A NEW CAPTAIN BILLY - EPISODE #79 - AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COUNTRY: The Majesty of George Jones "I Am What I Am." (Columbia, 1980)

Shit. I’ve burst into tears three times just trying to get through the opening track on this cart, He Stopped Loving Her Today. What is it about good country music that provokes such gut wrenching spasms of lonely grief? And here, the keening majesty of Mr. Jones’ voice proves he was the undisputed master of the emotional body blow. He Stopped Loving Her Today revived Jone’s career, even though he hated the song initially. He was quoted as saying that his: “…4 decade career had been salvaged by a 3 minute song.” It won him a Grammy and CMA Song of the Year. Producer Billy Sherrill loaded up the album with a raft of songs that reflected George’s reputation for out of control drinking and self destruction, and the recording feels like an intimate tell-all. Sherrill testified that the singer was in such bad shape during the making of the album that he had to record the recitation portion of the hit song 18 months after laying down the first verse. The track became inextricably linked with The Possum, making the top country charts, for the second time, a week after the singer’s death in 2013. The toxic co-dependency between the singer and his wife Tammy Wynettte is the stuff of legend, and one of the most compelling soap operatic storylines in Country music history. And, it underlines every lyric offered here. The couple divorced in 1976, but kept working together, all the while as the dissipated Jones kept hoping for a reconciliation. (They recorded their single “Two Story House” in the same year as this album). Thankfully, in 1981, George met and married Nancy Sepulvado who provided a stabilizing influence for him. She managed his career and got him sober (mostly), and surviving to the age of 81. This is a classic recording by one of the all time greats.