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Editor's Note: Country legend George Jones died two weeks ago, on April 26, 2013, in Nashville. Longtime area musicians John Howie Jr. and Tom Maxwell provided reflections on Jones. Below, Maxwell, meditates on Jones' voice and why it had the impact it did. Meanwhile, Howie presents an overview of Jones' life from the perspective of a budding country fan whose own band went on to open for Jones. Read that piece here.

George Jones is gone now, finally. It’s surprising he made it this long, given his once prodigious appetite for alcoholic and chemical refreshment. It’s possible that he wanted to follow his amphetamine-fueled and skeletal hero Hank Williams to an early grave, but no matter how many times George threw himself on that funeral pyre, it just wouldn’t light. Instead, he died a dignified old man, one who had largely quieted his demons.

In his wake are the many tales—well told, and not worth repeating here—about his many foibles: four wives, money problems, performing entire songs in a Donald Duck voice while coked out of his mind, skipping gigs and, of course, the iconic riding mower drive to the liquor store. That he was a fuck-up was never in dispute. We also got to hear once more, thanks to the man’s demise, the uniquely depressing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and a few of his better-known and tortured ballads. Everyone agrees, with some qualification, that George Jones was (possibly) the greatest country music singer of all time. I don’t know why you’d want to stop there. In life, he was without peer; in death, he will define an entire form of musical expression.

If we go back into his career—beyond the hair-raising honesty of 1999’s “Choices,” past the dated novelty of “High-Tech Redneck,” before even the ’70s duets with Tammy Wynette and ’60s hits like “She Thinks I Still Care”—we arrive in the mid-to-late 1950s, when George was signed to the Starday and Mercury labels. Unlike Patsy Cline, who teamed up around this time with producer Owen Bradley to make string-laden country pop, George’s departure from Western Swing took the form of “hardcore honky tonk,” relentless two-step dance music with often harrowing lyrics about alcoholism and failed relationships. It is here that we see the formation of his inimitable style and phrasing. At first, only in his early 20s, George imitated his idols Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and Lefty Frizzell. When producer Pappy Daily asked him to sing like George Jones, he replied “I thought you wanted to sell some records.”

When he did find that voice, sung through clenched jaws, George Jones became an icon. He had the vocal acrobatics of Lefty and the ability to inhabit the emotional heart of a song like Hank. But what George Jones really sang like is a pedal steel guitar.

“I stole everything I ever heard,” admitted Ella Fitzgerald, “but mostly I stole from the horns.” It’s true; you can hear supple tenor saxophone bends of phrase in her voice, just as you can hear staccato trumpet blasts in Louis Armstrong’s. George Jones did not come from a jazz tradition. He didn’t perform with those instruments. What he heard, lying between his parents listening to the Grand Ole Opry, was fiddles and guitars and the metallic bite of a lap steel, the kind of slide guitar that accompanied his heroes. In time, the lap steel morphed into the pedal steel. It was still a horizontal guitar, played with a metal slide, but this version was given foot pedals, depressed to affect the pitch. In the hands of a competent player it creates swooping, crying melodies that clearly informed Jones’ phrasing. It’s plain as day on 1959s “Mr. Fool,” in the way he shoots up the octave, sliding and sustaining “But I have al-ways been a fool to cry for you,” or in the chorus, when the word “before” is wrung out through two full measures, George adding syllables as his voice tumbles down, like building a staircase just to fall farther.

When listening to George Jones and the pedal steel that accompanies him, it’s evident how alike the two are: the almost infinite sustain, the plaintive highs, the sudden modulations, the extraordinary range, the precise melodic pirouettes, and the dramatic, if almost histrionic, swoops. Both the man and the instrument trade in the notes between the notes.

Then there was his all-out assault on vowels. George Jones is to vowels what William Shatner is to cadence. Listen to the way he swallows the word “ring” in the chorus of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” or pretty much any word in “The Grand Tour” and try to explain why it’s all so affecting. What can’t be understood intellectually makes total sense emotionally.

Hank Williams sang like a hillbilly. You can listen to his records and know he was a Southerner. You might recognize his Alabama accent. George Jones’ singing voice cannot be completely identified as Texan. Instead, he’s Country with a capital C, more easily parodied than imitated, bending and distorting vowels every which way. If someone came up talking like, that you’d think they were having a stroke. But George wasn’t talking. He was communicating.

Many stories have come out about George Jones—some, in their outrageousness, probably too good to be true. Most of them center on the man’s personal failings as opposed to his artistic triumphs. There is one worth remembering, witnessed by a friend of a friend. In it, George is sitting by himself in a backstage canteen a couple decades ago. Bill Monroe, the single-handed inventor of bluegrass, walks in the room on his way out to the tour bus. Instead of a spoken greeting, George sings the first line of a traditional gospel song: “Some glad morning when this life is o’er…”

Without missing a beat or slowing his step, Bill harmonizes the rest of the line in his high lonesome tenor: “I’ll fly away.”

What a beautiful sound they made.

Editor's Note: Country legend George Jones died two weeks ago, on April 26, 2013, in Nashville. Longtime area musicians John Howie Jr. and Tom Maxwell provided reflections on Jones. Below, Howie presents an overview of Jones' life from the perspective of a budding country fan whose own band went on to open for Jones. Maxwell, meanwhile, meditates on Jones' voice and why it had the impact it did; read that piece here.

Legend has it that the great Frank Sinatra once referred to George Jones as, “The second best male singer in America.” It’s one of my favorite quotes about the Possum, because whether or not Frank actually said it, the quote makes a very good point in its tone: that even a performer as lauded as Ol’ Blue Eyes—who had very few kind words for other singers and almost none for vocalists outside of his own genre—was able to recognize George’s talent. That speaks volumes about the country music icon, who passed away at age 81 on April 26.

Indeed, volumes have been spoken (and written) about Jones in the span of his nearly 60-year recording career, many of them focusing on his mythological exploits with everything from guns to riding lawnmowers. Still, most of them acknowledge his position as probably the greatest country singer who ever lived. That sort of defining title is awfully meaningful considering the range of people it places George above: Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Buck Owens, Charley Pride.

Jones began his recording career by imitating his idols Roy Acuff and Hank Williams, making spirited, if at times generic, honky tonk records of the kind associated with the mid ’50s. A plea from larger-than-life producer Pappy Daily to “sing like George Jones” unleashed a soulful voice like no other; it propelled Jones to a career that would scale the heights of influence and idolatry, and sink to the depths of depression and addiction. As he moved from label to label, the hits came fast and hard, and despite his issues with the bottle and responsibility in general (Starday Records executive Gabe Tucker said, “Back then ... you never knew what that little bastard was liable to get into”), Jones became stood alongside his contemporaries Buck Owens and Johnny Cash.

The part about being the “Greatest country singer ever” would be the part of the equation that ironically brought George the most grief, the most difficulty, and, in fact, the most insecurity. At the height of his popularity in the 1970s, he became more famous for the scheduled performances he bailed on than the ones he actually attended (earning him the everlasting nickname, “No-Show Jones”). When he did show up, he was often drunk or surly, and occasionally performed in the voice of Hank Williams or Donald Duck. The truth, however, is that Jones had been making these career faux pas since at least the ’60s, an indication of just how uncomfortable and ill-equipped he was to deal with the trappings of the music business.

A shelved live album, recorded in 1965 and not released until 1987 as Live at Dancetown USA, gives us a crystal clear document of a typical Jones show, pre-sobriety: George is slurring throughout, forgetting lyrics, taking several breaks (one of which he refers to as a “liquor mission.” Get it?), and throws his band to the wolves for most of the show. Despite all of this, when he does actually sing, it’s clear that he was successful for a reason: The man simply could not be touched as a singer. Even in an environment Jones clearly views as hostile, his pitch is perfect, his phrasing immaculate, and his emotional delivery unparalleled.

By the time Jones bought out his contract with Musicor Records so he could record with then-love interest Tammy Wynette for Epic Records in 1971, he had several classics and hits under his belt—an extraordinary career that many performers could have and would have retired from. Amazingly, George’s true heyday was yet to come. The 1970s and early 1980s proved to be the best and worst of times for Jones, with his romantic and addictive trials being played out in legend and song for all the world to see.

Americans can’t resist a good love story, and the romance between Tammy Wynette and George Jones was the stuff of legend from the word go. By all accounts, George berated Tammy’s husband—yes, she was married when they met—like a honky-tonk knight in shining armor, and declared his love for Tammy at the couple’s dinner table. George and Tammy’s 1969 marriage spawned several romantic hits, and their individual careers swelled also, but George’s general insecurity (perhaps most horrifyingly manifested in his backstage-at-the-Opry grabbing of Porter Wagoner’s private parts and accusations of Porter sleeping with Tammy) was always around, just waiting to derail any contentment that might have otherwise been forthcoming. When cocaine was introduced to the mix, George became a danger to himself and others. He fired shotguns at friends, ate rarely, and hung out with generally unsavory types.

The hits, however, kept coming, despite George’s propensity for missing gigs, or showing up drunk to awards ceremonies. Producer Billy Sherrill made a conscious decision around this time to have George record in lower keys than he had in the 1960s. The results spawned some of the Possum’s greatest performances: “The Grand Tour,” “Loving You Could Never Be Better,” “A Picture of Me Without You,” and this writer’s personal favorite (and one of George’s last great co-writes), “These Days I Barely Get By.” Jones was counted out, time and time again. Listening back to his recordings of that era, you might guess it from the subject matter, but you’d never guess it from the quality of singing.

DUIs, more missed shows, performances rendered in the voice of Donald Duck; none of these could stop Jones from releasing his career-defining (at age 49!) classic, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Not even George’s reticence (“It took us a year to record it,” said Sherrill) or his outright defiance (“Nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a bitch,” said Jones) could stop the song from propelling George to a virtual sweep of the 1980 CMA’s, at which a thoroughly plowed Jones thanked the first people he saw from the podium: legendary country music married couple Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright.

Around this time, George was everywhere. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed in my house. He was always on the radio in my dad’s car (I thought George was singing “They placed a ring upon his dog.”), always in the magazines, and frequently on our television set. I have a very clear memory of my dad and I watching George as portrayed by actor Tim McEntire in the made-for-TV Wynette biopic Stand By Your Man. One scene—a particularly brutal one—found George thrashing around, trashing a room, clearly intoxicated. That caused my father to utter the immortal words, “He’s a drunk, just a godawful drunk, I’ll give ‘em that. But the man could sing the words out of a Fu Manchu book and make you cry.”

My dad’s reaction—defensive of Jones, despite all of the evidence of his shortcomings—was a microcosm of the general public’s feelings about George, and one of the major keys to his success. In spite of his very public screw-ups, the fans adored him, even as they shelled out hard earned cash for shows they knew damn well he might skip out on. Because when he sang “The Grand Tour,” with its pleading “Lord knows, we had a good thing going here” lyric, it sounded like he had lived every word. Not one second of the vocal track from that song or any of the other classics from that period sounds anything less than purely heartfelt and authentic. The fact that George seemed like anybody else who just couldn’t quite get their act together only added to the intensity of the experience.

Meeting Nancy Sepulveda, who would become the fourth Mrs. Jones in 1983, changed things considerably for Jones. With the help of the proverbial good woman, the Possum finally got his act together, settled down, sobered up, and enjoyed a stable life and career, often poking fun at his former transgressions. He continued to have hits—among them John Howie Sr. faves like “Wine Colored Roses” and “The Right Left Hand. Now slightly grittier with age, his voice still resonated with pain and honesty. Jones even completed his entertaining autobiography, appropriately titled I Lived To Tell It All. But the past, filled with cocaine binges, captured-on-film DUIs, and missed shows, was behind him.

Or was it? In 1999, George crashed his Lexus into a bridge, and supposedly booze was involved. Once again, despite tragedy, George’s work did not suffer. Recorded around the time of the crash, Cold Hard Truth, which included the single “Choices,” was the last great album Jones released. I saw George twice on that tour, and his voice was as good as ever, his band fantastic, the fans rabid. He had complained about his throat, and the medication he was on post-accident, but he sounded like gold.

After witnessing a Jones performance on television around 2007, I vowed to never again attend one of his concerts. I was glad that he was still out there, but his voice had deteriorated considerably. I was a little shocked by his performance. I still loved him, but I couldn’t bring myself to hear the Greatest Country Singer Ever when he was no longer living up to the title. My girlfriend, who had never seen Jones, talked me into accompanying her to his N.C. State Fair performance in 2011, where all of my fears were well-founded. You could still hear the Jones magic in the phrasing, but the power and resonance were gone, replaced by something far weaker. I left the show recalling the first time I’d seen George, in 1993 in Gaffney, S.C., and how at that time his voice had seemed to truly come from the heavens, filling the entire outdoor park. That show had been cathartic. Little did I know that I would, in fact, see George one last time, under what—for me—would be the most ideal of circumstances.

When my band got the call to open for George at the Durham Performing Arts Center, we were beyond ecstatic. The opportunity of a lifetime had been offered to us, and we had every intention of making the most of it. Despite how I’d felt about the last Jones show I’d been to, he was still my favorite singer, and I knew he always would be. When I arrived at the venue on the fateful day, the first thing I was told was that George was in no mood or shape for any kind of meet-and-greet. I was disappointed, but I understood. His wife, Nancy, and most of his band were incredibly nice to us before, during and after the show. Nancy correctly guessed the gender of our steel player Nathan Golub’s soon-to-be-born son, and she and George’s own steel player watched our entire set and were very complimentary. Hell, the bass player even gave me a free T-shirt.

After the Rosewood Bluff’s portion of the show, while our bassist manned our merch table, George’s band came out to warm up the crowd. My buddy Dan Schram and I stood in absolute awe mere feet away from George as he sat preparing for the show. We were just about the only people who could see him, but he still sat there smiling, tapping his foot, waiting for his entrance. I remember thinking that, despite his age and recent illness, he really looked like that was the only place in the world he wanted to be at that moment.

Lord knows, I felt exactly the same.