George Jones: Saratoga’s Voice of Country

Today is the birthday of George Jones. He would be 95 today.

George Glenn Jones was born in Saratoga, Texas on September 12, 1931 — in Hardin County, deep in the Big Thicket country of Southeast Texas. His father played guitar and fiddle. George was already singing on the streets of Beaumont for coins at nine years old. He absorbed the region’s musical mix — country, gospel, honky-tonk — and began to synthesize it into something so pure that Hank Williams called him the greatest living country singer. Williams was not given to idle compliments.

Fifty Years of the Real Thing

“Why Baby Why” charted in 1955. “White Lightning” hit No. 1 in 1959. Then the hits accumulated across five decades — “He Stopped Loving Her Today” in 1980 was voted the greatest country song ever recorded in more polls than anyone has bothered to count. Jones’s voice was an instrument of devastating emotional precision. He could make two syllables do the work a lesser singer needed a whole song for. His personal life was chaos — the drinking, the missed shows that earned him the nickname “No-Show Jones.” He kept recording through all of it. He died April 26, 2013, in Nashville. Texas produced many great singers. George Jones was the greatest. Learn more at the Texas State Historical Association.