30 years ago in 1979 Epic Records issued a duet album on George Jones called My Very Special Guests. The duet album had been in the planning stages for several years and it was released during some of the more darker days in George's career. I do not have the original vinyl album but I've read some fans and critical comments remarking that the songs sounded "badly edited together" and other such comments to give the impression that the editing job wasn't up to par.
I never got my hands on the duet project until it was re-issued on CD in 1991 and even then I didn't get my hands on it until sometime in the mid 1990's...I lucked out and found a CD copy at a record store in a shopping mall. So, after I bought the much-anticipated project, and, since I have a personal goal of acquiring George Jones material, specifically from the 1970's onward, I listened to the duets with total bliss and excitement.
Listening to the duets I couldn't understand why fans or critics said the album "sounded pieced together, badly" for when I was listening to it, I couldn't even tell most of the duets were over-dubbed over top of George's recordings. According to Epic's associates at that time as well as George's famed record producer, Billy Sherrill, George was often too weak or nowhere to be found during the recording sessions. I take it that Sherrill and company simply decided to record the guest vocalist's lines ahead of time and then whenever they could get George into the studio, then they'd have him sing his lines...then the editing crew and mixing department would put everything together.
The peculiar way of putting the album together worked because it's a time capsule album where you have George and several country and pop acts singing duets...the pop acts at that time were heavily connected to various divisions of country-rock and southern-rock audiences. I am quite sure at the time of the album's release there was grumbling and belly-aching going on and plenty of names being thrown Billy Sherrill's way for having George do a duet album and gasp! have it include pop or southern-rock acts. I have no proof of that but given the reputation Sherrill has among music critics I wouldn't be surprised if such bickering like that went on.
The "oldest" song on the duet CD was his song with Tammy Wynette, "It Sure Was Good", recorded in early 1977 perhaps for a duet album that never materialized but found it's way on this project. Next is "Bartender's Blues" which was actually a major Top-10 hit for George as well as the name of his previous album in 1978...the song having been recorded late in 1977 with James Taylor singing harmony. In July 1978 he recorded his duets with Elvis Costello and Pop and Mavis Staples. The rest of the duets were recorded at various points throughout 1978 with "Proud Mary", his duet with Johnny PayCheck, recorded in November of that year. Ironically there was no material recorded in 1979 that was put onto the album.
The project was re-issued once more in 2005, marking the project's 26th anniversary. I think the label, Sony/BMG Music, may have been mistaken about what year the album was originally released because the celebration of the project's release came a year after it's silver anniversary. I assume they thought 2005 was the 25th anniversary of the album...and it's easy to see why: HBO aired a special in 1980 about this album and the show was titled George Jones: With a Little Help From My Friends and it featured George performing a lot of duets from the album plus exclusive duets with artists that weren't on the album. However, I'm probably wrong about the label not knowing when the duet project was originally issued because BMG had also issued a re-release of his 1980 album in 2005, marking the project's silver anniversary...so it could be that Sony/BMG Music were simply issuing titles under the "Legacy Edition" banner and decided to issue My Very Special Guests as well.
I will add that the 2005 re-issue contained 27 additional duets...it featured the original ten from the 1979 album plus it featured a collection of duets that George recorded throughout the 1980's and 1990's. It was a 2 CD collection and it came with an informative booklet.
The track list on the original album:
1. Night Life- with Waylon Jennings
2. Bartender's Blues- with James Taylor {harmony}
3. Here We Are- with Emmylou Harris
4. I've Turned You To Stone- with Linda Ronstadt
5. It Sure Was Good- with Tammy Wynette
6. I Gotta Get Drunk- with Willie Nelson
7. Proud Mary- with Johnny PayCheck
8. Stranger in the House- with Elvis Costello
9. I Still Hold Her Body- with Dennis and Ray of "Dr. Hook"
10. Will The Circle Be Unbroken- with Pop and Mavis Staples
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