The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones

by Rich Kienzle

In the vein of the classic Johnny The Life , this groundbreaking work explores the wild life and extraordinary musical career of “the definitive country singer of the last half century” ( New York Times ), who influenced, among others, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, John Fogerty, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks. In a masterful biography laden with new revelations, veteran country music journalist/historian Rich Kienzle offers a definitive, full-bodied portrait of legendary country singer George Jones and the music that remains his legacy. Kienzle meticulously sifted through archival material, government records, recollections by colleagues and admirers, interviewing many involved in Jones’s life and career. The an evocative portrait of this enormously gifted, tragically tormented icon called “the Keith Richards of country.” Kienzle chronicles Jones’s impoverished East Texas childhood as the youngest son of a deeply religious mother and alcoholic, often-abusive father. He examines his three troubled marriages including his union with superstar Tammy Wynette and looks unsparingly at Jones’s demons. Alcohol and later cocaine nearly killed him until fourth wife Nancy helped him learn to love himself. Kienzle also details Jones’s remarkable musical journey from singing in violent Texas honky tonks to Grand Ole Opry star, hitmaker and master vocalist whose raw, emotionally powerful delivery remains the Gold Standard for country singers. The George Jones of this heartfelt biography lived hard before finding contentment until he died at eighty-one—a story filled with whiskey, women and drugs but always the saving grace of music. Illustrated with eight pages of photos.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, History

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2015

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I know where I want to go, but I always seem to end up goin' the other way. I know there's nothin' down that way. I been down there too many times."
-George Jones

I knew George Jones was cool decades before pseudo-hipster millenials with pubic hair beards, corduroys and beanies did.

Jones was a relic of the rhinestone era who beat the rockers at their own bad-boy game. He was smashing guitars, trashing hotel rooms, provoking bar fights, waywardly firing pistols, missing gigs and abusing substances with the best of 'em. But he was, as Tony Bennett later said of Amy Winehouse, sinning against his talent. He was on a path too many in music had taken, to a surely fatal destination. He was millions of dollars in debt, behind in alimony and child support to several ex-wives, under summary arrest order if he so much as stepped into Nashville's Davidson County. He was being sued or jailed left and right, for debts, for assault, for drug possession, DUI, whatever. He missed more concert dates than he honored, and the ones he did make were because his coke dealers pushed him onstage, not wanting their source of income to dry up. When his second wife took his car keys away to prevent him getting booze, he hopped onto his riding mower and chugged on down the street at a turtle's pace to the liquor store eight miles away. George always found a way to do as he pleased. Such stories were funny and legendary in Nashville, but George's receding journey into his own echo chamber was no laughing matter. Wasted on booze and coke, he had begun talking and laughing to himself, a comedy show for one, on the stage of delirium, and nobody else was chuckling at his self-directed inside jokes. He was getting away from everyone.

But, in spite of himself, the world kept giving Jones opportunities for redemption: second, third and many more chances that ordinary mortals didn't get. This is what happens when you are the greatest living country singer.

One of those chances for rebound came in 1980. Songwriters Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman had just penned a piece of utter melodramatic piffle called, "He Stopped Loving Her Today." It was maudlin, hokey and about as subtle as a black velvet painting of a little girl with oversized crying eyes.

The song might prove that George was still Nashville's most powerful, not-so-secret weapon. When "He Stopped Loving Her Today" made it into his shaky hands, the squirrelly artist, quite rightly, thought it was shit and didn't want to do it. But, his producer cajoled him and, with thoughts, perhaps, of booze and cocaine awaiting him, he got the thing over with and recorded it. Thinking nothing more of it, he swaggered his chemically laden carcass out the door into the humid Nashville air.

The song, in my opinion, was never a great one, not a patch on a haunting masterpiece like Long Black Veil, another country-folk classic of posthumous love and death. The classic recording of that was by Lefty Frizzell, who, as it happened, was one of George Jones' musical heroes and later one of his drinking buddies. Jones' style was deeply influenced by Frizzell's, particularly the affect of stretching lyrics into multi-syllables. The success of Jones' record owes much to that great record and Frizzell's style.

When "He Stopped Loving Her Today," was released in April 1980, it was a bombshell, climbing to the number-one chart position by July 1980. It was on the charts for 19 weeks and became Jones' most famous signature record. It and Jones were showered with country music awards that year. In a few years, country music aficionados would proclaim it the greatest country song of all time. But George, despite the accolades, still didn't think much of the song, or, it appeared, his own life, which he had handed over to his demons. The next morbid song, it would appear, would be about him.

Regardless of what I think of the song itself, Jones' treatment turns it into sublime art. In it, we hear why Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett admired him. Listen to the passage in the song where Jones builds to the heights on the phrase "He stopped loving her," then, turning slightly downward on the word "her" descends imperceptibly into an almost whispered, almost spoken-word enunciation of the word, "today," so final, so regretful and so solemn. The range of emotion and technical prowess, particularly in dynamic range, here are phenomenal. It's artlessly artful and effortless in a way that eludes today's glitzy smart-bomb singers.

The record had a deep hold on my family. It was one of my late father's favorite records. Near the end of his life, he fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams of having a genuine retro jukebox in his house. He bought it from a bar, fixed it up and filled it with records. One of the most played songs in his rotation was "He Stopped Loving Her Today." After he died, my mother would occasionally play the jukebox, and that song, while cleaning in the basement. Obviously, irony is not missed here, given the meaning of the lyrics and the reality of a widow playing a song loved by her deceased husband. I hated when they played that song because, no matter what I thought of the insipid lyrics, it was something of a grueling, gut-wrenching experience to go through. Three minutes that seemed like a half-hour stare into the casket at the funeral of your best friend. I would always be moved nearly to tears by Jones' conviction and relentless slow-burn way of singing it. I've always been a Hank Sr. and Johnny Cash guy, but when George Jones is playing, it's easy to agree with the experts: that he was the greatest of all male country singers.

At the point of his life in the early '80s when Jones scored this triumph, one of so many in a rich career, he was about to hit bottom before finally achieving arguably his greatest milestone: beating the oddsmakers over his surely imminent death, outliving all the predictions including the Reaper's own. Jones, many thought, wouldn't make it past 50. His life of hard scrapping and hard drinking (and, increasingly, cocaine binging) -- a lifestyle mirroring that of his short-lived hero and early musical companion, Hank Williams Sr. -- veered Jones out of control. In one year during the late '70s, Jones missed 54 concert dates. Those charged to keep an eye on him were always given the slip. Liquor and blow were his disappear-power elixir. His booze-fueled rages were well-known in Music City, and he was on course to be another show business legend snuffed young. Jones hit peak craziness in 1982, leaving a trail of mayhem across the South that included coke-fueled speeding, arrests, wrecks, bad-check writing, and a savage run-in with a reporter on camera. "No-Show Jones" -- a nickname earned from his habit of stiffing paying fans -- was often better than the Jones who did show up. That Jones put on such a bad show, often openly insulting his fans, that it almost amounted to a declaration of war; some fans in retaliation attacked his tour buses and his entourage. Some radio stations began to ban his records. The man who had had multiple mansions and properties by 1983 was living in a trailer home. It all seemed hopeless, yet Jones' career, and life, did rebound. By 1984, he had begun to smarten up. There still would be relapses and brushes with death, but the arc was upward. He cast off his demons, listened to his dedicated fourth wife, Nancy Sepulveda, survived another car wreck and got right with the Lord. He made it all the way to 81 before passing in 2013, long enough to see himself immortalized, inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and honored by the Kennedy Center Awards for life achievement.

This book, The Grand Tour..., which takes its title from a George Jones hit, is a solid and unpretentious account of Jones' rambunctious life, from childhood poverty and abuse in swampy east Texas, to the heights of fame and the depths of personal weakness. It's written fine enough in a style suiting its subject, not too bland and not too fancy -- hitting the facts without lingering too long. It's nothing scintillating but evocative enough to make one pine for that lost-time "mystery train" world of old Southern musical nights and the glamorous golden age of the Grand Ole Opry of the '50s and '60s. It's also not the most probing biography that could be written on Jones, but it's a healthy portion-sized serving that gives me just the amount I need without outstaying its welcome, unlike a lot of verbose bios these days that try to trace a famous person's roots back to the Magna Carta or some shit. Along with stories of George's many ornery and violent episodes and financial profligacy, we learn a few surprising things: one being the singer's love of interior design -- an avocation Jones said he'd have pursued if he hadn't been a musician. When in his element, on stage, Jones could kill it, even when wasted, but had an inferiority complex when in venues or with audiences outside his comfort zone: places populated by New York sophisticates, Sinatra Vegas lounge types or outlaw country hippie crowds who triggered his skittishness. Jones was still a product of the rhinestone/leisure suit generation. The book is even-handed in covering the passionate and volatile six-year marriage of Jones and female country superstar, Tammy Wynette, suggesting that both parties were variously to blame for the dysfunction.

Anyone with an abiding curiosity about the American music industry, history and the arts -- and the many other legends Jones worked with or whose careers paralleled his (Buddy Holly, Elvis, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, and more) -- will derive something of interest from it. Some of the reviewers on here complaining about its structure and organization baffle me; I found nothing confusing or offputting about it.

----
(If you've read up till now, you've pretty much finished the book review. The rest of this is mainly an impressionistic digression about my time in Nashville that may provide some additional entertainment for you if you're in the mood. It had to be done, in any case, just because I wanted to. The end dovetails back into George Jones, so it's not entirely an outlier. I may pull this bit out at some point and re-purpose it, but for now...)

George Jones' Nashville was a small place, isolated from the cultural mainstream despite its dominance of one musical genre. I remember visiting it with my parents in the '70s to see the Opryland amusement park and it was a tiny city, much smaller than my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and definitely smaller than Tennessee's largest, Memphis. Decades later, all of that has changed. Nashville has surged past those other towns in population, geographical size, skyline, economic power and cultural vitality. I saw this when I visited the city in 2013 to meet a woman. I found that I didn't care so much for the woman, but very much cared for the town; I absolutely fell madly and hopelessly in love with it. I vowed to live there, and did so in 2014 and 2015 and my short sojourn was one of the great experiences of my life. The teeming honky tonks on Broadway, like Tootsies' Orchid Lounge, are ringed by the Grand Ole Opry's Ryman Auditorium (where I paid hushed respects backstage to the ghost of Hank Sr.), the Schermerhorn symphony hall, Municipal auditorum, blues clubs in Printer's Alley, and the starving musicians grinding out tunes, hat-in-hand on the sidewalks. If you couldn't find something good to listen to in these few magical blocks, then you were truly shit out of luck. I saw the Nashville Symphony perform Bartok and Mozart yards away from clubs like The Tin Roof where I moved my body to the sounds of young hopefuls fiddling and wailing like maniacs. I randomly met Brenda Lee -- the biggest selling American female singer of the 1960s -- shopping for flowers in a retail store. That's how it is there; old and new ever present in a town with an institutional memory for those attuned to see it. I'd bike downtown across the walking bridge off the suburban Greenway and see artists such as Charlie Daniels (old) and Dustin Lynch (new) playing the outdoor festivals. With caramels from Savannah's Candy Kitchen still in our mouths, me and a date squeezed into a honky tonk through a mass of humanity to be greeted by crazy drunken teenage girls who shoved inflatable vinyl dicks into our faces. This was a different level of clubbing. I stopped at a snack stand along the main drag to buy water in the heat and found the vendor had come from my own neck of the woods; she moved there with a guy who was no longer her guy, and that's why she was still around selling corn chips. Her story was one told a thousand-fold or more in that town. We had an amazing discussion but when I came back another day to try to find her, she was gone, never to be seen again. I walked into places where Hank Sr. and George Jones had gotten into bar fights and tossed into the piss- and- beer-swill-smelling alleys out back. I chatted with soused Slovenian girls after they'd worked the Wild Horse Saloon, battled a psychotic woman who stole my cell phone (long story) and who'd shoplifted a Dollar General while my back was turned, took women on the town with varying degrees of success. Luckily, once in awhile, there was success. I took two women out on the town once; a Spanish girl and I downed beers like champs while the other girl timdly sipped at hers and we knowingly traded glances over how adorable this was. I hit bars and played pool and hoped I wouldn't wreck my elderly Toyota Corrolla coming down the yawning hill of Charlotte Avenue with the dazzling glittery dusky skyline of the city arrayed in full view ahead. I bunked a few times, when the need arose, at the Music City hostel for $18 a night, trusting my possessions to total strangers and traversing the town with people I'd met there from England, Sweden, China, France and Spain; people who told me their life stories and why they came to Music City to see what they believed to be the real America. I met people who were seeing the world, travelers who made this fabled city a must-stop on their itinerary. I met a young musician, bunking in the same hostel unit with me, working on the music for the TV series, Nashville. He strummed his guitar softly in the dim light of the sitting room, next to a blonde mathematician from Sweden, while I ate pizza out of a cardboard box from a barebones take-out joint owned by Muslim immigrants in a bohemian hood where you could share donuts at 2am at the Krispy Kreme with goth punkers who were stumbling out of the hardcore club next door. I saw the most beautiful girl I ever saw, fleetingly, on the campus at Vanderbilt University while walking to an art museum. In a city of pretty faces, it was shocking when any one in particular stood out. I randomly met and chatted with a songwriter outside the BMI building in Music Row, a kindly older black man who'd been plugging away at it for years, with no great success but no sense of bitterness. I lived in a house with an ex-cop boarder who'd been pals with Jim Varney, the actor who played Ernest P. Worrell on TV and movies, along with a starving artist who'd once walked from Florida to Tennessee, just to get away from home. I talked to a gal in a smoothie bar who wanted to leave town for somewhere less exciting. I explored the town with a young Chinese woman attending Vanderbilt who decided to casually mention to me after we'd had three dates and I'd slept over at her place that she happened to be married, her husband still back home in Chongqing. I stood atop the prominence of the capitol building and took in the sweeping vistas of lands once tramped over by great armies of the Civil War. I watched slums and vast tracts I'd walked through after getting off the bus for the first time in 2013 turn into neighborhoods of gentrifying trendy bars and glass skyscrapers in the blink of an eye by 2015. Yeah, Nashville is one surreal fucking place. For someone like me, who prefers living in the moment, it's perfect. Lots and lots of very sweet memories stuffed into a short period of time. When I had to leave it, I cried.

I still get down to Nashville for business and pleasure a couple times a year (the city has one of the nation's greatest bookstores, McKay's -- too big to peruse in one day). Regrettably, I still haven't visited the George Jones Museum (even though I've been to Johnny Cash's). When I was living there, the museum always seemed closed, or under construction. I'd like to get right with the Lord and visit it some time.

-----
--KR/EG 2019

Pardon if this digressed into a love letter to Nashville. I'll probably end up doing it again on some other review, so you've been warned.

Recommended listening:
Cold Hard Truth (1999, Asylum). Jones' last gold album, beautifully produced in up-to-date sound with traditional country backings, this blend of gut-tugging ballads and rollicking novelties is absolute fire. It demonstrates everything that was great about George Jones. There's a lifetime of experience in every syllable and phrase and his nearly 70-year-old burnished voice is in fine fettle. Here's the title track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJRZ5...

[Jeri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grew up listening to tapes and records my parents would play of George Jones music along with hearing him on the radio. I even have some of his songs in my own collection that I have played for my children.

I knew most of the colorful past of George Jones' and thought this book would uncover more of the man behind the music. All it seemed to do was brush over who he was personally and focus on his drug and alcohol addiction. I did enjoy seeing the few photos included in the book.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. As a huge traditional country music fan, I am an admirer of George Jones' music and the many singers following in his footsteps. I was very excited to read a biography about him. I thought this book had a ton of interesting information but lacked organization. It was a bit difficult to come up with an overlying theme. I think I might try Jones' autobiography and see what I can learn from the man himself.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d guess that the most common word to pop up in George Jone’s biography is some form of the word “drink”. Throughout the first 2/3 of the book, Jones is a drinking fool. So much of the story takes place with Jones in an inebriated state that you wonder what he’d be like sober. You get a glimpse of that in the end of the book, but he’s older and more settled by the time that switch happens. You get the basics you would expect in a country music biography here: family background, growing up, early career, marriages, big concerts, run ins with the law, wrecked cars, singing partners, band members, lists of songs and albums, bizarre business ideas, divorces, come-to-Jesus moments, and eventual decline. And there’s the drinkin’. I found these normal parts of the biography were well done, although some parts of his life, mostly his early years, were minimally covered. Likely, there wasn’t much material to pull from. This book also had more than average depth when discussing his deals with record companies and the backgrounds of those companies and their owners. I found these areas interesting, but a bit tangential to the biography.

In the end, I feel I know more about No-Show Jones now than when I started. But I didn’t know anything before I started. I didn’t get the depth of analysis that, for instance, Johnny Cash received in his biography by Robert Hilburn. I couldn’t help but compare the Jones in this biography to Cash in the Hilburn book and Jerry Lee Lewis in the biography by Rick Bragg. Cash and Lewis are reflective and come across as smart in many areas. Jones doesn’t seem as reflective, and he doesn’t come across as smart as much as methodically employing a talent in crooning and carousing.

[JS · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Jones was my grandpas favorite singer, so this was a must. Similar to, but not as good as, books I read about Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. The story of mid-to-late 20th century country music singers all seem to follow the path of country upbringing-military-small time jobs-breaking into country music-alcoholism-fame-drug addiction and bad behavior-late life sobriety and appreciation. So this book was nice and short. It didn’t do deep dives into his behavior or reasons why he did what he did, but it was good enough to get an understanding of one of the better old school country singers. Favorite fun fact from this book: Keith Richards was a fan of George Jones

[Susan's Sweat Smells Like Literature · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about the life of George Jones. Many of the anecdotes about his wild life were entertaining but I found his biographer's crude and haphazard, tangential writing style very distracting. I felt as if he inserted himself and his thoughts too much into Jones' story. George Jones was one of the immortals of country music. He deserves a biography with a bit more dignity, and a biographer that knows not to hog the limelight with his subject.

[Shane Longoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my greatest criticisms of fans writing biographies of artists they admire is subjectivity often trumps objective assessment. A lot of great overview of the more uncomfortable aspects of Jones’ life, but there are some even more uncomfortable truths about his life I felt Kienzle glossed over without too much critical thought. Very solid writing and history, but there was a little too much lionizing overall.

Still recommend this one, though.

[Michael Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author tries to bring the singer to readers with pop psychology to explain (justify) his bizarre behavior. This attempt doesn't work.

[JBP · Rating 3 out of 5]

George "Possum" Jones was perhaps the greatest country singer of all-time. He definitely did those heartbreak songs better than anyone--google "The Grand Tour" or "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and listen to those if you don't know his work. Every now and then, I love to listen to old-school, my heart has been ripped out and stomped on by a no-good woman, melancholy country song and when I do...Jones is always a good option. He was an amazing singer but away from the microphone? Not as amazing. Multiple marriages [one to the equally brilliant country singer Tammy Wynette], kids, decades of alcoholism, cocaine addiction, bankruptcy, crazy on-stage antics--No Show was a nickname for the amount of time Jones wouldn't show up for gigs. It's actually hard to believe he lived to be 81 years old after reading about the ways he abused himself. But, he had 50 years of hits and is firmly ensconced as one of the all-time legends.

The reason this gets 3 stars instead of 4 is that too often it is just a discography recital--Kienzle spends too much time listing every single and its chart position. More intimate stories about Jones or some of the characters he worked with or new would have worked way better than an endless recap of his songs.

[Annie Booker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you're not a George Jones fan this is a fascinating and entertaining and at times heartbreaking read.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I once went through a George Jones phase, and I recommend it. For a month or two (this was probably more than 20 years ago) I listened to his stuff every day and wondered at how much he could wrap me in the emotion of the stories of his songs. This book keeps asserting that he was regarded as the greatest country singer in the world and, if I plead ignorance of too many others to agree, it seems a defensible claim.

At his best, George Jones is one of our great artists.

I picked this book up because I wanted to get more of his story. I’m just young enough – and am far enough outside the gravitational pull of Grand Ol’ Opry legend-making – not to know the stories. I’d heard, I suppose, about the time when, his car repossessed over a drunk-driving incident, he hopped on his lawn tractor and drove several miles to town.

That, amplified, is the story that Kienzle tells. He promises it’s going to be a bigger story, but it feels ultimately as if he has annotated the difficulty the man brought on himself through his alcoholism, cocaine abuse, and refusal to appear at scheduled concerts to such a degree that he was known as “No-Show Jones.”

In other words, this is one catastrophe after another, one failed marriage after another, one period of success followed by one more time of self-induced failure.

I get that, and I understand that it may be the principal lens through which to view the artist. There are some powerful stories here, like the way he collected and handed out Nudie suits, cars, and cash, like the way he picked fights with contemporaries and mistreated his many wives.

But, as I put this one down, I find I want to know more. Kienzle suggests that Jones was shaped by the contrasting experiences of his parents – a father who beat him into singing as a child and a mother who, in her deep religious faith, sang as an expression of hope and love.

I want more, though. I want to know how to make sense of a man with a punk sensibility who made it in what we now call Red-State America.

That is, George Jones stood as an avatar to a certain kind of listener. He meant something to people during his lifetime, and he helped define a kind of performer whom Nashville and the Opry continue to give us. I’d like to know more of how he represented that experience, how his most zealous fans saw him and what they expected from him.

I exited my George Jones phase eventually. I continue to think he’s one of the greats – maybe not Johnny Cash or even Gram Parsons, but close enough, as masterful a figure from the world of country as anyone. I didn’t quite get tired of him, but I came to feel too familiar with the intense emotional response he expects in his best work – and that his vast supply of less-than-best work unintentionally mocks.

This book gives the details of his life in a sympathetic and detailed way. I just wish it had gone further and told me more of where that best work came from and how it resonated.

[Nate]

I’m a newer George Jones fan, having not grown up on country music and only seriously gotten into it in the last few years. But I agree with the consensus that he’s one of the greatest singers of all time, regardless of genre. Just an incredible voice.

This is a straightforward, no-nonsense biography of the man. It goes chronologically and paints a convincing portrait of George Jones the singer and George Jones the person. If you know about George, then it should come as no surprise that roughly two-thirds of this book features him drunk off his ass, or later, high on coke, seemingly intent on self-destruction. The constant drinking and self-sabotaging is sad to read about, but also morbidly compelling. This book makes clear that, at his core, George was a good guy, and knowing about his later sobriety, redemption, and lionization by the larger country community makes you root for him through his dark days.

Kienzle gives ample attention to Jones’ music, too. I learned a lot, and have a better sense of his timeline, place in country music history, and his supporting players.

Kienzle’s writing is fine. Some passages are lively and engaging, others are dry recounting of facts. His transitions between paragraphs/stories are sometimes nonexistent, too; a better writer could have made the book smoother. Still, this is a solidly comprehensive biography of a fascinating man whose Jekyll and Hyde personality plagued him for decades, but whose talent and influence was undeniable.

[Ted Lehmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones by Rich Kienzle (Harper/Collin/Dey Street Books, March 2016, 288 Pages, $18.77/14.99) provides an excellent overview of the life and times of George Jones, called, by the New York Times, the “definitive country singer of last half century” and known for years in the industry as “no show Jones” for his propensity to be unable to make it to the stage because of his serious problems with drugs and alcohol. It may also echo the life and times of the country music industry during the decades from the sixties through the eighties, when many, according to an interview we heard recently, the industry floated on an epidemic of drugs and alcohol. While I didn't find much of Jones' life or personality to be much endearing, many of his fans will excuse his behavior for the greatness of his mammoth catalog of hit songs which persist, being frequently covered by country music singers everywhere. I found the book and the man to be both sad and distressing.

George Glenn Jones was born in 1931 during the depths of the depression in the Big Thicket region of east Texas, a heavily wooded region lying along the southeastern edge of Texas bordering on Louisiana. This is a region where, when the turpentine and logging industry wasn't doing well, the moonshine business thrived. Jones' father, a violent alcoholic himself, was prone to responding to upsets in the world by beating his wife and children, which, according to Kienzle, lay at the base of Jones's own lifelong difficulties with drugs and alcohol. Music, however, was always a feature in his life, as his father played guitar and harmonica, while his mother was a church pianist in a Pentacostal church, leading Jones' toward his base in both country and gospel music which dominated his life.

Perhaps the most interesting element of this book, for me, lay in the insights into the recording industry, when that industry was ruled by large commercial labels, as it emerged during the fifties and sixties, from small, regional outlets recording in primitive studios music aimed at narrowly focused regional audiences, in Jones' case, of white, working class fans who heard him playing largely in honky-tonks and bars. As his success as a performer grew, he moved to Nashville, where the country music recording industry was centered, working for larger and more prestigious labels. He decried what he saw as the breakdown of traditional country music into an “urban cowboy smooth style represented by the rise of singers like Kenny Rogers and Garth Brooks, including even Dolly Parton, as she became a movie star in the eighties. As in bluegrass, the move from its rough, rural origins to suburban comfort in the U.S. Demographic profiles created fissures in the business which disturbed and angered Jones. Kienzle, prone to comments like “scared the shit out of him,” substitutes coarse language for serious analysis at times. Jones' work became the “gold standard” for a movement during the eighties which Kienzle refers to as New Traditionalism, represented by Dwight Yoakum, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, and Patty Loveless.

Meanwhile, Jones' personal life can only be described as a mess. He was married several times to women whose influence on him was negligible. His marriage and professional association to/with Tammy Wynette created great music, but never contributed to his achieving a more adult lifestyle. He bought and sold large tracts of land with the idea of developing music parks, which never quite panned out. Jones was prone to buying and either giving away or wrecking cars and yachts, never learning to live in a responsible way or manage money. He was frequently sued and usually lost. His last wife, Nancy Sepulvado, seems to have helped him, with the help of several admittances to rehabilitation institutes and hospitalizations, to forego drugs and learn better to manage his drinking. Often plagued with ill health, Jones still managed to live into his 81st year, dying in 2013. He is remembered and celebrated as one of the all-time greats of country music history. Songs like He Stopped Loving Her Today and The Grand Tour have become staples of country music and bluegrass.

Veteran country music critic, journalist, and historian Rich Kienzle is the author of Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz and Great Guitarists: The Most Influential Players in Blues, Country Music, Jazz and Rock. A contributing editor and columnist at Country Music magazine for nearly twenty-five years, he also edited their history publication The Journal. He was formerly a contributing editor at No Depression and Guitar World and is now a regular contributor to Vintage Guitar Magazine. His work has appeared in Fretboard Journal, Guitar Player, Request, The Journal of Country Music, and the Austin American-Statesman. The author of liner notes for almost four hundred reissue albums, Kienzle is among the few country journalists profiled in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. He received the International Country Music Conference’s Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism in 2012. (from Harper Collins author biography)

The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones by Rich Kienzle (Dey Street Books division of Harper/Collins, March 2016, 288 Pages, $18.77/14.99) is a reasonably thorough account of George Jones' life which makes no effort to paper over his personal demons and deep flaws. Who can tell whether those flaws contributed to the depth and emotional impact of his singing or fatally damaged his output and his life. Certainly, his record as a husband and father were evident to everyone who knew anything about him. Nevertheless, George Jones' reputation as an icon in country music only continues to grow. I read the book as an electronic galley provided to me by the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app. If you decide to order this book, please consider using the Amazon portal on my blog at www.tedlehmann.blogspot.com

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to see George Jones perform before he passed. He was not in good voice, telling the audience he had a cold, but I didn't much care about that. I just smiled the whole time, knowing I was experiencing something really special.

I've never really learned how to mentally handle artists who are part angel and part demon. But I wanted to find out about this man in more detail, so I picked up this biography to lay things out for me. Kienzle does a serviceable job - this isn't an exhaustive work, it's not in any way intimate or filled with interesting insights. It's the basics, and in that, it does its task adequately. Jones is such a complicated man, a dark character in many ways (at times, jealous, surly, belligerent, abusive, violent, and chronically irresponsible), and beneath the accolades Kienzle lauds him with, there is a trail of hurt and mistreated people who get little attention in the story. We hear nothing, for example, from Jones's children. I imagine that's a different book to be written.

[Lance Cahill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty uneven book. The book read as an extended book project that plodded along paragraph to paragraph with loosely connected anecdotes whose commonality related to the time period that it happened. Moreover, anecdotes relates through interviews didn’t meet scrutiny of other corroborating evidence except in handful of cases, so veracity of many of these seemed wanting. As the result of this, I did find myself skimming some paragraphs.

The book does cover to the extent that Jones’ substance abuse impacted his life to such a negative extent and how close to the edge Jones was many times - something I wasn’t deeply aware of previously. But the how and why of recovery is left to guess work - probably due to the lack of access the author seemed to have been given as evidenced by the interview list in the back of the book.

Was expecting something a bit more rigorous from a William Morrow imprint.

[Nate Woodard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinatra once called George Jones “the second best singer” in the world. Johnny Cash called him his favorite singer. Waylon Jennings said every country singer wished he could sing like him. And when he died, Keith Richards said “I cannot express the emptiness I feel . . . He possessed the most touching voice, the most expressive ways of projecting that beautiful instrument of anyone I can call to mind. You heard his heart in every note he sang.”

Jones’ life was the stuff of country legend and the embodiment of honky-tonk folklore. Poverty and wealth, accolades and arrests — all high highs and low lows just like his inimitable voice.

It’s that drama and detail that make this book a fun read. Not the best or worst written biography I’ve ever read, but a solid telling of a truly wild life story.

[Mike Balsom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent five years as a country music DJ at a radio station in Welland, Ontario, Canada. That was the late 80s/early 90s, when I began to understand the importance of the Possum. His popularity at the time was almost overwhelming. It was also a time when Nashville traditions were being subverted and George Jones and others were standing up for 'traditionalism'.

Kienzle's book is a good introduction to the heavy drinking, chain smoking, carousing legend, following as it does a logical chronology of the man's life. But that's also where this bio disappoints, as sometimes Kienzle sticks a little too close to the timeline, at the expense of allowing us to see a little more of the man behind the voice.

Worth the read for anyone who is interested in real country music and the legends who made it what it was, and is.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5. There’s a lot to like about this biography, mostly that it focuses intensely on George Jones’s music, much more so than his scandals and sins. But a few key omissions of certain stories regarding Jones’s worst moments—as well as an apparent willingness to believe a few questionable official accounts of certain events—prevent the reader from gaining a full grasp of the man.

That said, it is well worth reading for any fan of country music, especially those who have not yet gotten into Jones for whatever reason. Or for country agnostics who want to learn about a man who is probably the best entry point into the music you could possibly have. (Not to mention the greatest country singer ever.)

[Flyss Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting if slightly shallow biography of George Jones widely regarded as the greatest country singer of all time, his most famous song, he stopped loving her today always seems to pop up on those lists of sad songs, it’s one of my favourites but I must say I was a bit saddened to find out he didn’t care for the song. The biography nicely expanded on my knowledge of the singer for example I knew some of the details of his life but not quite how far of the deep end he went with alcohol and cocaine. Such a sad waste of talent.

[Sam Motes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of the man behind the Country Music that lead the life that gave birth to those tragic songs. Many wives, boos and drugs flowed through his life and though unreliable enough at times to be known as No Show Jones his talent and realness drove a loyal following who loved the man no matter what. He was truly a giant of Country Music whose influence flows strong today in Country Music and beyond.

[Colton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always enjoyed George's music, so I wanted to deep dive into his story and learn more about the harder, more salacious bits behind his nastier, meaner, "No Show Jones" persona off-stage. The book never goes into, but does explain some aspects of the man's life that would explain his self-destructive tendencies. It's not super in-depth, nor is it quite as entertaining or thought-provoking as I'd have hoped it to be. It was fine, nonetheless.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, well written, easy to ready biography of a country legend. Worth a read if you are a fan of George Jones or country music in general; there is nothing earth shattering or any exclusive information in this book, but it is a clearly presented document showcasing the highs (and many lows) of the ol' Possum's life in a clear & concise manner.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good-but-not-great biography of the legendary Jones, long on accounts of his foibles and missteps, but also giving considerable coverage to his music, which is the most important thing. A very workmanlike book, but it feels a little short on soul. Could have used a Rick Bragg-ish touch, maybe. Worth reading for fans.

[Clint Bungles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always love a good music (auto)biography. Didn't know much about the man outside of the "No Show" Jones moniker and a few tales during his wild days. This book provides great detail on the Possum's recording career and also offered info on contemporaries like Merle, Willie, and Waylon that I enjoyed. Fun read.

[Bonnie Thrasher · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess if all you really want to know about the life of George Jones is that he was a blubbering addict, you would find merit with this book. I have to think there was more depth to his character than was portrayed in this biography.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love George Jones: drunk, coked-out, mean, friend-shooting, wife-beating, self-destructive, drive his mower to the liquor store, no-show Jones. There will (shouldn’t) ever be another like him. I will always think of my dad (a teetotaler) when I hear him.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a OK biography. We really did not need to know when he recorded every song, who was present at every recording, every concert, etc. The book would have been 100 pages less without all that info about people no one ever heard of anyways.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining! This is a good overview of George Jones' life & career. Not as detailed as some music biographies I've read, but it does a good job of hitting the critical events. (After all, recounting in detail *every* performance George missed would require an entire bookshelf!)

[Paul F · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent insight into the greatest singer of all time’s(imo) troubled life. Lots of behind the scenes stories a out recording albums, his out of control drug and alcohol use and his violent behaviour. I had no idea! An excellent read.

[Jeff too Much · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice biography of Jones. Especially the early years going up to Pappy and Starday. Thinking the factual reporting works well with the early days, but as Jones devolves into substance abuse and mental issues, and his eventual recovery (?), thinking there is more of an emotional story to be told.