the 1983 George Jones road book

The book has some wear to it but there's not a torn page or anything. My grandfather bought this at a 1984 George Jones concert that he, myself, and my grandmother went to. He kept it for years but one day he let me have the book since I would appreciate it more.

There are a lot of pictures, along with George's commentary, throughout the road book/tour book. The name of the book promotes I AM WHAT I AM, George's 1980 album, reaching Platinum status in 1983.

I scanned some images from the book as I mentioned that I would be doing in a previous entry. This first image is a collage of pictures...you will have to click the images in this blog to see a bigger picture...I didn't want a lot of huge pictures dominating the blog.





In the picture below, it's the centerfold I was referring to in a previous entry.





I also scanned a page promoting the park...which includes a picture of the bandstand and a picture of George pushing on a tree...you'll have to click the image...





I wonder what's standing where Jones Country once stood assuming it's no longer standing? Anyone around that part of Texas maybe want to travel over there and take a look around and see if the bandstand is still standing or if the woods and wildlife have taken over the area?

Anyway, this puts the wraps on the Jones Country talk...for now.

...heartbreak by the dozen...

Yes, as many fans of classic country music will pick out right away, the name of this blog is derived from the Ray Price hit "Heartaches By the Number" but for this blog I call it Heartbreak by the Dozen because in this particular installment we're going to look at a 1986 George Jones album called WINE COLORED ROSES...before I get into the meat and potatoes of the album, a little history lesson is needed...and besides, I'm a sucker for nostalgia and talking about the by-gone days.

At the time of this album's release country radio had been going through some major shifts in identity. The decade started off with the industry reaping millions from the Urban Cowboy fad and other pop-influenced acts popping up left and right. By mid decade the Urban Cowboy fad was winding down in large parts of cities who were moving on to the next movement. In Nashville the fad continued to thrive due to Mickey Gilley being one of the biggest country music stars during the first half of the 1980's and his Gilley's night-club continued to weave the imagery brought to life in the Urban Cowboy movie. However, there was a segment of country singers who did not get into all of the cowboy attire or ride mechanical bulls. George Jones was one of the few who did not.

By the time WINE COLORED ROSES was issued, the landscape in country music was a sea of eclecticism with all sorts of country music styles being played and recorded. There was also a trend of younger country singers coming along at this same time, unofficially lead by Randy Travis, but it also included diverse acts as Alabama, Reba McEntire, and George Strait. These acts, in addition to several more later in the decade, would help shape country radio throughout the 1980's and most of the 1990's. All of this emergence of talent proved to be a blessing and a curse for country music...for Nashville wanted country music to compete, legitimately, with pop and rock music and this meant more airplay of those particular singers whom radio programmer's felt attracted a majority middle age to younger listening audience. Yes, this is the era in which country radio started it's gradual decline of airplay of artists based not on their talent or their ability to sell concert tickets and singles, but rather, the airplay declines were based on demographics and audience make-up.

WINE COLORED ROSES featured a few of George's last Top-10 hits. The title track is quintessential George Jones...it tells of a man who gets a letter from a former girlfriend who asks if he's quit drinking...and the man tells her his answer via the mail. The song, being a ballad, inched up the charts and made the Top-10 for a couple of weeks...in a separate chart that tracked sales of singles, "Wine Colored Roses" peaked three places higher...indicating it was being bought in spite of radio not playing it much. A follow-up single didn't arrive from this album until late spring 1987, the bouncy "The Right Left Hand". This single also sailed into the Top-10...written specifically about George and his wife, Nancy. Epic then released the poetic "I Turn To You" later in 1987 as a third single...this one was the first solo recording of George's that decade to not enter the Top-10. He had issued several duet recordings in 1985 and in 1980/1981 that peaked in the Top-20 but all of his solo recordings managed to hit the Top-10 with frequency starting back in 1980 with "He Stopped Loving Her Today". So, "I Turn To You" broke a seven year string of consecutive Top-10 solo hits for George, 1980-1987. Interested in where "I Turn To You" peaked at? It peaked in the Top-30 but no higher than #25...and I'll bet nobody even recalls when that song was a single...I didn't know it was a single until 10 or more years ago when I first started looking up chart placings of my favorite singers and seen it listed as a commercial single by him.

The rest of the album fits between slow ballads and up-tempo songs...one of the more clever is "Don't Leave Without Taking Your Silver". A song that should have been a single but wasn't is "The Very Best of Me". When you hear this song it jumps out of the speakers and sounds like the kind of song George could have had fun with in concert. "Ol' Frank" tackles the familiar subject of a woman marrying for money. "Hopelessly Yours" is a straight forward romantic song that I like...it was recorded several years later by Lee Greenwood and Suzy Boggus as a duet. They had the hit recording as well as a hit music video. "If Only Your Eyes Could Lie" typically gets the thumbs up from just about everyone who hears it...it has the elements that most country music listeners want to hear. "These Old Eyes Have Seen It All" carries a nostalgic feel where George tells about a man he encounters in a bar and is immediately taken through time by way of the older man's stories.

There is a duet in this collection and it's a song with pop singer Patti Page who has always had a connection to some sections of country music with her gospel recordings and her "Tennessee Waltz" anthem. On this album, George and Patti team up to sing "You Never Looked That Good When You Were Mine", a delicious song about a couple who've since parted ways but after having time away from one another they suddenly notice each other's attractiveness. This album was certified GOLD in 1994 by the RIAA.

1. Wine Colored Roses
2. I Turn To You
3. The Right Left Hand
4. Don't Leave Without Taking Your Silver
5. The Very Best of Me
6. Hopelessly Yours
7. You Never Looked That Good When You Were Mine- with Patti Page
8. If Only Your Eyes Could Lie
9. Ol' Frank
10. These Old Eyes Have Seen It All

Silver Anniversary

The year...1984...25 years ago. George Jones was riding the crest of his new-marriage along with a re-focused look at his career. This marks the silver anniversary of a couple of George Jones albums and some books, too. The books are biographies that were released in this era, as a lot of writers were re-discovering the music of George Jones after they must have been put on a self-imposed M.I.A from covering his career...wanting to write more about the wild off-stage antics that were taking place.

George and Nancy are coming up on their 26th wedding anniversary. The two of them got married on March 4, 1983. On the personal front he was still coping and dealing with his much-reported alcoholism but on the career front he was riding high on the radio as one of the advertisements in this blog indicates. The couple were living away from Nashville at the time...far, far away...out in southeast Texas to be specific. The two settled in the part of Texas that George grew up in and by late 1983 the couple had opened up a country music park, "Jones Country", out in the wooded area in the vicinity of Colmesneil, Texas. Interestingly, EPIC Records had issued an album called JONES COUNTRY around the time of the country music park's grand opening on Labor Day, 1983.

YOU'VE STILL GOT A PLACE IN MY HEART...this is the name of the album that EPIC issued on George in early 1984. The album consisted of ten songs all delivered in George's distinctive style and it focused quite a bit on more optimistic sentiments, specifically the title track, which features a lazy harmonica solo adding to the song's feel. There were only three songs that you could call sad on the entire album and those were tracks four, nine, and ten. The only downside about the album, from a commercial stand-point, is EPIC never bothered to release anything else from it...which went in step with JONES COUNTRY because with that album, EPIC never issued any single from it at all. So, with only one single released to country radio from YOU'VE STILL GOT A PLACE IN MY HEART, this meant that nine songs went un-heard by the masses.

The track list for this 1984 album is as follows:

1. You've Still Got a Place In My Heart
2. From Strangers, To Lovers, To Friends
3. The Second Time Around
4. Come Sundown
5. Even The Bad Times Are Good
6. I'm Ragged But I'm Right
7. Courtin' In The Rain
8. Loveshine
9. Your Lying Blue Eyes
10. Learning To Do Without Me

The album was ballad heavy with only three songs in the up-tempo vein. George taped an hour long TV appearance to promote this album and it ran on The Nashville Network in the summer of 1984, entitled NEW COUNTRY, a regular series on TNN. While the album was ballad heavy, tracks six, seven, and eight were up-tempo. In fact, track six is a re-recording of one of George's earliest songs from the mid 1950's. Track six also served as the title for one of the biographies to surface that year. Dolly Carlisle wrote the biography, RAGGED BUT RIGHT, and used a publicity picture of George on the book's cover. If you look closely at the book's cover you will notice it's the same picture EPIC used for their 1982 compilation album on George, ANNIVERSARY: TEN YEARS OF HITS, although for the album they used the head-shot and cut off the rest of the body.

The biography featured plenty of stories of George's career and personal life including information that had been passed on from one source to the other. George himself was never contacted about the book's release but I have it in my collection and it isn't a terrible biography...it isn't filled with wall-to-wall gossip, either...but it does contain it's fair share of hearsay, which I was referring to a few moments ago with second-hand information being handed down from one person to the next, but it's still a good read. The back of the book features a testimonial from none other than Merle Haggard saying "After reading RAGGED BUT RIGHT, I can think of only one word to describe the man and his music...INCREDIBLE!". Below this is a few paragraphs from Carlisle and following this is a small write-up about the author and telling us she was named a CMA Journalist of the Year three times and that she had written four articles on George for People Magazine prior to her issuing this book. The pictures are incredible...including a picture of George and infamous manager Shug Baggott on a speed boat plus some pictures of George at Jones Country...in one picture he's performing a duet with Leona Williams.

There are two sets of pictures in this book. The first set appears between pages 48 and 49. In this series of pictures there are younger pictures of George and some of his family. There is also a picture, a bird's eye view shot, of the opening day of his Plantation Park that was up and running according to the book, from 1970 through 1973 when George and Tammy moved back to Nashville. Also in the pictures are a shot of him and Waylon Jennings that was taken, as far as I know, during the recording sessions of MY VERY SPECIAL GUESTS in 1979.

The second set of pictures appears between pages 176 and 177...including a picture of George as a cast-member of HOLLYWOOD SQUARES. He is located on the top far left corner during a 1981 week-long taping. Also on the show were Tammy Wynette, Jim Stafford, Margo Smith, Mel Tillis, George Lindsay, Minnie Pearl, and Roy Clark. The ninth square was series regular George Gobel, wearing a cowboy hat, and it's interesting that Gobel is the only one in the cast wearing the stereotypical cowboy hat and everyone else isn't wearing any...well, actually, the only person, besides Gobel, with a hat was Minnie Pearl...so, looking at the picture of the show's contestants, in a manner of speaking, it was sort of like a city person's idea of what "country music" is: a cowboy hat; those who are fans of country music will know what I'm getting at.

There was a second book released on George this year, too. This book was titled THE SAGA OF A COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER, and it was written by Bob Allen, a music critic for the now out of print Country Music Magazine. This second book is more or less a gossip-meets-facts-meets-entertainment-meets-author's opinion's on George Jones from the start of his life until the mid 1980's. Allen's opinions of Nashville and the music industry can be found among the biography...as well as his opinions of just about everyone who's associated with George in and out of the country music business. In a lot of ways this book is similar to RAGGED BUT RIGHT in that it provides a lot of hearsay and infamous stories about George's past but where RAGGED BUT RIGHT comes across as an easy read, THE SAGA book comes across as an analytical study filled more with opinion from the author than a presentation of facts or hearsay. Allen's thoughts about Billy Sherrill and others in country music during the 1970's, specifically, are written loud and clear while the author continually brings up commercialism as a bad thing? All in all the book can be informative if one is more interested in wanting to know what the author thinks about George and country music instead of a reader wanting to learn about George, the person, and George, the singer.

I assume the author felt it personally interesting to dwell on debts that George racked up or make snide comments toward Billy Sherrill at various points in the book...plus he takes a jab at Ralph Emery and at others the author doesn't care too much about...all of this totally unnecessary in a George Jones biography. So, in my summarization of this book, you will learn a whole lot about what the author likes and hates in country music hidden within the promotional avenue of a "George Jones biography", where one could say the author uses George's name to vent his own thoughts and views.

Like the RAGGED BUT RIGHT book, this book from Bob Allen contains pictures as well. Although Dolly Carlisle's book went out of print and was never re-issued, Bob Allen's book was re-printed in paperback in 1994 and retitled THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A HONKY TONK LEGEND picking up in the mid 1980's where the first book left off and running through 1994...which means ten more years were analyzed in the 1994 re-print version.

Closing the chapter now on the books that were issued in 1984, we move on over to the music once again. In late 1984 EPIC issued a second album on George. This one was a duet album with all female country singers. LADIES CHOICE hit late in 1984 featuring nine duets and one solo recording. Unlike his previous album, EPIC issued three singles from this LADIES CHOICE. The first single arrived in late 1984, the solo "She's My Rock" which was a smash hit...claiming the runner-up spot for three weeks...unable to knock off the #1 single at the time. Afterward, in the first half of 1985, EPIC issued the duet with Brenda Lee, "Hallelujah, I Love You So", which reached the Top-20 as did the other single from the album, his duet with Lacy J Dalton called "Size Seven Round and Made of Gold". The duets were sensational in my opinion but I assume country radio programmer's were weary of duets since there was a duet craze in country music during the early 1980's and so the duet single's suffered as a result. EPIC promoted this album on the TNN show, Nashville Now, where George performed a number of duets on the show with the ladies: Terri Gibbs and Leona Williams just to name a few. The track-list for the duet album goes as follows:

1. She's My Rock
2. Hallelujah, I Love You So- with Brenda Lee
3. All I Want To Do In Life- with Janie Frickie
4. We Sure Make Good Love- with Loretta Lynn
5. Daisy Chain- with Barbara Mandrell
6. All Fall Down- with Emmylou Harris
7. Size Seven Round- with Lacy J Dalton
8. Our Love Was Ahead of It's Time- with Deborah Allen
9. Slow Burning Fire- with Terri Gibbs
10. Best Friends- with Leona Williams

This closes out the look at 1984 in the George Jones time-line.