Well, it's not an exciting blog entry this time around...I thought i'd show-off a ball cap that was bought at a George Jones concert in 1988 or 1989. I didn't buy this...my grandparent's had went to George and Conway's concert in Columbus and this was one of the souvenir's they bought. My grandfather wore this hat for years. The hat is named after George's 1987 album, Too Wild Too Long of course.
"I'd like to thank, uh, Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright...". George was on stage at the CMA awards in 1980, or, 1981...totally caught off-guard when his name was called for Male Vocalist of the Year and as he went up on stage to get the award he grinned and there was some silence and he looked out into the audience and thanked Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright before exiting the stage...leaving some confused and some in fits of laughter and some heaping a lot of applause. It was recounted in the biographies of George in the early 1980's and it was written about in George's autobiography in 1996. George, it was revealed, was under the influence that night and didn't know what to say when he went up on stage. According to George he saw Kitty and Johnny sitting out there in audience and so he thanked them, which annoyed the staff at Epic/CBS. According to an article I saw concerning Rick Blackburn, he confronted George and asked him why he thanked two people who had nothing to do with his career and George told him he couldn't think of anything to say so he thanked those two on the spur of the moment.
This picture was taken at some point in the late 1960's. It was used on the 1969 album, Where Grass Won't Grow but I don't know if it was taken in 1969 or 1968. Speaking of the 1969 album...it reaches 40 this year. I do not have the vinyl copy but I do have a low-budget cassette copy that was issued on Hollywood Records/Highland Music in 1988. It features the Top-30 title track, "Where Grass Won't Grow", about a farmer who doesn't have very much success because the ground's so poor. It's a tragic ballad. This album also features the Top-10's "If Not For You" and "She's Mine". Some of my personal favorites are on this album. In addition to the hits there's the toe-tapping "For Better or For Worse But Not For Long" and the barn-stormer, "Shoulder To Shoulder". Can you guess what's shoulder to shoulder in the song? It's a cute sing-a-long. Another novelty is "No Blues Is Good News". There is one song on here that's sorrowful and chilling and it's "Old Blue Tomorrow". A local DJ would play this song nearly everyday...long before I found the cassette copy of Where Grass Won't Grow. It's a song about aging. "Barbara Joy" is another up-tempo song found on this album, which runs the gamut of emotions.
3 comments:
Hi, Ouisconsin Fiddler here...I found your Blog...thanks for the e-mail! Anyways, yes I have that vinyl album. MS-XXXX something, but the Musicor stereo version (back then everything could be bought as mono or stereo versions). I got my copy along with A Good Year For The Roses and I think Walk Through This World w/Me (Tammy on cover) at Musical Memories in Milwaukee back when I was attending college at Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1985. In fact, this album (Where Grass Won't Grow) really defined the height of George's "Musicor" era to me (I see his different era's by record labels vs. say decades as his sound really took on different characteristics with each label/producer). This album had 2 great unreleased George tunes that I consider some of his best "For Better or For Worse (But not for Long)" and "The Lies You Told" (I believe that's the name...). Like yourself, I found Where Grass Won't Grow on a cheap "Rhino" release of Musicor hits. Rhino did some nice things for being cheap. First, they released these albums you wouldn't ever expect anyone else to (but George did sign away all his rights to get to Epic I recall), and second, kept them pretty much intact and used the original artwork. Too bad they didn't stay around longer else I could have bet "I'm A People" and "4033" would have been done up to in full form. I loved Barbara Joy as well, some nice dobro on this album made it feel a bit more old time country in some aspects. I'll sign off saying I enjoyed George's Epic years as his best (with the "Sherrillization" applied via strings and Pete Drake or Sonny Curtis on steel), followed by his Musicor years, then UA years. The rest I will chalk up as being equal in respect as only the RCA recordings go down as somewhat poor in quality. It's hard to believe George is still out there singing...hope he keeps it up into the next decade...that would be quite the time span of any singer!
Hello...thanks for commenting.
"The Lies You Told" is actually named "Shoulder to Shoulder", that I wrote about, and another one of my favorites among the other favorite songs on that album is "Old Blue Tomorrow".
Not many people say good things about George's Epic recordings but yet that is my favorite material, too, but in reality I like all of his different era's but the Epic songs stand out above the rest because of the instrumentation/production and the style of songs he sang...the songs, nearly most of them, all had a storyline...but yet there's always been story line's in all of his songs but with Epic the storyline approach tended to be more apparent specifically because of his personal life and the songwriters working for CBS/Epic that were specifically writing songs that mirrored the antics, heartbreak, and pain of George's private life.
I don't know the in's and out's of who played what instruments or anything like that or who wrote what without looking it up. I know George wrote quite a few songs and co-wrote several as well but his songwriting doesn't get much attention.
I've been busy uploading George Jones video montage's...a quick note about RCA. George's Musicor recordings were released by RCA when he left for Epic in 1971. I think RCA had bought out Musicor and George wanted to go make albums on Tammy's label and so he paid Musicor a large sum of money to be released from his contract. Afterward, RCA started to release a lot of albums on George comprised of material that had already been released or songs from the vaults.
"A Day In The Life of a Fool" was one of those RCA released singles and it hit the Top-30...but it wasn't considered an officially released single because George was signed to Epic, not RCA.
RCA also released an album called WRAPPED AROUND HER FINGER on George...but technically George never was signed to RCA.
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