George Jones – Hits I Missed…And One I Didn’t

In the tradition of his 1962 album Sings The Hits Of His Country Cousins, this disc finds George Jones tackling a dozen favorites made famous by others. He didn’t really “miss” all these hits — “Here In The Real World” and “On The Other Hand” weren’t pitched to him first in the first place — but no matter. “Funny How Time Slips Away”, “Detroit City”, “Today I Started Loving You Again” — everything is taken at midtempo, which gives Jones (now 74 and unlikely to regain the voice he had prior to his 1999 coma) all the room he needs to breathe between phrases. It also allows for unspeakably gorgeous solos by a couple of old comrades-in-arms, pedal steel man Lloyd Green and pianist Pig Robbins. The one he didn’t miss, of course, is “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. Jones has been singing it so long now, he says in the notes, he thinks he finally knows how to sing it. Which sounds like sacrilege, until you hear him quiver and caress the line, “Kept some letters by his bed, dated nineteen and sixty-two.”