In 1962, after "She Thinks I Still Care" spent a month and a half atop the charts, people were beginning to realize just how important a singer he was going to be. Jones...
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Bob Wills' songbook -- which, of course, includes tunes popularized, not written, by Wills -- is one of the most resilient in country music, ranking alongside Hank Williams...
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Jones had tried his hand at the tunes of his favorite songwriter before, but here he's had a few years to find nuances of heartbreak in both familiar tunes like "You ...
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George Jones' second tribute to Hank Williams in a matter of years, My Favorites of Hank Williams was originally released on United Artists in the early '60s. None of the...
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Jones has recorded many albums of duets, but this is the best where he's got multiple partners. Maybe it's because Jones was legitimately excited about the sessions, ...
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The concept behind The Bradley Barn Sessions was an intriguing one: Place George Jones in the hands of traditionalist country producer Brian Ahern, record at Owen Bradley's...
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If any artist cried out for a cross-licensed, multi-label retrospective, it was George Jones. When Epic/Legacy released the double-disc The Essential George Jones: The...
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Greatest Country Hits is a budget-line, 11 track CD covering Jones' biggest hits for United Artists, all presented in their original recordings. While this collection does a...
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You'd think George Jones Sings Like The Dickens would be full of novelties, since Dickens's biggest hits were songs like "Take An Old Cold 'Tater (And Wait)" and "May ...
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Given George Jones' love for novelty songs, it isn't surprising that he recorded a tribute album to the king of country novelties, Little Jimmy Dickens. What is surprising...
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Aficionados of United Artists-period Jones will recognize many of these songs, since Jones released them on other albums in 1962 (two of them appear on Homecoming In...
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A compilation of various performances George Jones recorded at United Artists, including album tracks, singles, and new performances, Sings the Hits of His Country Cousins...
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Jones's first album of religious music draws more on Southern gospel than the spare honky tonk of his other recordings from the early '60s, but it never quite makes it to...
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Boasting a more lavish production than his secular albums, Homecoming in Heaven is George Jones' second collection of gospel songs. The majority of the songs on the album...
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1962 was a big year for Jones, with a tribute album to Bob Wills, a gospel album and a collection of favorite hits by other artists. They all capitalized on this album,...
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The New Favorites of George Jones, the Possum's first album for United Artists, is a mixed bag that is highly indicative of the crossroads country music faced in the early...
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Jones and Wynette didn't lose the magic despite a divorce and 15 years of not singing together (though the two Greatest Hits packages on Epic are still the ...
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This low-budget package contains eight of the duets that two of the most melodramatic singers made together as George & Gene during the mid-'60s. The recordings, which...
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When George Jones left United Artists to join Musicor in 1965, it was decided to start off with a duet recording session with teen idol (and labelmate) Gene Pitney. The...
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Recorded just as George Jones was beginning his remarkable early-'80s comeback, the George and Tammy reunion album Together Again doesn't have the spark of some of their...
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Run-of-the-mill Billy Sherrill production from the late '70s, including an ill-advised attempt at country disco ("I Ain't Got No Business Doin' Business Today"). Only...
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Recorded at the height of the rock & roll establishment's infatuation with George Jones in the late '70s, Bartender's Blues is one of the most misdirected albums in his...
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She Thinks I Still Care: The George Jones Collection (The United Artists Years) is a comprehensive double-disc retrospective of Jones' four years with UA, featuring 40...
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Sony repackaged and re-released three good, but not great, collections of George Jones' Epic recordings -- Super Hits, Super Hits, Vol. 2, and George and Tammy Super Hits --...
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Together Apart is constructed as a loose concept collection about George Jones and Tammy Wynette's infamous romance, featuring songs they recorded both together and solo...
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The couple that made "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" a household phrase cut this classic collection of broken-home ballads in the mid-'70s, just when their own marriage was falling apart....
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It sure don't, especially when, unlike his last few albums, Jones gets material that lives up to his living-legend status. Fortunately, Bobby Braddock, author of Jones's...
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The title track to It Don't Get Any Better Than This has George lamenting contemporary country and celebrating classic country with a bunch of pals -- Merle, Waylon, Willie,...
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16 Biggest Hits covers much of the same ground as the sublime Anniversary -- not quite as well, but it's still pretty great nonetheless, simply because the source material...
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In 1991, Jones left Epic and producer Billy Sherrill for MCA and a series of producers. Kyle Lehning, who worked with Randy Travis and Dan Seals, produced this album. It...
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George Jones ended a long association with Epic and producer Billy Sherrill in 1990 when he jumped ship to MCA and Kyle Lehning. His MCA debut wasn't a masterpiece, but it...
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Released in 1982 to commemorate a decade at Epic Records, Anniversary is a double LP (later reissued as a single CD) spanning 22 tracks and containing all of George Jones'...
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An accurate portrayal of a Jones concert circa 1985, meaning that Jones doesn't actually take over as the primary singer until the fourth cut, there's a lot of corny ...
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Epic's 1977 album All-Time Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 boasts a misleading title and concept of epic proportions. Yes, almost all of these ten songs are big hits and these...
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Not to be confused with the similarly titled Epic album, Me and the First Lady, this is a TV-offer-only collection of George and Tammy's duets. ~ Chris Woodstra, All Music...
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On the back cover of Koch's two-fer reissue of A Picture of Me (Without You)/Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half as Bad as Losing You), George Jones is quoted as saying: "I am so...
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All-Time Greatest Hits is culled from George Jones' United Artists recordings. During these years, he had two of his definitive hits -- "She Thinks I Still Care" and "The...
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Several of his country-chart hits from the Musicor years are included, with a re-recording of "White Lightning" and, inexplicably, an instrumental version of "Race Is On." ~...
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Only two hits here, but what hits they are-- "The Grand Tour," an undisputed Jones classic, plus Johnny Paycheck's "Once You've Had The Best." The filler is pretty...
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1974 was a hell of a year for George Jones creatively, with one of his finest Epic records, The Grand Tour, being issued that year. Jones' partnership with producer Billy...
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Based on the track listing, it would seem that White Lightning, which boasts 14 tracks mainly from now woefully scarce Musicor years, would be an essential collection....
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Jones splits this album evenly between songs of loneliness and despair and declarations of unending love. He's better at despair, but with songs like "Hell Stays Open ...
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One album in an entire series of greatest-hits releases for CBS artists, this package documents the very best singles by George Jones and Tammy Wynette, an act that was once...
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Released in 1977, a few years after they divorced but while they were still occasionally touring and recording together, Greatest Hits contains the ten biggest hits George...
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14 Greats is a budget-priced collection that features only one hit -- a re-recorded "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Your Memory Will)" -- that opens up a collection of poorly...
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Jones' Musicor recordings have been criminally mistreated through the years with a flood of rip-off collections filled with muddy re-recordings. The budget-priced 20...
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By and large, Friends In High Places is the least interesting of Jones's duet albums, and the one that sticks to country partners. However, it does have a duet with...
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This album features duets with some of country's biggest stars, including Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, Vern Gosdin, Randy Travis, Charlie Daniels, Ricky Van Shelton, and...
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20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of George Jones draws upon Jones' legendary honky tonk recordings for Mercury during the mid- to late '50s and...
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There are so many compilations cluttering George Jones' catalog that it's hard to tell which ones are worthwhile and which ones aren't. A rule of thumb is, budget-line...
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With scant material between the two, both this Ace compilation of Jones' early material and Mercury's two-disc Cup of Loneliness collection should thrill fans in search of...
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Hollywood's shoddy packaging of George Jones are notorious but Golden Hits is one of the company's better efforts. The quality of the recordings is fairly good, though a...
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George Jones & Tammy Wynette's Super Hits contains the bulk of the duo's biggest hits, including "The Ceremony," "We're Gonna Hold On," "Golden Ring," "Southern California,"...
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Greatest Hits is hardly an accurate term -- "You Comb Her Hair" was the biggest hit here -- but Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 is an interesting hodgepodge of nine tracks of...
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A Billy Sherrill-produced religious album might be greeted with suspicion, but he and Jones make this one work by eschewing the gospel standards in favor of songs by Tom...
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The title track was this album's only hit, though it also contained "Never Bit A Bullet Like This," a duet with Sammy Kershaw, and "Hello Darlin'," Jones's send-off to ...
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George Jones' third MCA album is a 10-track, pure country outing. Despite the digital sound and short running time (less than 32 minutes), it is produced in classic...
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As could be expected, Honky Tonkin' includes a few hits ("Who Shot Sam," "If I Don't Love You," the title track), but the surprise comes later in the collection, with...
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"He Stopped Loving Her Today," an unparalleled tale of devotion, could carry an album all by itself, but fortunately it doesn't have to. I Am What I Am not only has ...
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I Am What I Am announced that George Jones had officially returned to form artistically and, in the process, it became his biggest hit album ever. It's easy to see why --...
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Conceptually linked to My Special Guests, Ladies Choice is a collection of duets with country music's biggest female stars of the time including, Janie Fricke, Barbara...
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This album's highlight is the pairing with Elvis Costello on Costello's "Stranger In The House," but it also contains duets with Waylon Jennings, James Taylor, Emmylou...
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George Jones duets with some expected country contemporaries (Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck), some outlaws (Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson), and, most interestingly, some...
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One Woman Man 2/28/1989, Yahoo! Music, Brian Mansfield
Jones puts his stamp on some great old songs, including "I'm A One Woman Man" (which uses his bass range to great effect) and "Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms."...
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One of Jones's best Epic albums, it succeeds despite two previously released songs being tagged on to fill it out. One of those is "Radio Lover," a bizarre cheating tale....
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The premise here is hard to deny--"the greatest country singer meets its greatest songwriter," as Elvis Costello says in the liner notes of the reissue. But these...
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George Jones Salutes Hank Williams was recorded at Mercury Records, toward the beginning of Jones' career. At this stage, George still sounded similar to Hank Williams, but...
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One continually waits for an edge to develop or some sense of intense commitment to break through the surface of the smooth, professional '80s productions of this country...
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One of many songbook albums that George Jones recorded while at Musicor Records, The Great Songs of Leon Payne is one of the finest minor gems in the Possum's catalog....
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Recorded at the peak of his popularity, this album is sometimes restrained, and sometimes finds Jones at his uncontrollable best. Though predominantly honky tonk ballads,...
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The title track is one of Jones's great honky- tonkers, and though this album relies heavily on ballads, Jones kicks it up on the album's two other highlights--the single...
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The title track to The Race Is On is one of George Jones' biggest hits. With its galloping beat and clever, funny lyrics, the single gives the impression that the rest of...
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Rhino's 1991 collection The Best of George Jones (1955-1967) covers his recordings for Starday, Mercury, United Artists, and Musicor -- in other words, it's the Pappy Daily...
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Walls Can Fall 10/27/1992, Yahoo! Music, Brian Mansfield
On "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair," Jones declares his determination not to pass quietly into the realm of the washed-up country singer. On the rest of the album, he ...
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"Wrong's What I Do Best," Jones sings in one song from Walls Can Fall, and listening to the album you almost believe he's telling the truth. Jones makes the same albums he's...
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CDs from Drive Archives always sound like they were mastered in an empty rain barrel, and this is one of the worst. Songs like "A Good Year For The Roses," "Window Up...
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An EP culled from this album would be brilliant, and fans of Jones might want to put up with the mediocre cuts here just to enjoy some of the finer moments of the man's '80s...
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This album coincided with Jones's autobiography of the same name, so many of the songs play off Jones's own life, most notably "Honky Tonk Song," in which Jones is ...
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A companion piece to his best-selling autobiography of the same name, I Lived to Tell It All is a surprising return to form by George Jones. Where The Bradley Barn Sessions...
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Touted as George Jones' return to hardcore country, Cold Hard Truth -- the Possum's first record for the revitalized Asylum Records -- certainly does achieve that goal....
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George Jones moved to MCA Records in 1990, beginning the decade with the promising And Along Came Jones. As it turns out, a new label and a new band of collaborators and...
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So paired because they appear to be reminiscences and elegies to George Jones' legendary failed marriage to Tammy Wynette, this two-fer of The Battle and Memories of Us...
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16 Biggest Hits provides an excellent summary of George Jones and Tammy Wynette's duets for Epic between 1971 and 1980. All of their best-known songs -- "The Ceremony,"...
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Arriving a mere five months after George Jones' much-hyped Asylum debut, Cold Hard Truth -- a record that was touted as his return to hardcore country -- Live With the...
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There have been very few live recordings of George Jones, particularly of his early years, which makes Live at Dance Town USA so valuable. Recorded in June of 1965, the...
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One album with Asylum was enough for "the Possum," and even if The Cold Hard Truth's mastermind Keth Stegall has been retained for a couple of cuts on The Rock: Stone Cold...
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In 2003, could there be anything more desirable in country music than George Jones reunited with "retired" producer Billy Sherrill? Hardly. Some will complain that the pair...
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One of the more bittersweet entries in the Love Songs series, this collection of George Jones ballads features some of his essential songs, including "Loving You Could Never...
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20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of George Jones collects a dozen tracks from Jones' '90s albums for MCA, including "I Don't Need Your Rocking...
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Oh yeah, this is it. Just in time for Valentine's Day 2004, Legacy kicks loose this compilation of love songs by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. And though it only contains...
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There have been many George Jones collections over the years, and many of them have concentrated on his early recordings for Mercury (often including some Starday sides,...
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This is a budget comp of George Jones during his United Artists years, and is about one-third the size of the more expensive double CD issued by Razor & Tie. Still, the...
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Of all the George Jones recordings out there (and there are many), no single volume better charts his development as a singer and performer than this one. Loaded with 16...
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