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

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 ERolling StoneE magazine His voice was like a Stradivarius violin: one of the greatest instruments ever made. THJones'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.THJones'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.