The Grand Tour

The Life and Music of George Jones

Rich Kienzle

• Publisher: Dey Street Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780062309921
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062309938
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

In the vein of the classic Johnny Cash: 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 result: 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.

CHAPTER 1

1931–1953

It’s a story that persists today: the Ghost Light of Bragg Road, built on an old railroad line in the Big Thicket near Saratoga, Texas. No one seems sure if it’s swamp gas, car headlights, a dead railroad worker’s ghost carrying a light, or what, but Bragg Road to this day has the nickname “Ghost Road.”

The legend is understandable. The Thicket, in southeast Texas, was a huge and forbidding region of piney woods, bayous, swamps, and backwoods, more like Louisiana than the Texas prairie. It stood out against the largely flat and arid background of the Lone Star State. Remote and untamed, it dominated five rural counties at its largest and covered between two and three million acres. The Brazos River bordered it on the west, the Sabine River on the east. The town of Nacogdoches marked the northern border. It once ran south until not far from the Gulf Coast.

Nature, not man, held the cards. Dense woods and wild creatures within the Thicket made it a sort of terrestrial black hole, a place that explorers and even Native Americans largely avoided due to the potential for entering and never exiting. The area has seven types of hickory trees, according to a Department of the Interior survey, not to mention multiple types of oak and cypress. A similar diversity applies to the vines and shrubs there. At one time, the Thicket had junglelike wildlife in its midst: coyotes, wolves, bears, ocelots along with bobcats and foxes. Alligators, turtles, snakes—some of them lethal—and lizards were abundant.

Inevitably, civilization intruded. Nineteenth-century outlaws on the lam from some other part of the country began settling there in part because of the isolation. Confederate deserters arrived during the Civil War. They faced a difficult life in the Thicket, which wasn’t the optimal place to plant crops and was highly vulnerable to flooding. Settlers had to be resourceful just to stay alive. When lumber companies saw vast, seemingly endless acres to be harvested in the 1880s, the region began attracting workers willing to cut down the trees.

The Thicket developed its own unwritten code, where laws mattered less than a rugged libertarianism. People left others alone unless their space or rights were being violated. For those who got in someone else’s way, the resolution was often swift and violent. Husbands were expected to provide for their families, wives were to handle domestic chores and accept whatever the husband dished out. Breadwinners who did not provide adequately were considered unsavory. Racism and violence against minorities were part of everyday life, one reason many African Americans and Latinos avoided the area. Just as violence, domestic and otherwise, was common, drinking was part of the austere lifestyle, the booze largely homemade. Gunplay, not surprisingly, was also part of everyday life, whether aimed at a bear or at somebody who provoked a fight or stole something from someone else. The region became a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism delivered in primitive, ramshackle churches matching equally primitive, ramshackle houses built of logs and wood.

J.F. Cotton, who settled in one area of the Thicket, discovered a mineral spring there before the Civil War and later found oil beneath the ground. He did little with it at the time, but in the 1880s, businessmen began promoting the springs to attract people seeking their therapeutic value. A hotel was constructed there and the growing community dubbed Saratoga, named for upstate New York’s Saratoga Springs. The government opened a Saratoga post office in 1884. After Spindletop, the first major oil field in Texas, was discovered south of the Thicket, in Beaumont, in 1901, the region became open to exploration, including the Thicket itself and the area around Saratoga. Other settlements grew, including Kountze, Thicket, and Sour Lake. The oil fields did in the springs, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad ran a branch into Saratoga to service the lumber and oil activities.

The town was laid out with three sections reflecting the community’s phases of growth. Old Town was adjacent to the site of the springs; New Saratoga adjoined the oil fields that came next. Depot Town sat near the railroad station. By the time of the Depression, however, the oil fields were largely tapped out and the lumber industry had drastically diminished the Thicket. A 1936 survey found it covered no more than a million acres. Conservationists viewed it as a laboratory for biodiversity worth preserving before it disappeared, an effort that increased after World War II. To protect what remained, President Gerald Ford signed legislation creating the Big Thicket National Preserve, administered by the National Park Service, in 1974.

George Washington Jones had Alabama roots. His ancestors had left there for Texas in the first half of the nineteenth century. Frank Jones, his grandfather, had been a Confederate officer whose son, David Raleigh Jones, born in Nacogdoches in 1872, married Mississippi native Mary Elizabeth Farris, a tough, volatile woman who enjoyed a drink or two and whose family had a reputation for hard living. The couple had separated by the time of George Washington Jones’s birth in Lufkin, Texas, on January 10, 1895. Living with his mother and her family, he grew into a tall, strong man who enjoyed the bottle, played the harmonica, and danced, but also possessed a powerful work ethic that never left him.

Clara Patterson’s ancestors also hailed from out of state. Her mother, Martha, was born in Mississippi before her family moved west and settled in the Thicket. Her Florida-born father, Jepton Littleton Patterson, known as Uncle Litt, was a deeply religious farmer. He not only imparted his fundamentalist spirituality to his fourteen children—twelve daughters and two sons—he also constructed a church on his property. Clara, the couple’s seventh child, was born in Nona, Texas, on March 10, 1896. Her love of family and religion were seamless. As she matured, she became a fine singer and formidable organist, the last young woman one would think would fall for someone like George Washington Jones.

When they met in the tiny settlement of Thicket, Texas, northwest of Saratoga, each found much to like about the other, leading to a move totally out of character for Clara. The couple secretly married on August 14, 1915. Clara’s father, well aware that his new son-in-law was part of the rowdy Farris clan, was not happy. The couple settled in the Thicket, moving from rented house to rented house through the region over the next twenty-five years. They both realized mere survival required backbreaking labor in the thick, hot, piney woods and taking whatever work could be found.

The census of 1920 revealed George Washington Jones, twenty-four, and Clara Patterson Jones, twenty-three, renting a home in Hardin County, in the middle of the Thicket. They had one child, Ethel, born in 1918. George’s listed occupation was “teamster,” connected to the local logging industry. The couple and their expanding family scraped out a living through sheer determination. George did whatever he could to provide for the family, delivering and selling ice and whatever else brought in money. When the oil fields tapped out, his specialty became carving and shaping the wooden slats, or staves, that make up barrels. He didn’t come about the lumber honestly, raiding the nearby forests for the right wood. They grew their own food, and Clara’s frontier-era approach made use of everything she had available. When a hog was butchered, she combined the fat with lye to make soap for a family that was growing fast.

Herman, their first son, was born in 1921, followed by Helen in 1922 and two consecutive sets of twin daughters, Joyce and Loyce in 1925 and, in 1928, Doris and Ruth. Dr. Alfred William Roark, who had an office in back of a local drugstore in the area, was one of the few physicians around. He often used a bicycle to maneuver through the backwoods. Delivering babies was common for Roark, who’d delivered Ethel and knew the Jones family well. When he required help in emergencies, he often summoned George Washington Jones, who developed a skill for tending to wounds and setting broken bones that made him a sort of primitive EMT or physician’s assistant.

Ethel, the firstborn, was special to her father, who doted on her within the couple’s limited means. When she became ill in 1926, George and Clara tried to take care of her. A hospital might have helped, but the money wasn’t there, and George’s Thicketeer nature led him to refuse any charity. Dr. Roark did what he could, but it wasn’t enough. Ethel died February 28, 1926. Her shattered parents buried her at Felps Cemetery, northwest of Saratoga. Clara’s deep religious faith helped her cope with the overwhelming grief, but for George Washington Jones, the loss of his first and favorite child forever changed him. He could dull the pain by plunging into the hard work required to support his family. When work ended, after the next week’s groceries were purchased, he began to anesthetize the pain with regular drinking binges that led to alarming personality changes. He became boisterous, belligerent, and even verbally or physically abusive.

The 1930 census showed thirty-five-year-old George and thirty-three-year-old Clara residing in a house near Saratoga with an estimated value of $150. While the census taker mistakenly listed his trade as “stove maker,” the form correctly categorized the job as part of the “timber” industry, whose trees he was poaching for the wood. The children were Herman, Helen, “Jocee” (Joyce), “Lous” (Loyce), “Doriss” (Doris), and Ruth. Clara’s occupation was “housewife.” In early 1931, she was again pregnant. Dr. Roark was present to deliver the eighth and final Jones child on September 12, 1931. George W took the kids to a nearby home while Dr. Roark saw to Clara and delivered her twelve-pound son, heavy enough that the physician accidentally dropped him, breaking his arm. Telling the kids they had a new baby brother, George Washington Jones brought his brood home to find the infant’s fracture had already been set. The couple named him George Glenn Jones, but to the family, and everyone else in the vicinity, he was Glenn, a name that stuck to him into adulthood. Clara rarely called him anything else.

She doted on her youngest son, as did his sisters. On Sundays she took them to nearby church meetings. Clara noticed he seemed responsive to music, sometimes hymns, or the old folk tune “Billy Boy,” which she often sang to him at home. He eventually began trying to sing himself, and his uncanny ability to remember a melody and even sing it back impressed many. Clara kept him constantly by her side, as if something catastrophic might happen. But she couldn’t always keep her eyes on him. Sometimes the baby, who had little use for clothes, would run buck naked to neighbors, grinning all the way. As he entered his toddler phase, more folks noticed Glenn’s clear, strong voice in church, a source of pride to Clara, Herman, and the girls. Music became a respite from hard work, and when George Washington Jones was in a good humor, he sometimes pulled out his harmonica and played as Clara happily led their children in singing hymns. Later, when the family acquired a wind-up record player, Glenn found joy in the primitive mountain songs of the Carter Family.

Within a year of Glenn’s birth, the family relocated to a house in the Depot Town area. Like others in the Thicket, they existed much like nineteenth-century pioneers. The family often lived on gravy and bread and whatever vegetables were available. They took baths in washtubs. When Dr. Roark wasn’t needed, Clara treated common ailments with home remedies. Toys had a different connotation around the Thicket than they did in more affluent areas. On Christmas, any playthings the Jones children received were tiny and few. When Glenn was old enough to handle a chore, he was assigned the job of loading the iron stove with wood chopped for that purpose. The first time he tried, anxious to do well, he overloaded it, the intense heat nearly ruining the stove before it had to be doused with water. As he grew, the boy, unaccustomed to any other life, had little idea of his poverty, like many other Thicketeers. Shy but friendly, he loved solitude and often walked deep into the woods to daydream or sing songs at the top of his lungs.

Still haunted by Ethel’s death, George Washington Jones remained sober and evenhanded when he worked. It’s difficult to dismiss the enormous pressures on him to provide for his family. Making staves became impossible when timber companies who owned the forests posted private guards to stop anyone—by whatever means necessary—from filching lumber for any purpose. With Prohibition repealed, the always resourceful Jones, fully aware he lived in a dry area, found a new vocation: brewing and selling moonshine and beer.

CLARA PASSED HER STRONG MORAL CODE, ROOTED IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, to her children and expected them to follow it to the letter. Glenn once ran afoul of that rule when he stole a pocketknife from a neighbor’s home. When the neighbor told Clara, Glenn admitted the theft, produced the knife, and got a whipping for his trouble, one he knew he deserved. Clara’s simple Christian values and belief in charity became a lifelong touchstone for her son, who would help others without hesitation, often without being asked.

The problem came with the undeserved violence the family suffered at the hands of their patriarch.

George W’s taste for alcohol wrought immense psychological havoc and physical abuse on the family he worked so diligently to support. It became a ritual. He’d frequently stumble home drunk in the middle of the night, tearing up the house and waking the kids to demand they sing for him, using his belt on any who balked. Glenn and Doris were often singled out. Well aware of his youngest son’s singing talents, George W increasingly focused on Glenn. When they could, Helen and her sisters helped their little brother sneak out an open window. Clara was not silent. Her husband’s drinking offended her sensibilities, and she railed at him about it. For her trouble, she found herself in his line of fire, beaten and battered around.

For George Glenn, it was a paradox: being coerced to do the one thing he loved doing more than anything else—singing—or face a belt whipping. It became one of a number of deep scars that led to depression, conflicts, and feelings of worthlessness that didn’t fade as he grew into adulthood. As he became one of the great singers of his time, beloved by fans and admired by peers, his shyness remained, aggravated by a gnawing sense he was somehow undeserving—particularly when he drank. Given what he endured in his youth, he would identify with the underdog his entire life.

George W was not always so irresponsible. He acquired a Zenith battery radio in the late 1930s that allowed the family to sample the wider world beyond Saratoga. Glenn, not surprisingly, gravitated to music on various stations in Beaumont and to the east in Louisiana. But it was the Grand Ole Opry, heard from Nashville on WSM’s fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel signal, that truly captivated him. The Opry began in 1925 as the WSM Barn Dance, conceived by ex-Memphis newspaperman-turned-announcer George Dewey Hay, formerly an announcer on the country’s first such rural-oriented radio show: Chicago’s National Barn Dance on WLS. In Nashville, he created a specific, rural-South concept for the program that contrasted with the Barn Dance’s broader musical content. The early Opry presented performers from middle Tennessee. Many were string bands like the Gully Jumpers; among the solo performers were fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson, black harmonica virtuoso DeFord Bailey, and rollicking elderly singer and banjo strummer Uncle Dave Macon. With the powerful WSM signal, the Opry’s popularity expanded nationwide throughout the 1930s.

Glenn found two new musical heroes on the Opry. One was Roy Acuff. An east Tennessee singer and fiddler, the onetime baseball player turned medicine-show performer had developed a powerful singing voice performing at venues that often lacked microphones. He’d worked around Knoxville since 1934. A 1938 guest performance on the Opry led WSM to invite the thirty-five-year-old singer and his band to join the show that year. Acuff quickly became the Opry’s preeminent personality. Propelled to national stardom, he and his Smoky Mountain Boys had an unforgettable dynamic: his fiddling and rough-edged, deeply emotional vocals were accompanied by a raw, traditional string ensemble. Mixing secular numbers like his signature song “Wabash Cannonball” with gospel favorites like “The Great Speckled Bird” earned him a huge following across the country.

The Opry welcomed Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in 1939. Monroe, a singer-mandolinist from Rosine, Kentucky, had already achieved considerable success with his guitarist brother Charlie as the Monroe Brothers, a close-harmony vocal duet. When the brothers parted ways, Bill devised a new, dynamic approach to string-band music with his group, centered around a strong backbeat, intense high-harmony vocals, aggressive fiddle solos, and his own fiery mandolin playing. Glenn was captivated by the fervor in Acuff’s voice and by both Monroe’s eerie high tenor vocals and the Blue Grass Boys’ sound, tighter than that of Acuff’s musicians. If things were calm on Saturday nights, Glenn would crawl into bed next to his parents to listen, asking them, if he dozed off, to wake him if Acuff or Monroe came on. Soon he had fantasies about his own Opry stardom, telling anyone who would listen about this seemingly impossible goal.

Sixteen-year-old Helen departed the Jones household in the fall of 1938. She’d met twenty-year-old Wayvard Thomas “Dub” Scroggins, a farmer from Kerens, Texas, northwest of the Thicket and not far from Dallas. He knew about old man Jones and his abuse and when he beat Helen yet again, an infuriated Dub solved the problem by marrying her in Saratoga on October 21, 1938. The couple, who would have five kids of their own, would remain a positive touchstone in George Glenn’s turbulent life. Known for ingenuity and earthy common sense, Dub became a lifelong hero to George.

GLENN’S LIFE WAS NOT ALL HYMNS, THE OPRY, AND BEATINGS. HE BECAME A rambunctious kid who developed a sly, ornery sense of humor he carried into adulthood. His older brother Herman and his wife, Evalina, lived nearby; when her husband was away, Evalina, fearing the hobos who roamed the area, rapping on doors begging for money and food, kept their screen door latched. Knowing this, Glenn would tease her by rattling the door and uttering hobolike requests. Sober or drunk, he played similar tricks on family and friends for decades, and some of his fellow country stars weren’t exempt from them.

The Joneses departed Saratoga in 1940 for the larger Thicket town of Kountze (pronounced Koontz), northeast of Saratoga. It had a railroad stop that gave the family greater freedom to travel. They could take a train to visit Beaumont, the port city built around oil development, shipping, and shipbuilding connected to the Gulf of Mexico by a large ship channel. Clara found the First Gospel Tabernacle in Kountze, pastored by the Pentecostal evangelical team of Wilbertine Burl Stephen, known as Brother Burl, and his singing, guitar-playing wife, Annie Pharris Stephen, known as Sister Annie, who also taught Sunday school.

LITTLE GLENN’S ABILITY TO REAR BACK AND INFUSE OLD HYMNS WITH FEELING led the Stephens to take him, with his parents’ approval, along to revival meetings they held throughout the area, at Kountze’s H&H Store, and in other nearby hamlets and larger towns. After Burl did the preaching, Annie would sing hymns Glenn already knew, such as “Canaan’s Land” and “Farther Along.” Since he knew how to drive his daddy’s used veh...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. 1931–1953
• 2. 1953–1961
• 3. 1962–1968
• 4. 1968–1975
• 5. 1975–1983
• 6. 1983–1990
• 7. 1990–1999
• 8. 1999–2013
• Epilogue: 2013–2015
• Acknowledgments
• Selected Listening
• Sources
• Photo Section
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher