The Grand Tour (16 page)

Epic released the George and Tammy duet album
We Go Together
in November 1971. In early 1972, “Take Me” became their first Top 10 duet. George's first Epic solo single, “We Can Make It,” by Sherrill and Glenn Sutton, was recorded in January. Released by Epic barely a month later, it entered the Top 10. The follow-up, “Loving You Could Never Be Better,” written by Peanutt Montgomery, his wife, Charlene, and Betty Tate, gave George his greatest chart success (No. 2 on
Billboard
) since “A Good Year for the Roses” in 1970. Those songs, plus covers of Charley Pride's “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'” and Rex Griffin's 1930's suicidal musing “The Last Letter,” were included on George's first solo Epic album, simply titled
George Jones,
which arrived in May.

1972 was a presidential election year. For decades, country stars choosing to get involved in politics (except for staunch Republican Roy Acuff) took the Democratic side, the result of a firm belief that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs saved poor rural southerners during the Great Depression. One exception: Arizona-born Marty Robbins, an outspoken supporter of conservative Republican Arizona senator Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential candidacy. The Democratic mind-set began changing in the sixties as rural white southerners and some blue-collar northerners grew angry at Democratic support of civil rights legislation. In 1963, Alabama governor George Wallace, Democrat and avowed segregationist, symbolically stood at the door of the University of Alabama to prevent admission of black students, defying federally
mandated desegregation. After a carefully orchestrated face-off with a deputy US attorney general, Wallace stepped aside. Vilified as a blatant racist, Wallace let his feisty, banty-rooster style and colorful personality keep his profile high.

Wallace ran for president in 1968 under the banner of the American Independent Party. His flag-waving, raucous rallies were well attended by blue-collar workers in the South, and, to the surprise of many, in working-class cities of the North. Most of his rallies included a country band to warm things up. Opry stars Grandpa Jones and Hank Snow were among his early supporters. Tammy sang for politicians in 1966, when she and Don Chapel performed for Georgia Democrat Zell Miller's unsuccessful congressional campaign. When Wallace again ran for president in January 1972, this time as a Democrat, his Nashville support had grown. Various acts, George and Tammy included, stood in his corner. Not everyone followed. Merle Haggard, assumed Wallace-friendly thanks to his flag-waving anthem “Okie from Muskogee,” refused to support the governor, who conducted an aggressive campaign until he was shot by Arthur Bremer at a Laurel, Maryland, campaign stop on May 15. Paralyzed from the waist down, Wallace vowed to press ahead. Dewey Smith, a Wallace organizer in Polk County, Florida, which included Lakeland, heard of an all-star fundraiser being held for liberal Democratic hopeful Senator George McGovern and decided the idea could work for Wallace. He dubbed it “Wallace's Woodstock.” On June 10, George and Tammy hosted a fundraiser at Old Plantation joined by Ferlin Husky, Del Reeves, Melba, and the governor's son, George Wallace Jr., an aspiring country singer. Press reports indicated the event drew between seven and ten thousand.

In the studio, Billy doubled down on the mystique surrounding the couple's life as it gained greater buzz with fans and the
media. With things seemingly going well at the moment, the next choice was “The Ceremony,” originally titled “Until Death Do Us Part.” Its composers were Jenny Strickland and Carmol Taylor. Billy made changes and became the third cowriter. While over-the-top in many ways, this fanciful, overly dramatized version of the Jones-Wynette nuptials scored when the couple performed it onstage and became a Top 10 single. It seemed that many singles Epic chose to release alluded, directly or indirectly, to the ups and downs of the couple's relationship. Norro Wilson didn't believe this was always a deliberate effort, calling the material “songs that fit their particular environment at that time. I think because it was a good song, you recorded it because it was bringing out things about them. But I don't know that we consciously or they consciously thought that.”

As Tammy accrued three No. 1 singles in 1972 alone, George's next solo effort, the ballad “A Picture of Me (Without You),” became another of his earliest Epic masterpieces. Norro Wilson wrote it, based on an idea George Richey had jotted on a piece of paper he kept in his wallet. With a haunting, gospel-like melody and Sherrill's careful production work, it became Jones's third Top 10 solo single at Epic that fall. Wilson was proud of the final result, noting, “If you can come up with a good title, sometimes [the songs] will write themselves. Everybody loved the song, and then when he opened his mouth and started singin' it and the playing and especially the piano licks on ‘Picture . . .'” It remains a powerful performance, revealing how Sherrill's fastidious arrangements continued to accentuate the grittiness in George's voice. Beginning with gentle vibes and piano, George starts his vocal as perfectly placed, dramatic, Spector-like percussion figures punctuate each verse beneath him. As he sings, backup singers join on the chorus, with strings and pedal steel blending flawlessly in the
background. The song wasn't necessarily tied to his tempestuous relations with Tammy, but it bolstered his growing, deepening stature as the king of heartbreak.

Country began gaining ground in escaping its niche-market status. Albums like the best-selling and universally admired
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
and his follow-up album
At San Quentin
were only part of the trend. In the 1960s,
Rolling Stone
magazine, known for its literate and incisive chronicling of the rock scene, had provided some of the earliest intelligent profiles of Cash, Buck, and Haggard. George and Tammy began to attract more interest from the print media beyond country fan publications. A sign of that came with a 1972
Rolling Stone
profile of Tammy. Author Patrick Thomas followed her (with George mostly in the background) around Old Plantation. George already had a degree of popularity among rock and folk musicians like Dylan, though it was Johnny Cash who truly captured the counterculture as early as the 1960s folk revival. Among the Jones fans was Gram Parsons, the Florida-born former folkie turned West Coast country rocker. A founding member of the pioneering California country-rock band the International Submarine Band, Parsons had joined the iconic folk-rock band the Byrds, of “Mr. Tambourine Man” fame, in 1968. The group recorded George's old Mercury single “You're Still on My Mind” on their groundbreaking country-rock album
Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

Old Plantation had been a resounding success since its opening, but one problem persisted thanks to the huge crowds: local government and residents' concerns about traffic congestion, zoning, and other related matters. As the hassles continued and time passed, an old pattern repeated itself: George began losing interest. He found the park as much a chore as a potential revenue stream. With him and Tammy busier than ever with records and
touring, the homestead that had been so much fun to create felt less important. As 1972 came to an end, they closed the park, put their Florida holdings on the market, and returned to Nashville. Since they already had a residence there, they naturally needed a second. The 1973 vanity purchase they made was a classy one. They paid $310,000 for Oaklawn, a sprawling estate near Spring Hill, Tennessee. Built in 1835 by Absalom Thompson, the house had been Confederate general John Bell Hood's headquarters for one night during the 1864 military campaign that led to the Battle of Franklin. George had no interest in creating another music park. Instead he purchased farm equipment and Angus cattle to occupy his time, placing the Nudie-embellished Bonneville in a barn, where it became fair game for pigeons and rodents. Eventually he resold it to Nudie.

George and Tammy's TV appearances were expanding beyond
Hee-Haw
. They appeared on the March 16, 1973,
Midnight Special,
NBC's Friday late-night music variety show built around live performances by current rock and pop acts. Tammy sang “Kids Say the Darnedest Things”; George sang his hit “What My Woman Can't Do,” proof their growing visibility merited appearing on a show whose audience cared more about the Doobie Brothers and Carole King. “What My Woman Can't Do,” cowritten by George and Peanutt with the usual adjustments by Billy, was straight-ahead traditional. Pig Robbins added piano trills in the right places, and the backup singers blended nicely with keening pedal steel in the background. The lyrics' allusions to Tammy were obvious enough.

The emotional roller coaster for the couple and for everyone around them continued, though, on occasion, it yielded some positive results. In one blowup during a 1972 tour, both Peanutt and his wife were on George and Tammy's bus and heard
Tammy declare, “We ain't gonna make it!” Without thinking, George responded, “We're just gonna have to hold on.” Hearing those lines would light up the section of any gifted songwriter's brain, the area that can turn such offhand remarks into music. Tammy had been irritated with Peanutt for his ongoing partying with George. By the next day, Peanutt had written part of “We're Gonna Hold On.” George and Tammy liked what they heard. George added some ideas, and Tammy was thrilled enough by the song to set aside her aggravation at its composer. They recorded it at Columbia in March 1973.

George's return to Nashville had pretty much knocked him off the wagon. Norro Wilson saw the drinking as others did: a facade. “He was shy in quite a few ways. He was just really an old country boy. When he'd get crazy and did a little drinkin' it gave him courage, and that's when he'd act up.” Accompanied by Peanutt, George's longtime picking and drinking buddy, he'd take off from Nashville for parts unknown whenever he pleased. Sometimes it was George's doing. At other times, Tammy went berserk and got physical with him, or found her own excuse to take off. In August 1973, she had divorce papers drawn up hoping to scare him straight. To say the move backfired is putting it mildly. Receiving the papers set him into a towering rage that ended at Columbia's studios, where he ended up cutting his hand and arm after punching a window at the security desk. Metro police arrived, arrested him for public drunkenness, and took him to jail. Peanutt bailed him out. Tammy decided to withdraw the papers and hold on, at least for the moment.

Released late that summer, “We're Gonna Hold On” was a restrained, simple declaration of resiliency. Tammy takes the first verse, George picking up the next. Billy kept things interesting by changing keys as the song progressed. It became their first No. 1 duet.
George's next Top 10 was a frantic solo reading of Bobby Braddock's “Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half as Bad as Losing You),” which felt rushed. It certainly didn't make the best use of his voice the way the next single did. Johnny Paycheck, then recording for Billy at Epic, wrote “Once You've Had the Best,” a celebration of reconciliation, a ballad that seemed to symbolize the ongoing George-Tammy issues. It had the usual Sherrill production values: subtle piano, strings, carefully placed percussion, and a male vocal chorus in the background. George sang the gentle lyrics, bending notes in all the right places. It became his most successful Epic single yet.

The situation ebbed and flowed behind the scenes. Tammy, despite Peanutt's obvious friendship with George and his compositional talents, was not personally fond of the Montgomerys, who finally left Nashville for northern Alabama, a region to figure prominently in the next phase of George's life. The year 1974 brought an even greater worry for him: Clara's failing health. Born four years before the twentieth century began, she had started to have heart problems around 1968 (a year after George W died), leading George and Tammy to regularly rush to Texas when she became ill. In April, they were in London to play the International Country Music Festival at Wembley Stadium when they got an emergency overseas call from Helen. Clara was failing fast. A thoroughly supportive Tammy, who also loved Clara, joined George on a transatlantic flight, a connecting flight to Houston, and finally a long drive to her bedside. They arrived too late. Clara Patterson Jones, the loving, righteous mother who'd given her son his best and most noble instincts and much of his love for music, died peacefully on April 13, before they got there. The pain burned deeply as the family gathered for the funeral. She was interred next to her husband at Restlawn Memorial Park under the couple's bronze marker.

AMERICAN RECORD COMPANIES LARGE AND SMALL EMPLOYED STAFF TO PRO
MOTE
new releases to retailers and to radio, as they did in New York and Los Angeles, with larger labels having more elaborate staffs. The exploding sales of rock and pop led to a growing music press in the wake of
Rolling Stone, Creem,
and other publications along with mainstream newspapers devoting increased space to informed coverage of rock and pop. Along with radio and sales staff, most labels had separate offices dedicated to promoting artists and new releases to print media. Until 1974, Nashville had no such thing. To oversee the Nashville office, Columbia Records hired Dan Beck, who'd formerly written for the New York trade publication
Record World,
once interviewing Sherrill, who was impressed with the published story. When he arrived, Beck hired Mary Ann McCready, just out of Vanderbilt University, as his assistant. Columbia “had all of these big artists and with a lot going on, headquarters in New York was noticing that Nashville was growing from the red to the black,” McCready recalled. “Billy was very anxious to have some marketing support in Nashville with what was then a promotion and studio operation.”

Once Beck set up shop he connected with Tammy, who, despite the unpredictable ups and downs of her marriage, presented the best possible face to the label, as did George. “Tammy was really excited and engaged in the whole idea of publicity,” he said. “I think that went back to her days as a beauty operator when she was in Alabama. What was stardom and fame back then? It was those magazines . . . in the beauty shops. Tammy just idolized George as a singer. I know it was kind of a tumultuous time for them, but when I saw them, she was extremely happy. She just loved the whole idea of being married to George, loved what a performer he was and the whole thing.”