George Jones – I Lived to Tell it All

Garth Brooks may be country music’s answer to Billy Joel, and Travis Tritt its Elton John (check out “Up Against the Wall” off his new album, The Restless Kind), but the beauty of George Jones is that, no matter what he does, he’ll never be anyone but George Jones.

A legendary singer whose recording career spans some 40 years, Jones possesses one of the most distinct and truly gorgeous voices in American popular music. He’s got a tone as rich and smooth as butter and a wealth of inflections that flutter, jump and moan like the heartbeats of the people he sings about. He can grab hold of a single vowel and pull it apart like saltwater taffy. Even when he’s singing the most spiritually debilitating material — a sad sack chained to a barstool, a man facing a loneliness of his own making — his voice never fails to light up the landscape with its purity and emotional vigor.

If you’ve been wondering what happened to the honky-tonk in today’s country, George Jones records are one place it’s been hiding. Jones may not get much radio airplay these days — even his 1980 blockbuster “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is ancient history — but he continues to crank out albums on a regular basis. And it’s encouraging that both the songs (even if none were written by George himself) and the arrangements on I Lived to Tell It All are solid and sharp. These are songs that actually mean something: They’re about real people, real emotions, and George brings the feelings to life like few in country music can.

They’re also, to some degree, about the singer himself. Right off the bat, George shows he’s not afraid of his past, singing in “Honky Tonk Song” about a man so desperate for a drink and a good country song that he drives the riding mower into town — something George himself did when then-wife Tammy Wynette took his car keys away. But as good-natured as “Honky Tonk Song” is on the outside, it’s also a frank picture of desperation. George knows it, and the sadness that seeps through the cracks sits with you long after the melody is gone.

The bulk of this album consists of drinking songs — something of a rarity these days among Nashville’s best and brightest. Speaking of the new breed, one of the album’s standouts is a terrific sendup of “young country” stars. The lyrics of “Billy B. Bad”, written by Bobby Braddock (the pen behind “She Stopped Loving Her Today”), are silly, but they bite down hard: A suburban kid who “looks cute in his cowboy suit” becomes a star and muscles up for his video, then is over the hill at age 29. (“He just tested positive for Branson,” sings George with obvious glee.)

George himself hit 65 this year. If you listen hard you can hear age creeping around the corners of his voice, but take notice, too, that he’s refused to shy away from challenging material. Branson-bound he’s not; the Possum’s pipes are a mighty machine, and a national treasure. Long may they run.