George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend
(Book). George Jones's nearly 60-year recording and performing career has had a profound influence on modern country music and influenced a younger generation of singers, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Trace Adkins. As Merle Haggard said of Jones in Rolling Stone magazine, "His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made." Jones's saga is a larger-than-life tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He was born into near poverty in a backwater patch of East Texas. His formal education ended early; by his early teens, he was singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, for tips. After beginning to record in the mid-1950s Jones became, by sheer dint of his vocal prowess, one of Nashville's most celebrated honky-tonk singers. But from the start, Jones's life, as often reflected in his music, was shaped by misdirection, chaos, turmoil, and emotional strife aggravated by a ferocious appetite for alcohol. Fame and adulation seemed to merely intensify his personal travails. Jones's story has a relatively happy ending. With the help of fourth wife Nancy during the final decade and a half of his life, he got clean and sober, was feted as a much-revered elder statesman for the music, and, by most accounts, found peace of mind at long last.
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George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend
(Book). George Jones's nearly 60-year recording and performing career has had a profound influence on modern country music and influenced a younger generation of singers, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Trace Adkins. As Merle Haggard said of Jones in Rolling Stone magazine, "His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made." Jones's saga is a larger-than-life tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He was born into near poverty in a backwater patch of East Texas. His formal education ended early; by his early teens, he was singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, for tips. After beginning to record in the mid-1950s Jones became, by sheer dint of his vocal prowess, one of Nashville's most celebrated honky-tonk singers. But from the start, Jones's life, as often reflected in his music, was shaped by misdirection, chaos, turmoil, and emotional strife aggravated by a ferocious appetite for alcohol. Fame and adulation seemed to merely intensify his personal travails. Jones's story has a relatively happy ending. With the help of fourth wife Nancy during the final decade and a half of his life, he got clean and sober, was feted as a much-revered elder statesman for the music, and, by most accounts, found peace of mind at long last.
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George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend

George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend

by Bob Allen
George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend

George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend

by Bob Allen

Paperback(Updated Edition)

$24.99 
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Overview

(Book). George Jones's nearly 60-year recording and performing career has had a profound influence on modern country music and influenced a younger generation of singers, including Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Trace Adkins. As Merle Haggard said of Jones in Rolling Stone magazine, "His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made." Jones's saga is a larger-than-life tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He was born into near poverty in a backwater patch of East Texas. His formal education ended early; by his early teens, he was singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, for tips. After beginning to record in the mid-1950s Jones became, by sheer dint of his vocal prowess, one of Nashville's most celebrated honky-tonk singers. But from the start, Jones's life, as often reflected in his music, was shaped by misdirection, chaos, turmoil, and emotional strife aggravated by a ferocious appetite for alcohol. Fame and adulation seemed to merely intensify his personal travails. Jones's story has a relatively happy ending. With the help of fourth wife Nancy during the final decade and a half of his life, he got clean and sober, was feted as a much-revered elder statesman for the music, and, by most accounts, found peace of mind at long last.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781480355828
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 02/01/2014
Edition description: Updated Edition
Pages: 368
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bob Allen (Sykesville, MD) is a former editor of Country Music Magazine. His articles, essays, and reviews on popular music have appeared over the years in Esquire, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Saturday Evening Post, and Billboard. As a writer and editor, he has also contributed to several Time-Life music publications as well as the Country Music Foundation's Encyclopedia of Country Music.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Prologue Legion 1

Chapter 1 Voices in the Thicket 11

Chapter 2 Coin of the Realm 43

Chapter 3 Houston and Nashville: Up the Lost Highway 73

Chapter 4 King of the Realm 117

Chapter 5 Tammy 151

Chapter 6 All the King's Horses and All the King's Men… 195

Chapter 7 Vertigo 249

Chapter 8 Out of the Darkness and into the Light 288

Epilogue: "The Happiest Years of My Life" 291

Postscript: Veneration 307

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