Country Music Artist & Songwiter - George Jones


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Bio:
George Glenn Jones (born September 12, 1931), is an award-winning American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette.

Jones has had more songs than any other singer on the US Country charts - 167 as of November, 2005. He has also had the most Top 40 Hits and is second to Eddy Arnold with the most Top 10 Hits. Over the past twenty years, Jones has frequently been referred to as "the greatest living country singer" and "the Rolls-Royce of country singers."

Throughout his long career, Jones made headlines often as much for tales of his drinking, stormy relationships with women, and violent rages as for his prolific career of making records and touring. His wild lifestyle led to Jones missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones", but Jones never hid or denied his faults and now, with the help of his fourth wife, he has been "clean" for years. Jones clocked up scores of hits during his career, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists.

Early Life:
Jones was born in Saratoga, Texas and raised in Vidor, Texas, along with his brother and five sisters (another sister died young before George was born), being exposed to music from an early age from his parents own record collection and listening to the gospel music he heard in church. When George was seven, the Jones family bought a radio which introduced George to the country music that would become his life. The gift of a guitar when Jones was a young boy of nine soon saw him busking for money on the streets of his home town Beaumont.

Jones left home at sixteen and headed for Jasper, Texas where he found work singing and playing on a local radio station. Before he was out of his teens he married his first wife, Dorothy, but their union didn't even last a full year and Jones joined the US Marines. Despite the Korean War being fought at the time, Jones never experienced active service overseas, instead he sang in bars near his base in California. After leaving the Marines his music career took off.

Current Life:
Despite being in his seventies, Jones is still an active recording artist and still tours extensively on the North American continent as well as overseas. His other projects include the George Jones "University" which is a twice-yearly training programme for those wishing to learn about a career in the music business. He also endorses his own brand of sausages which are produced for him by Williams Sausage Company of Tennessee using Jones's own recipe. The product boxes feature stories from Jones's colorful life. Other food products he has brought out include a range of barbecue sauces.

Jones and wife Nancy run a diner in Enterprise, Alabama which is decorated with memorabilia from Jones's long career in the country music business.

Jones is also a partner in Bandit Records, an independent record company set up by Jones and others when Jones's former record company Asylum Records was closed down by its owners AOL Time Warner. Bandit Records philosophy is to "create unique, interesting projects with artistic integrity that can operate free from the constraints of the corporate music industry".

In 2006, he was treated in hospital for pneumonia but made a full recovery and continued with his prolific touring schedule.

2008 marks Jones's 54th year recording country music (1955-2008, inclusive) as well as his 39th year at the Grand Ole Opry.

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