George Jones – A Picture Of Me (Without You) / Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half As Bad As Losing You)

You aren’t ever going to catch me complaining when Koch reissues old George Jones albums, but, in a couple of ways, it does seem an odd decision to package these two particular early-’70s LPs, Jones’ second and third with Epic producer Billy Sherrill, on a single disc. For one thing, this pairing skips over Jones’ superb, self-titled Epic debut, and for another, A Picture Of Me and Nothing Ever Hurt Me are quite different recordings, both in sound and theme.

“Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half As Bad As Losing You)”, the hilarious opening title track to the 1973 album — wherein ol’ George suffers a toothache, loses a toe, and has his “pelvis ruptured by an angry kangaroo”, among other indignities — is a racing, rousing, nearly rocking number, and its breathless pace and playful tone are repeated agreeably on “You’re Looking At A Happy Man”.

From “White Lightning” in the ’50s to a ’90s hit such as “I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair”, Jones has always excelled at these sorts of novelties, and Sherrill’s interest in rock-and-soul-influenced rhythm tracks really kicks these uptempo numbers into overdrive. On the other hand, Sherrill’s delicate and earnest arrangement for “My Loving Wife”, a tongue-in-cheek song that plays on the sexist stereotype of the car-wrecking, clothes-buying, phone-gossiping woman, seems like a particularly bad choice all around.

Joke songs aside, however, Jones is a legend because he can sing a ballad as well as anyone who has ever stood in front a microphone, and the best examples here — a moving, sweet reading of Lefty Frizzell’s “Mom And Dad’s Waltz”, the beat-down “Wine (You’ve Used Me Long Enough)”, and the top-ten hit single “What My Woman Can’t Do” — show Jones at the top of his game. Too bad these songs don’t seem to have anything to do with one another.

Far more focused, as well as generally including superior songs, 1972’s A Picture Of Me (Without You) is the better album — in fact, it’s one of the finest albums of Jones’ storied career. All but a couple of the 11 ballads here have Jones singing about gratitude, about how deeply thankful he is to the woman who loves him right out of his mind, who has helped him grow into a man actually worth loving, who appears as if she must be a gift from God, and his voice trembles tenderly as he pays his respects to dear friends and old lovers now gone. Every song here is a keeper.

And the top-ten title track is as good as country music has ever been. The song’s nothing fancy, just a list of how the singer says he looks, or how he would look, without his lover. Can you imagine a sky with no blue and a river with no water, he sings, a world and even a heaven with no music? But when a straining-to-remain-dignified Jones delivers his understated yet pained reading of the ballad within the confines of Sherrill’s exquisite arrangement — tinkling piano and dramatically employed bass accents giving way to strings that swell with emotion like the singer’s own heart — this list becomes transformed into a hymn of intense gratitude for the woman he loves, for how she has made him whole. Is she standing by his side, her own heart swelling, as he explains how lucky she has made him? Or is he desperately trying to dry her tears and persuade her to stay at his side? Is she already out of the picture? I don’t know (though the album’s cracked-glass cover suggests it’s the latter), but it hardly matters. When music is this powerful, all we can do is be grateful it has finally been reissued.