The Grand Tour: The Life And Music Of George Jones

By Rich Kienzle

George Jones, one of the greatest performers in country music history, began his career at age twelve, playing his guitar and singing on the streets of Beaumont, Texas. At age 61, in 1992, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Sixteen years later, he was named one of the luminaries of the arts at the annual Kennedy Center Honors. After a life that included a tumultuous marriage to Tammy Wynette and a reputation as “No-Show Jones” for missing performances, he died a happy, settled elder statesman of country music in 2013. He was 82 years old.

Rich Kienzle, a long-time country music reporter and historian, has written an excellent new biography, The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones. I was impressed with the author’s wealth of knowledge concerning incidents and people in the country music industry. What keeps it from being the “definitive biography” it’s advertised to be is the absence of source notes and index. The reader doesn’t know where the author gets specific information. There is, however, a lengthy bibliography, and I must acknowledge being surprised to find mention of my book, Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story.

The Grand Tour is divided into helpful multi-year segments that cover phases of Jones’s life. The first chapter, “1931-1953,” ends with his discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps and his first divorce. He had joined the military after being jailed for failure to pay child support. The author writes, “The judge hearing his case offered one sure solution: enlisting in the military, where family-support payments were automatically deducted and forwarded.” While stationed in California, he often sat in with bands in local nightclubs.

Chapters 2 and 3 cover his second marriage and divorce, his move from Texas to Nashville, and his musical career interspersed with alcoholic behavior. Kienzle tells us:

The bottle remained George’s other collaborator. His reputation as one of Nashville’s great drinkers was a given. The amount he consumed before and during a recording session could affect his performances in positive or negative ways.

Chapter 4, “1968-1975,” is the Tammy Wynette period. It begins with a four-page history of Tammy and producer Billy Sherrill. A biographer always has the quandary of how much information to include on other characters in the subject’s life, and this author does a good job of blending these backgrounds into the overall story. In 1974, Jones recorded one of his greatest hits, “The Grand Tour,” described by the author as “a wall-to-wall showcase of heartache, the milieu where George did his best work.”

Jones is between wives and controlled by drugs in the 1975-1983 section. Chapter 5 ends with, “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.” Now there is a cliffhanger.

Kienzle gives credit to other George Jones books, the Bob Allen biography, George Jones: The Saga of an American Singer (1984), and the autobiography with Tom Carter, I Lived to Tell It All (1996).

The two sides of George Jones can be illustrated by the 1994 attempt to rename a bridge along Interstate 10 in his honor. The Neches River Bridge separated Jefferson and Orange Counties in Texas, and both counties would have to approve the change. Jefferson County, which contained Beaumont, strongly supported the idea. Those officials “cited George’s local roots, fame, and triumph over adversity,” Kienzle tells us. But people on the Orange County side objected to naming a bridge for a notorious alcoholic and said he “had no business being honored in this county.” The original name stayed.

The Grand Tour is a balanced, factual biography, and Kienzle uses personal knowledge of the music industry to summarize Jones’s attitude toward modern country music in the 1990s. The story, however, fails to bring Jones to life. His feelings and emotions are discussed, but the reader doesn’t get inside the actual person’s head. There are no interview quotes, other than from one 2001 interview with the author. Family members, for reasons unexplained, are not included. We don’t hear from Nancy Sepulvado Jones or the children or siblings.

Historians of country music will enjoy the details in this book, George Jones fans will appreciate learning numerous facts about their favorite singer, and fans of biography will enjoy this well-written addition to the genre. In spite of its shortcomings, I highly recommend The Grand Tour.