The Grand Tour

by Rich Kienzle

  Murray, who’d known him for a while, got a good dose of George’s erratic side when setting up George in a colorful office area complete with the titles of some of his hits painted on the wall. Another painting, Murray said, featured “a big possum sittin’ back with a hat on and he was playin’ the guitar and all this music was comin’ out of the center of the guitar. He got up there one day and said, ‘I don’t like that possum up there!’ George Richey had given him this beautiful black leather jacket with this possum on the back. George took it out there and put it in the dumpster. He said he didn’t want anybody to call him ‘Possum.’ He had us paint over the possum right there. It was offensive to him at that particular time. And a week later, he was just the opposite.”

  A drunken September 20 show at Meadow Brook Music Festival in Rochester, Michigan, seemed to embody Jones in decline. Toledo Blade reviewer Bob Rose detailed a concert that began with the Jones Boys playing eight songs, the musicians looking to the side for signs of George before he finally stumbled onstage, so wasted he was slurring lyrics. Unable to recall words, he had to be constantly prompted by the band. Even a move into the Hank Williams songbook faltered. Rose detailed his taking audience requests and beginning “Your Cheatin’ Heart” only to—again—forget the words. “He asked a Jones Boy how that one went,” Rose commented. As the Jones Boys tried to get him to wrap things up, he blithely ignored them, grinning and telling the thinning and disgusted crowd, “We’re gonna play till three or four in the morning, right?” By the time management turned up the house lights to get him to leave the stage, most of the audience had left. His pitiful final words from the stage: “Somebody’s trying to embarrass us.”

  He had three CMA Awards nominations for 1981: an unusual second nomination for “He Stopped Loving Her Today” as Song of the Year, another for Male Vocalist, and, unbelievably, the third for Entertainer of the Year. Given the messes left behind in Logan, Beaumont, and other venues, his chances of winning in that last category were remote at best. This time, the entire country saw the mess on the televised 1981 awards. Neither the prelude nor the aftermath, Murray said, were pleasant. When George arrived at the Opry House, Murray recalled, “Ralph Emery said, ‘George, I’ve got something for you that the Opry gave us.’ He handed him a watch, and George took it out and it had diamonds around the thing and it had some engraving inside it about the Opry. Inside the top it was really neat. And George just took it and we walked maybe ten steps and there was one of those flip-top garbage cans right there and he just reached over and hit it with the back of his hand, and throwed the watch in the garbage.” After the show ended he returned to his suite, broke some lamps in his hotel room, and apparently got rough with Linda. No one was surprised when he failed to appear at CBS Records’ CMA Week Artist Showcase.

  With the contrived stories about George on the mend rendered moot, much of Nashville began accepting the notion that the World’s Greatest County Singer, driving around with Hank Williams cassettes in his car and a life-size cardboard figure of his early hero, was heading for a similar if not identical end. He stiffed everyone on a November 22 show in Roanoke, Virginia. The promoter sued for $25,000. It had long been a crapshoot with his fans, yet enough still loved him that they continued showing up despite his disrespecting them. “He just had one thing on his mind, and that was the drugs,” said Gerald Murray.

  With “Still Doin’ Time,” another bleak ballad about lost love and symbolic incarceration in a “honky-tonk prison,” at No. 1, any doubts over George’s status with CBS Records were put to an end when the label re-signed him in November. He flew to Los Angeles with Rick Blackburn and his own attorney, Tom Binkley, to sign the new deal with a half-million-dollar advance to be applied to his debts. George, however, was still George, and threw a wrench into the deal at the last minute by demanding $100,000 for himself. He got the money and bought a new car. Most of the remaining cash likely went up his nose.

  George was in Shreveport, Louisiana, with Wayne Oliver, who had a girlfriend there. Since he and George were flying to New York, Wayne arranged for his girlfriend to accompany them and bring a friend for George: Nancy Sepulvado, a Shreveport divorcee, the mother of two daughters, who’d spent twenty years working in a factory assembling telephones. From the start, George and Nancy found a bond. They were captivated with each other, to the point that George flipped off some shows to visit her in Shreveport. She ended up leaving Shreveport with daughter Adina to join George on tour. His relationship with Linda, who had stuck by him despite abuse and the stress of watching him implode, began to unravel. The bad blood between Nancy and Linda, with Jones caught in the middle, upset everyone, and Linda finally had enough. Before 1981 ended, she and George parted for good.

  The year 1982 began with a disappearing act before a January 6 concert with Johnny Paycheck, now one of the hottest singers in the business, and Donna Fargo. As George and Nancy set up housekeeping in Alabama, George’s situation grew more dire. The coke dealers were abundant. Nancy knew he drank, but cocaine added a chilling dimension that could turn him physically abusive, even to her. Unlike other women in his past, she reacted to his behavior with a steely determination to do everything she could to pull him out of what were clearly the last gasps of both his career and existence. She didn’t care if he never sang again. Her love was for the man, not the icon.

  ONE DAY GERALD MURRAY’S PHONE RANG IN MUSCLE SHOALS. IT WAS WAYLON Jennings asking, “Can you come and get the Possum?”

  George had visited Waylon and Jessi’s home in Brentwood, south of Nashville. George ended up out of control. Waylon’s ill-advised decision to give him a generous dose of whiskey, hoping to calm him down, backfired badly. He trashed furniture, then threw a photo in a metal frame at his host. When Jerry Gropp, Waylon’s guitarist, tried to restrain George, he ended up with a busted thumb. Waylon held George down. When he thought George was finally tired, he let go. George, who’d been faking, sucker-punched the man who had given him tens of thousands of dollars to help him out of his financial morass. Waylon finally subdued and restrained his friend, then made the call to Murray.

  Murray arrived to find a mess. “He broke all his lamps and everything.” George sat on a piano bench. Waylon “had him tied, his pants pulled down around his knees and his belt around his ankles pulled up there. Jones jumps up and squirms around a little bit like nothing ever happened [and said], ‘You gotta hear this!’ He asked Jessi to sing something. Waylon looked at me and said, ‘Boy!’” Despite it all, Waylon hadn’t lost any of his affection for the man he’d met in Lubbock more than twenty years earlier. He refused to take any money for the damages.

  The no-shows continued, although on occasions when George was in better shape he could still surprise those closest to him. Murray remembered one northeastern tour that took them to Long Island. “He walked off, come back down off the side of the stage, and he said, ‘Is that enough?’ I said, ‘George, I believe if you did fifteen more minutes, we’d be good.’ He walked on down there in the dressin’ room and pulled off his shirt. He [wore] an old striped T-shirt. And he walked back up there and said, ‘You all care if I sing one more?’ He left an hour and a half later.” He also took control when a problem arose at a Wheeling, West Virginia, concert involving a revolving stage that malfunctioned and cut the electricity to the band’s gear. According to Murray, “George said, ‘Oh well, I can handle that.’ He just got a bar stool and set down and got his guitar and did the rest by himself. When he wanted to, he could do what he wanted.”

  That included times when he just wanted to hang out in Muscle Shoals with friends like Jimmie Hills or Murray. When George was off the road, Murray would pick up the ringing phone and find George on the other end. “He’d say, ‘Me—you—outside in front of the office in a few minutes. I’m pickin’ you up in the motor home! We gonna [cook] green tomatoes and Shake ’n Bake in Colbert Park and play some ball.’ We were out there one day and the first time we did the ball thing and I kicked it and it went
flyin’ out across there and it went in the Tennessee River, floatin’ down the river, and George just stood there and watched it float off and said, ‘Guess it’s useless to ask if you brought another ball.’ He liked just gettin’ in the car and goin’ there, if it was something he was interested in. He just looked for something to occupy his time.”

  George, Nancy, and Adina settled in Muscle Shoals, where Nancy began to survey the regulars in his inner circle with a jaundiced eye. The Montgomerys were around, and Peanutt was now pastoring his own church, but the relationship had changed between George and his old friends as he grew closer to Nancy. Elsewhere drug dealers hovered, and rumors flew of life-insurance policies taken out with the expectation that George would soon be history. Nancy claimed a car attempted to force her off a bridge when she was crossing the Tennessee River between Florence and Muscle Shoals. George was vulnerable wherever he went, and local hostility toward Nancy seemed to be mushrooming. Someone was going to get hurt or killed, and finally George, Nancy, and Adina decided to head for Texas.

  They were in transit on March 29, Nancy at the wheel of George’s Lincoln Town Car with the “POSSUM1” vanity plate as he snorted coke. With Nancy and Adina begging him to ditch his stash, he threw it out the window. But the powder in his bloodstream was still calling the shots. On the interstate near Jackson, Mississippi, George rambunctiously slid his foot over and tramped on the gas pedal, kicking their speed to ninety-one miles an hour. A local officer pulled them over. When he saw who it was, a drug dog was summoned. George was arrested for possession of cocaine. The stash might have been gone, but enough remained on the floor mats and, Murray said, on the toe of one of his boots. Charged and released on bond, George decided to return to Muscle Shoals and relied on booze to get him home.

  He, Nancy, and Adina flew through northern Mississippi on March 30. With Nancy again driving and George drinking, he pulled the same tramp-on-the-gas-pedal routine that got him busted in Jackson. Nancy had enough. She pulled over and exited the car. Adina did likewise. Now alone behind the wheel, George sped north on Highway 45. After a couple of turns, he wound up on Grubb Springs Road, running off the road and flipping the car. When Monroe County sheriff’s deputy Pete Shook arrived on the scene, he saw the license plate and reported back. Sheriff Pat Patterson, a longtime Jones fan, responded that he knew exactly who it was. George was transported to Aberdeen-Monroe Hospital. Patterson later said he was “so slobbering drunk, he wouldn’t have known if he was Roy Acuff or Jesus Christ.”

  Meanwhile, unaware of what had happened, Nancy and Adina went to a nearby house and asked to use the phone, telling the woman who answered the door who they were. She replied that she’d been listening to her police scanner and heard George Jones had been in a wreck nearby. Nancy called Gerald Murray. After some confusion over whether she was in Hamilton, Mississippi, or Hamilton, Alabama, he sent someone to pick her up. Murray agreed that George needed some sort of immediate intervention. With the help of three of George’s sisters, Murray had him transferred from Aberdeen to Hillcrest in Birmingham. He was there for fifteen days until the hospital released him after finding someone had slipped him cocaine.

  The coke case, obviously more serious, would take considerable time to litigate. As for the DUI, it happened in an era when drunk-driving in America wasn’t viewed as gravely as it would be in later decades. George was willing to pay fines. He pleaded guilty and wrote a check to the Monroe County sheriff’s office—on what turned out to be a closed account. Sheriff Patterson insisted Jones stopped the payment. His situation grew worse in late April as he missed shows at the Opry House in Nashville, in Birmingham, and a May 1 show in Florence, for which he was later sued. He spent part of the month in Nashville recording with Haggard, who’d signed with Epic. A Taste of Yesterday’s Wine, named for the Willie Nelson composition “Yesterday’s Wine,” was an impressive example of two old buddies simply going into the studio and singing. The other material included “C.C. Waterback,” the album’s hit single, and “No Show Jones,” a self-deprecating ditty with an obvious theme.

  George’s 1982 trail of madness wasn’t quite finished. Back in Tennessee on May 25, he was drunkenly speeding down I-65 south of Nashville when Tennessee highway patrolman Tommy Campsey pulled him over. In no time, a Nashville TV station had a crew on the scene as Campsey dealt with a belligerent, drunk, and argumentative George. As Campsey arrested George and moved to put him in the patrol car (without the usually required handcuffs), Jones pulled loose and tried to kick the TV cameraman. Across the country, millions saw the video, showing his body emaciated, his eyes flaring with the psychotic glare of a trapped, desperate man who had lost all hope.

  Monroe County, Mississippi, issued an arrest warrant over the nonpayment of the DUI fine, and George received a letter from Sheriff Patterson. The county talked of extraditing him, an absurd idea since at that time the charges were misdemeanors. More illogical were comments from Shook, Patterson’s chief deputy, who’d responded to the accident. He told the Associated Press, “We don’t think it’ll get that far,” meaning extradition. “We don’t think he could stand all the publicity.” After the coke bust, the televised DUI arrest in Tennessee, and other recent headlines, it’s a mystery why anyone would think more negative press would bother George. Pee Wee Johnson finally drove to Mississippi to personally pay the fine, now $737.50.

  In mid-June, Associated Press reporter Joe Edwards filed a story about George’s deterioration, one far more ominous than the optimistic stories of the previous year. He quoted Tammy saying, “I don’t know where George is. I doubt if even George knows where George is.” Murray told Edwards that his client “told me he wants to be another Hank Williams,” adding, “If something doesn’t happen, he won’t be around much longer. He needs to go into a hospital on his own to get straightened out.” That view was echoed by Dan Wojick of the Lavender Agency—Shorty Lavender had died in May—who said, “George has to want to help himself.”

  In Jackson, Hinds County prosecutors indicted him for the cocaine bust. George also incurred the wrath of Jackson Daily News Ledger columnist Orley Hood, who referred to the singer as “Godless and friendless, a moral pauper who is perpetually ashamed of himself.” In Williamson County, Tennessee, where the televised May 25 DUI arrest took place, officials issued an arrest warrant on July 14 for failure to appear in court. He arrived at the courthouse in Franklin in his tour bus two days later and agreed to give a free concert for the Williamson County sheriff’s office as “community service.” Judge Jane Franks fined him fifty dollars plus $123 in court costs.

  Pee Wee accompanied him to an August 6 show in Augusta, Georgia. George had his motorcycle with him. After a drunken, half-assed performance that ticked off the audience, he compounded the insult by refusing to sign autographs. Pee Wee, his dark hair styled much like the star’s, went to protect the motorcycle only to be attacked by fans thinking he was George. In San Antonio on August 11, an audience of two thousand dwindled to six hundred as he stumbled through a set that included not one but two performances of Hank Sr.’s “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love with You.” The bills continued coming due. When he appeared for an October 25 concert in Salem, Virginia, he was served with a judgment for a previous show he’d missed. To satisfy the court, the local sheriff took George’s gold watch, diamond ring, and $10,000 in gate receipts. For one small radio station, the constant parade of George Jones headlines was too much. The station manager of WRIJ-AM in Humboldt, Tennessee, northwest of Jackson, cited Jones as a poor role model for his children and declared his records off their playlists.

  Taken as a whole, 1982 seemed to have finally moved George to the precipice. As he wobbled there, the slightest wrong move would surely take him over the edge.

  CHAPTER 6

  1983–1990

  He’d finally left—escaped Alabama, where the drama, the threats, and the dealers had gotten to be too much. Once his refuge, it had become his, Nancy’s, and Adina’s own private hell
. So George, Nancy, and her daughter settled closer to her home turf: the town of Lafayette, Louisiana. The year 1983 began with him missing a January 19 court date in Jackson on the coke charge, rescheduled to February 10. On the road, he was a bit shaky. At a February 1 concert in his former hometown of Lakeland, Florida, he took the stage after a fifteen-minute delay. Reviewer Dave Stuckrath described him as “not at his best,” but added the opinion that “he wasn’t noticeably drunk. He seemed in good spirits and even joked about moving back to Lakeland.” He sang just eight songs, seven hits and his current single, “Shine On,” before leaving the stage. The reviewer was sympathetic and critical, declaring, “One can’t help but wonder what this great singer could do if he had only taken care of himself.”

  February 10 brought the rescheduled court date in Jackson, set to convene at nine A.M. George didn’t arrive until about 11:30. With twenty-five spectators present, he accepted a plea bargain agreed to by his attorney. Prosecutors required him to plead guilty to a single charge: possession of cocaine. Hinds County circuit judge Breland Hilburn then sentenced him to six months’ probation and, in lieu of a $30,000 fine, ordered him to perform a concert “for some worthy agencies here in this area in some appropriate amount of time.” The judge also addressed George’s unexplained tardiness, fining him $100 for the infraction, warning, “That will be paid before you leave this courthouse.” It was. The worst of his charges was now behind him.

  Fifteen years had passed since George, newly divorced and nearly broke, left Vidor and East Texas. Now that region began to seem like a place of renewal. Helen and Dub lived not far from the town of Woodville in Tyler County. Dub remained a simple man of the soil, one of the many qualities that George truly revered. That region held plenty of history for George. Jasper, the town where he’d played music in bars and on the radio with Dalton Henderson in 1947, wasn’t far to the east. Lufkin, his daddy’s birthplace, sat to the north. Kountze, the Thicket town where young George Glenn and his family moved after leaving Saratoga, where he sang with Brother Burl and Sister Annie, wasn’t far south. It was, in short, the optimal place for George and Nancy to take stock and reorganize, far in mileage and spirit from Nashville and northern Alabama.