George Jones-The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour
Darlin'
Pass Me By (If You're Only Passin' Through)
She'll Love the One She's With
Once You've Had the Best
The Weatherman
Borrowed Angel
She Told Me So
Mary Don't Go Round
Who Will I Be Loving Now?
(Released 1974)

The early 70's was a big time for personal, Confessional records. Joni Mitchell's Blue, Neil Young's Tonight's the Night and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks are the classics in this genre. They are all Devastating and raw accounts of Love, loss, Addiction and failure and have gone on to become the benchmark for which great singer-songwriting is measured, even today. Add to that list the great George Jones' The Grand Tour, A powerful and chilling account of sadness and regret.

Working with the legendary "Countrypolitan" producer Billy Sherrill, Jones creates a lush palette on which to paint his tales of woe. Soaring strings and pedal- steels that nearly speak, this is Country music at its most sophisticated, played by professionals for adults.

Taking the usual Country themes of Jealousy and regret, Jones cranks them up to eleven and stops just short of naming names. Songs like "She'll Love the One She's With", "Borrowed Angel", and "She Told Me so" present a neon-lit bar room world of near- psychotic romantic envy and motel room rendezvous of almost operatic proportions, while "Pass Me By" and "Once You've Had the Best" take the resolution to be alone to suicidal depths. How hardcore is the pain and suffering here? The title track, a "grand tour" of mementos in a house where a wife has left the narrator for his drunkenness, taken the baby and gone to another man was co-written by the man (George Richey) his then-wife (Tammy Wynette) had just left him for. Honestly.

Smack in the middle of all of this misery is a great little rave-up called "The Weatherman", which is a hopeful and positive piece. I don't know if it is supposed to serve as black comedy or it's the drunken euphoria before the next hang-over, but it makes the songs around it bite that much harder.

George Jones is rightfully considered Country's greatest voice. There is no set of pipes to match his. With this record Jones was played alongside Sinatra, Streisand, and Herb Alpert on adult contemporary radio. He would scale the country charts again in his career, but never again would he lay it all on the line with so much success.