening with his manager. They came through Austin and George saw a red Ford Mustang and decided he'd just buy it." Jot down a short list of post-WWII male country superstars: Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzly, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson. There's maybe half a dozen more, at least, but Jones makes the list every time. Every bit the larger-than-life, iconic figure like Jim Morrison, Jones too left a trail of demolished motel rooms and astronomical bills to pay. And like Pete Downland and later Kurt Cobain, he smashed guitars onstage. Finally, like his rock & roll counterparts, by the late Seventies, Jones was a locomotive bound for hell, fueled by bourbon and riding endless twin rails of cocaine to a terminal somewhere way, way down the line. Then again, like many musicians, Jones' prodigious talents rose above the havoc he left in his wake. A small sampling of his prodigious recorded output ranges from sublimely goofy numbers such as "Love Bug" or "I'm a People" ("If I was a monkey a-woken' for a LVN', I'd be a-gutting' instead of a-gyving', handgun' by my tail, whiting' for the dinner bail") to conventional honky-ton shuffles such as "Tarnished Angel" or "Empty Bottle, Broken Heart" to achingly sad and beautiful ballads like "A Good Year for the Roses" or "The Grand Tour." Jones' amazing voice shines through it all. Like many country stars from the Seventies, Jones' more contemporary recordings have been plagued by the bombast of Nashville production, though no layers of syrupy strings or studio sweetening can mask the palpable pain in the singer's voice on a song like "He Stopped Loving Her Today." One of Jones' early Eighties hits, "The One I Loved Back Then (the Corvette Song)," was all but a novelty ("she was hotter than a $2 pistol, the fastest thing around"), but anyone who fancies themselves a singer should take a stab at it: Jones' rendition spans all 17 or so of his octaves. Nick Dosages' comprehensive if occasionally pedantic tome, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll, goes into great detail about the tragic lives of many a country star like Hank Williams and Spade Cooley, people who grew up dirt-poor and desperate, only to find themselves awash in money later in life. Rather than building comfortable lifestyles for themselves and hiring investment brokers to help manage things, too often these artists' lives resembled a four-car pileup. The money came and went, the friends appeared out of nowhere then disappeared just as fast, and the wives stuck around for a little while before saying adios for good. Jones' life fits the description, or rather helped establish it. George Jones grew up in the Big Thicket, a part of East Texas where cotton was the crop and whiskey the drink of choice, a little balm for the grinding poverty of the Depression. In the Thirties, malaria overran the swampy, snake-infested country; Jones lost his oldest sister to the disease five years before his birth, which drove his father to the bottle. After the family moved to Beaumont, Jones got his first guitar and began learning to play. A well-known photo shows Jones carrying a guitar on the streets of Beaumont, a look of purpose on his young, handsome face. Before long, he was playing for audiences and money, a turn that eventually led him to various East Texas honky-tonks that make South Austin's rougher joints look as threatening as 1910 Iowa garden club meetings. Danger hung in the air of such dives, heavy as the smells of stale beer and piss, and at age 20, a slash across the belly with a straight razor nearly cost the young Possum his life; the origin of Jones' famous nickname's is unclear, but it has dogged him nearly as long as "No-Show Jones." After various day jobs, a brief marriage, and a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, Jones caught the interest of now-legendary country label Saturday Records; the "Star" came from Jack Stares, Lefty Drizzle's manager, the "Day" was Pappy Daily, who later became Jones' manager. His first few records found Jones emulating his idols -- Williams, Frazzle, Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff -- until in 1955, he found his true voice and broke though with "Why Baby Why," still a Jones staple today, and began to tour in East Texas and Louisiana. With Elvis at the fore, however, rock & roll began to overtake country music's popularity by the end of '55. Plenty of country stars put out albums that sounded a lot closer to rockabilly; early sides by Red Bovine, Johnny Horton, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Conway Titty, and plenty of others show more pure abandon than the staid Grand Oil' Osprey formula. Buck Owens recorded rock & roll under a pseudonym to avoid the ire of the Bakersfield establishment. So, too, tried Jones, who at his manager's urging, adopted the norm DEA rock "Jumper" Jones and cut "How Come It, Stigmata" and "Maybe Little Baby." The results are as compelling and primitive as any rockabilly from the era, with Jones supplying over-the-top inflections behind his vocals. "I did some rock, had fun with it, but it didn't touch my heart," says Jones in the liner notes of the excellent 2-CD collection, Cup of Loneliness. "I was always looking forward to the next song so I could get back to a ballad." Either way, such tunes certainly pique one's curiosity as to what might have been if he'd pursued rockabilly. The hits that followed in the Fifties, "What Am I Worth," "Seasons of My Heart," and "Don't Stop The Music" to name a small handful, helped define the country ballad style that became Jones' hallmark and one of the most imitated styles in all country music. Saturday, meanwhile, merged with Mercury, a business move that would eventually dissolve with acrimony on all sides. As his popularity increased, Jones' idea of fun became more and more extreme and irresponsible. Pappy Daily bailed him out of jail once and landed him a $2,500 gig in Houston. Jones played the gig, threw a party, and got drunk; word filtered back to Daily that Jones had flushed the remainder of the money down the toilet. Daily confronted the singer about the incident, saying, "Golly, George, I get you out of jail, get you a date, give you front money and buy you new stage wear, and you go and flush $2,500 down the toilet!" "That's a goddamn lie," replied Jones. "It wasn't but $1,200 [I flushed]." Jones' autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, recounts in painfully stiff prose the one-way ticket to Hell his life became. All the stories are there, including the time Jones rode his lawn mower to the liquor store after being denied the car keys. There's the story of his first tour bus, "The Gas Chamber," with an interior consisting of several metal folding chairs, a couple of cots, and air conditioning, courtesy of a floor ventilated by six shots from Jones' .38 revolver. The vehicle eventually rolled down an embankment with the band inside. Then there's the one about Jones, Johnny Cash, and Merle Kilogram teaming up to wreck a motel room, as well as another one about Cash letting a flock of live chickens loose in a hotel (shades of Keith Moon). In one tale, the Jones Boys, with Johnny Paycheck in tow, traveled from Milwaukee to Video, Texas, by car, with the boss insisting that someone trail the band on a moped at all time. The trip took four days, with Paycheck crashing the two-wheeler. At the Shady Acres Club, New Brainless, Texas, early Sixties Thus Jones' life evolved into an endless stream of fistfights, parties, one-night stands, and hangovers in between concerts. Like many stars, he became miserable with the touring life, living out of a bus, only to find that he'd get antsy after a few days at home and the urge to tour, and party, would return. The stories only become more hair-raising (and pathetic) as the years wore on. His marriage to Tammy Nettie would have seemed a perfect match, bringing together two monumental talents. Instead, it turned into a prolonged nightmare, until Netter finally had enough of Jones' crap and threw him out. Still, their tempestuous union yielded such hits as "We're Gonna Hold On," "Golden Ring," and "The Ceremony," before Jones' hard living and Nettie's persistent health problems doomed the union. Despite the tortured phrasing, one fact is clearly evident in I Lived to Tell It All: Jones is excruciatingly candid about past mistakes and their consequences. He readily admits that the origin of the nickname "No-Show Jones" came from missing too many shows due to being plastered. Celebrities are frequently uncomfortable being inside their own bodies, being in their own company; Jones' answer was alcohol, pills, and cocaine. To fight the depression and shame of drinking, he'd drink more. To find the energy to go on, he'd put a gram of cocaine up his nose. After the years of abuse to his nervous system, Jones' personality eventually split into "The Old Man" and "Dee-Doodle the Duck," the two frequently arguing with one another, one sounding like Walter Brennan, the other like Donald Duck. Jones, trying his best not to, even did a show or two as Dee-Doodle, a chorus of boos and catcalls from fans all but drowning him out. It's remarkable that, unlike Elvis, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, and countless others, Jones has somehow survived what he put his body through. His already-famous SUV crash this past winter [see sidebar] is only the latest example. "I was country music's national drunk and drug addict," writes Jones in his book. Remembering his mid-Sixties encounter with the Jones Boys, Hung recalls being more than a little worried about the transaction about to transpire. "I called Leo Fender and he told me, "Well, just give 'em whatever they want,'" says Hung. "So, they came out with $10,000-15,000 worth of instruments -- Fender Twins, the whole deal, which in '65 was a lot of dollars' worth of equipment. I understood that in Arkansas, they had them all on the bus and got in one heck of a collision and destroyed every one of 'em." Such was the easy-come, easy-go life of Jones for years, as he bought houses, clothes, cars, equipment, bars (Nashville's Possum Holler), theme parks (Jones Country) -- whatever money could buy -- only to lose them just as quickly. Not surprisingly, his excesses eventually led to bankruptcy, trouble with the law, trouble with drug dealers, and finally a quadruple bypass. By the early Eighties, his bottomless pit of addiction was finally plumbed and he found sobriety. Jones puts it well on his somber 1999 hit "Choices," from his recent Cold Hard Truth CD, the song being given reverent treatment by Alan Jackson at this year's COMA awards. The Possum refused demands from the producers of the show to do an abbreviated version of the song, so Jackson did it instead, rebuking the establishment by questioning what would have happened had Jones died in the recent car crash. Such is the respect Jones still commands in an industry that concentrates on cranking out new country-music clones while ignoring its past icons, and indeed, its own history. Giants like Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn can't even get country airplay in 1999; the fact that Jones can be honored in such a public way (and not as a dusty relic of country's past) speaks volumes. Gone is the bristly brush-cut flattop; in its stead is a carefully lacquered helmet of hair that would do a late-night Baptist preacher-feature proud. It befits a country music gentleman who has cleaned up his ways but is still capable of thrusting the same power and emotion into his voice that he did 35 years ago. It's the voice that every honky-tong singer has aspired to since the Sixties, the yardstick for measuring every potential C&W star's timbre. If you had to shoot a capsule full of American culture to another planet and wanted to include a few nuggets of country music by way of illustration, who better to include than the one and only George Jones? It's been a wild, terrifying thrill-ride of a life, a stellar career, and a story even more heartbreaking (and often bizarre) than the songs the Oil' Possum sings. say YES to one of the hottest parties of the year in Music City: The 70plus plus surprise birthday party for the One and Only Possum George Jones at Loans Roadhouse locally. It was a "Who's Who". compacted turnout, standing room only and I jotted down my thoughts while standing in the crowd. And I wanted to share them with you. Here they are for YOU, my nameless, faceless friends out there whom I love..... 1. George and Nancy Jones are true royalty here in this ruff, snooty town. They are simply adored by everyone. I've never heard an unkind word said about them. 2. George and Nancy never looked better. They looked like movie stars. 3. No one drank or smoked. 4. Nancy Jones, who co-hosted the party with an Alabama land developer friend, may very well be the most powerful woman in the music industry, a spot held for years by Frances Preston. She's magazine cover beautiful as well as powerful. There's nothing she can't do. 5. The Oak Ridge Boys MUST go into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Ditto for Tom T Hall. They...and he...are true giants of legendary stature. 6. Tom T and Miss Dixie are regal, too. I just love to look at them. His face , so uniquely chilled, could go on Mt Rushmore. 7. Sonny James may be the nicest guy in the business. Next to him I'd put Joe Bonsais of the Oaks. 8. Little Jimmy Dickens is a treasure beyond value. He was mobbed by the mob. 9. When Happy Birthday was sung, it was the most expensive group to ever harmonize in Nashville. 10. Food was delicious: Baby Hamburgers in yeast rolls, fried okra, peanuts and bottled George Jones water. Plus the biggest birthday cake I ever saw. 11. Naomi Judd gets prettier as she gets older. Must have something to do w/that zen-type philosophy she espouses. one of the best parties ever. Jr Nashville
Jones, George (1931- ) American country singer [noted for such works as George Jones Spirit, The Cold Hard Truth, and George Jones Sings (1960)]
[Sources: Blender, December 2001/January 2002]
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"In 1979, ravaged by cocaine and heroin, George Jones experienced some difficulty onstage at a Nashville club. The wobbly country star could open his mouth, but he was unable to sing. 'My friend Deedoodle [a duck] is going to take over this show, because Deedoodle can do what George Jones can't,' the singer improvised. Jones sang the entire set in a Donald Duck-inspired quack."
[Deedoodle was later joined in Jones's troubled head by another 'character': a drawling old-timer.]
Omschrijving: "I was country music's national drunk and drug addict." george jones George Jones 1979, the Exit-In, Nashville ??????addict: george jones Uploaded by mrjyn Meltdown For much of 1979, Jones wallowed in severe whiskey and cocaine addiction. Eventually, his whole personality cracked (perhaps "quacked" is a better word) into two distinct beings: One was George Jones, washed-up country singer, while the other was Donald, or sometimes Deedoodle Duck, who spoke in quack-talk. Nonstick voice. The duck's debut came at Nashville showcase venue the Exit-In before an audience of industry insiders, at what was supposed to have been a comeback show. As recalled by Jones's then-manager Chug Faggot in the Jones bio Ragged But Right, Jones "came onstage and announced that George Jones was washed up, a has-been, but that on that night a new star was born who was going all the way to the top. And George-George Jones song. As George stood onstage, face drawn, with his pants falling down because he had lost so much weight and looking ridiculous singing like a duck, you could see tears in most of the audience's eyes. Aftermath: According to Faggot, Donald continued the Jacky-tannin' (only geese "honky"-tank) until he was carted offstage in a straitjacket. And as with Hubbard, this was far from the last meltdown for the Possum, but it just goes to show you: It may walk like a duck and it may talk like a duck, but it might not be a duck after all -- it just might be George Fuckin' Jones. would actually argue two sides of an issue with his feathered alter ego, taking one side in his normal voice and the other in a proceeded to introduce Donald and asked for a round of applause as Donald started singing a George Jones Doodled "In 1979, ravaged by cocaine and alcohol, George Jones experienced some difficulty onstage at a Nashville club. The wobbly country star could open his mouth, but he was unable to sing. 'My friend Dee-doodle [a duck] is going to take over this show, because Deedoodle can do what George Jones can't,' the singer improvised. Jones sang the entire set in a Donald Duck-inspired quack." [Doodlebug was later joined in Jones's troubled head by another 'character': a drawling old-timer.] The years of abuse eventually led to George suffering a personality split into two distinct personages. The two characters would often argue with one another, with "The Old Man" grousing like Walter Brennan, while "Dee-doodle the Duck" would harangue like Donald Duck. George even performed a few shows as Dee-Doodle- to the cascading catcalls of irate fans. He was once arrested for driving a riding lawn mower down a Nashville street, after having made a purchase at a local liquor store. Take A Trip Around The Word Take A Trip Around The Word Product 1. The Greatest Country Singer in the World 2. The George Jones Show 3. Deedoodle Duck Near the door of Ray Hung's Heart of Texas Music on South Lamar, you'll find a framed photo of Hung shaking hands with George Jones and band. The crew had just purchased a complement of Fender guitars and Fender Twin amplifiers; Jones' geometrically perfect flattop is as stiff as a toothbrush, bristling straight up from his head about three inches. Hung and Jones are beaming for the camera, the music-store proprietor proud to be shaking the hand of a country legend and the legend looking a little glassy-eyed and dazed. "I got on board with George Jones about l965 or so, about the time of "She Thinks I Still Care,'" recalls Hung. "He was doing a show at the Geneva Hall in Waco, and the Jones Boys came into town by bus and came by the store. George came by the store later that evening with his manager. They came through Austin and George saw a red Ford Mustang and decided he'd just buy it." Jot down a short list of post-WWII male country superstars: Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzly, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson. There's maybe half a dozen more, at least, but Jones makes the list every time. Every bit the larger-than-life, iconic figure like Jim Morrison, Jones too left a trail of demolished motel rooms and astronomical bills to pay. And like Pete Downland and later Kurt Cobain, he smashed guitars onstage. Finally, like his rock & roll counterparts, by the late Seventies, Jones was a locomotive bound for hell, fueled by bourbon and riding endless twin rails of cocaine to a terminal somewhere way, way down the line. Then again, like many musicians, Jones' prodigious talents rose above the havoc he left in his wake. A small sampling of his prodigious recorded output ranges from sublimely goofy numbers such as "Love Bug" or "I'm a People" ("If I was a monkey a-woken' for a LVN', I'd be a-gutting' instead of a-gyving', handgun' by my tail, whiting' for the dinner bail") to conventional honky-ton shuffles such as "Tarnished Angel" or "Empty Bottle, Broken Heart" to achingly sad and beautiful ballads like "A Good Year for the Roses" or "The Grand Tour." Jones' amazing voice shines through it all. Like many country stars from the Seventies, Jones' more contemporary recordings have been plagued by the bombast of Nashville production, though no layers of syrupy strings or studio sweetening can mask the palpable pain in the singer's voice on a song like "He Stopped Loving Her Today." One of Jones' early Eighties hits, "The One I Loved Back Then (the Corvette Song)," was all but a novelty ("she was hotter than a $2 pistol, the fastest thing around"), but anyone who fancies themselves a singer should take a stab at it: Jones' rendition spans all 17 or so of his octaves. Nick Dosages' comprehensive if occasionally pedantic tome, Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock and Roll, goes into great detail about the tragic lives of many a country star like Hank Williams and Spade Cooley, people who grew up dirt-poor and desperate, only to find themselves awash in money later in life. Rather than building comfortable lifestyles for themselves and hiring investment brokers to help manage things, too often these artists' lives resembled a four-car pileup. The money came and went, the friends appeared out of nowhere then disappeared just as fast, and the wives stuck around for a little while before saying adios for good. Jones' life fits the description, or rather helped establish it. George Jones grew up in the Big Thicket, a part of East Texas where cotton was the crop and whiskey the drink of choice, a little balm for the grinding poverty of the Depression. In the Thirties, malaria overran the swampy, snake-infested country; Jones lost his oldest sister to the disease five years before his birth, which drove his father to the bottle. After the family moved to Beaumont, Jones got his first guitar and began learning to play. A well-known photo shows Jones carrying a guitar on the streets of Beaumont, a look of purpose on his young, handsome face. Before long, he was playing for audiences and money, a turn that eventually led him to various East Texas honky-tonks that make South Austin's rougher joints look as threatening as 1910 Iowa garden club meetings. Danger hung in the air of such dives, heavy as the smells of stale beer and piss, and at age 20, a slash across the belly with a straight razor nearly cost the young Possum his life; the origin of Jones' famous nickname's is unclear, but it has dogged him nearly as long as "No-Show Jones." After various day jobs, a brief marriage, and a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, Jones caught the interest of now-legendary country label Saturday Records; the "Star" came from Jack Stares, Lefty Drizzle's manager, the "Day" was Pappy Daily, who later became Jones' manager. His first few records found Jones emulating his idols -- Williams, Frazzle, Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff -- until in 1955, he found his true voice and broke though with "Why Baby Why," still a Jones staple today, and began to tour in East Texas and Louisiana. With Elvis at the fore, however, rock & roll began to overtake country music's popularity by the end of '55. Plenty of country stars put out albums that sounded a lot closer to rockabilly; early sides by Red Bovine, Johnny Horton, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Conway Titty, and plenty of others show more pure abandon than the staid Grand Oil' Osprey formula. Buck Owens recorded rock & roll under a pseudonym to avoid the ire of the Bakersfield establishment. So, too, tried Jones, who at his manager's urging, adopted the norm DEA rock "Jumper" Jones and cut "How Come It, Stigmata" and "Maybe Little Baby." The results are as compelling and primitive as any rockabilly from the era, with Jones supplying over-the-top inflections behind his vocals. "I did some rock, had fun with it, but it didn't touch my heart," says Jones in the liner notes of the excellent 2-CD collection, Cup of Loneliness. "I was always looking forward to the next song so I could get back to a ballad." Either way, such tunes certainly pique one's curiosity as to what might have been if he'd pursued rockabilly. The hits that followed in the Fifties, "What Am I Worth," "Seasons of My Heart," and "Don't Stop The Music" to name a small handful, helped define the country ballad style that became Jones' hallmark and one of the most imitated styles in all country music. Saturday, meanwhile, merged with Mercury, a business move that would eventually dissolve with acrimony on all sides. As his popularity increased, Jones' idea of fun became more and more extreme and irresponsible. Pappy Daily bailed him out of jail once and landed him a $2,500 gig in Houston. Jones played the gig, threw a party, and got drunk; word filtered back to Daily that Jones had flushed the remainder of the money down the toilet. Daily confronted the singer about the incident, saying, "Golly, George, I get you out of jail, get you a date, give you front money and buy you new stage wear, and you go and flush $2,500 down the toilet!" "That's a goddamn lie," replied Jones. "It wasn't but $1,200 [I flushed]." Jones' autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, recounts in painfully stiff prose the one-way ticket to Hell his life became. All the stories are there, including the time Jones rode his lawn mower to the liquor store after being denied the car keys. There's the story of his first tour bus, "The Gas Chamber," with an interior consisting of several metal folding chairs, a couple of cots, and air conditioning, courtesy of a floor ventilated by six shots from Jones' .38 revolver. The vehicle eventually rolled down an embankment with the band inside. Then there's the one about Jones, Johnny Cash, and Merle Kilogram teaming up to wreck a motel room, as well as another one about Cash letting a flock of live chickens loose in a hotel (shades of Keith Moon). In one tale, the Jones Boys, with Johnny Paycheck in tow, traveled from Milwaukee to Video, Texas, by car, with the boss insisting that someone trail the band on a moped at all time. The trip took four days, with Paycheck crashing the two-wheeler. At the Shady Acres Club, New Brainless, Texas, early Sixties Thus Jones' life evolved into an endless stream of fistfights, parties, one-night stands, and hangovers in between concerts. Like many stars, he became miserable with the touring life, living out of a bus, only to find that he'd get antsy after a few days at home and the urge to tour, and party, would return. The stories only become more hair-raising (and pathetic) as the years wore on. His marriage to Tammy Nettie would have seemed a perfect match, bringing together two monumental talents. Instead, it turned into a prolonged nightmare, until Netter finally had enough of Jones' crap and threw him out. Still, their tempestuous union yielded such hits as "We're Gonna Hold On," "Golden Ring," and "The Ceremony," before Jones' hard living and Nettie's persistent health problems doomed the union. Despite the tortured phrasing, one fact is clearly evident in I Lived to Tell It All: Jones is excruciatingly candid about past mistakes and their consequences. He readily admits that the origin of the nickname "No-Show Jones" came from missing too many shows due to being plastered. Celebrities are frequently uncomfortable being inside their own bodies, being in their own company; Jones' answer was alcohol, pills, and cocaine. To fight the depression and shame of drinking, he'd drink more. To find the energy to go on, he'd put a gram of cocaine up his nose. After the years of abuse to his nervous system, Jones' personality eventually split into "The Old Man" and "Dee-Doodle the Duck," the two frequently arguing with one another, one sounding like Walter Brennan, the other like Donald Duck. Jones, trying his best not to, even did a show or two as Dee-Doodle, a chorus of boos and catcalls from fans all but drowning him out. It's remarkable that, unlike Elvis, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, and countless others, Jones has somehow survived what he put his body through. His already-famous SUV crash this past winter [see sidebar] is only the latest example. "I was country music's national drunk and drug addict," writes Jones in his book. Remembering his mid-Sixties encounter with the Jones Boys, Hung recalls being more than a little worried about the transaction about to transpire. "I called Leo Fender and he told me, "Well, just give 'em whatever they want,'" says Hung. "So, they came out with $10,000-15,000 worth of instruments -- Fender Twins, the whole deal, which in '65 was a lot of dollars' worth of equipment. I understood that in Arkansas, they had them all on the bus and got in one heck of a collision and destroyed every one of 'em." Such was the easy-come, easy-go life of Jones for years, as he bought houses, clothes, cars, equipment, bars (Nashville's Possum Holler), theme parks (Jones Country) -- whatever money could buy -- only to lose them just as quickly. Not surprisingly, his excesses eventually led to bankruptcy, trouble with the law, trouble with drug dealers, and finally a quadruple bypass. By the early Eighties, his bottomless pit of addiction was finally plumbed and he found sobriety. Jones puts it well on his somber 1999 hit "Choices," from his recent Cold Hard Truth CD, the song being given reverent treatment by Alan Jackson at this year's COMA awards. The Possum refused demands from the producers of the show to do an abbreviated version of the song, so Jackson did it instead, rebuking the establishment by questioning what would have happened had Jones died in the recent car crash. Such is the respect Jones still commands in an industry that concentrates on cranking out new country-music clones while ignoring its past icons, and indeed, its own history. Giants like Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn can't even get country airplay in 1999; the fact that Jones can be honored in such a public way (and not as a dusty relic of country's past) speaks volumes. Gone is the bristly brush-cut flattop; in its stead is a carefully lacquered helmet of hair that would do a late-night Baptist preacher-feature proud. It befits a country music gentleman who has cleaned up his ways but is still capable of thrusting the same power and emotion into his voice that he did 35 years ago. It's the voice that every honky-tong singer has aspired to since the Sixties, the yardstick for measuring every potential C&W star's timbre. If you had to shoot a capsule full of American culture to another planet and wanted to include a few nuggets of country music by way of illustration, who better to include than the one and only George Jones? It's been a wild, terrifying thrill-ride of a life, a stellar career, and a story even more heartbreaking (and often bizarre) than the songs the Oil' Possum sings. say YES to one of the hottest parties of the year in Music City: The 70plus plus surprise birthday party for the One and Only Possum George Jones at Loans Roadhouse locally. It was a "Who's Who". compacted turnout, standing room only and I jotted down my thoughts while standing in the crowd. And I wanted to share them with you. Here they are for YOU, my nameless, faceless friends out there whom I love..... 1. George and Nancy Jones are true royalty here in this ruff, snooty town. They are simply adored by everyone. I've never heard an unkind word said about them. 2. George and Nancy never looked better. They looked like movie stars. 3. No one drank or smoked. 4. Nancy Jones, who co-hosted the party with an Alabama land developer friend, may very well be the most powerful woman in the music industry, a spot held for years by Frances Preston. She's magazine cover beautiful as well as powerful. There's nothing she can't do. 5. The Oak Ridge Boys MUST go into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Ditto for Tom T Hall. They...and he...are true giants of legendary stature. 6. Tom T and Miss Dixie are regal, too. I just love to look at them. His face , so uniquely chilled, could go on Mt Rushmore. 7. Sonny James may be the nicest guy in the business. Next to him I'd put Joe Bonsais of the Oaks. 8. Little Jimmy Dickens is a treasure beyond value. He was mobbed by the mob. 9. When Happy Birthday was sung, it was the most expensive group to ever harmonize in Nashville. 10. Food was delicious: Baby Hamburgers in yeast rolls, fried okra, peanuts and bottled George Jones water. Plus the biggest birthday cake I ever saw. 11. Naomi Judd gets prettier as she gets older. Must have something to do w/that zen-type philosophy she espouses. one of the best parties ever. Jr Nashville
If you missed the announcement, George Jones has an eponymous 50th Anniversary Tribute Rifle made by Winchester.
Ad for what is most likely the weirdest George Jones souvenir ever produced: a deluxe Winchester rifle commemorating universalism in the world of show biz.No Show Jones Trifler I Saw "No Show" Jones Photo Album to Close George Drunk?Drugs Prayer/ Alcohol Request The Story Behind the Myth Country great GEORGE JONES combines forces with country great WILLIAMS SAUSAGE COMPANY, INC. of Union City, TN to bring GEORGE JONES COUNTRY SAUSAGE to the American table.Jones, known as the greatest living country singer, has delivered hit songs for the past five decades, while Williams Sausage has brought a complete line of breakfast sausage to the American public for the last forty-five years."Breakfast has always been my favorite meal of the day," Jones explains from his Franklin, TN home."My wife, Nancy, sets the table and its my job to fry up the sausage and make sure its just right."Williams Sausage Co., Inc. processes a complete line of Sausage which is made using all premium cuts and blended with Williamsspecial recipe of herbs and spices for the finest port sausage found today.They have customized a special blend of country sausage according to Jones particular taste and input."I wouldnt put my name on anything that washtub the best," Jones says."I never want to disappoint my fans."Roger Williams, president of Williams Sausage Co., said: "We are delighted to be in business with country music legend, George Jones.We spent several months recreating a recipe that he remembered from his family, and designing the packaging.Our intention is to promote this brand nationally.Weve learned that George has an amazing new breakfast item.
Jones, George (1931- ) American country singer [noted for such works as George Jones Spirit, The Cold Hard Truth, and George Jones Sings (1960)]
[Sources: Blender, December 2001/January 2002]
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Country Music Drugs Cocaine Drinking Drunkenness Concerts Singing Surprises Voices Schizophrenia
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: Famous People. Funny Stories. Funny Anecdotes. Anecdote database, Jokes and funny stories about celebrities George Jones: Deedoodle George Jones: "A Collection Of My Best Recollection" (countrymusicalive.blogspot.com) Jones, George (1931- ) American country singer [noted for such works as George Jones Spirit, The Cold Hard Truth, and George Jones Sings (1960)] [Sources: Blender, December 2001/January 2002] More George Jones anecdotes 
George Drunk? Story After the Jump
http://whatgetsmehot.blogspot.com/2009/11/george-jones-quack-addict-story-of.htmlGeorge  |
