George Jones

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• Genre: Honky-Tonk
• Hometown: Saratoga
• George Jones Website

About

Known by his fans as the King of the Broken Hearts, George Glenn Jones has been blessed with one of the most distinctive, influential and golden voices in the history of country music. Infatuated with the music of Hank Williams, Jones spent the better part of his youth playing in smoky honky-tonks until he developed a songwriting style that spawned nearly as many chart-toppers as Eddy Arnold. Jones puts his life into his songs, telling tales of debauchery and oppression, reflecting his personal battles with alcoholism and divorce. He hit the charts with the platinum-selling widow's anthem "He Stopped Loving Her Today" in 1980, but by the '90s, country radio had begun exchanging their heritage artists for younger, fresher faces. Although Jones didn't have much in the way of chart success, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992 and continued to record and tour throughout the decade. In 1996, Jones authored the book, I Lived to Tell It All, which hit the New York Times' Best Seller list and television specials shined a spotlight on the legend, feeding the public's insatiable hunger for George Jones. Surprisingly, George's second Grammy came in 1999, some 20 years after his first, for the acclaimed album, Cold Hard Truth. In 2008, Jones released a duets album called Burn Your Playhouse Down.

- Linda Ryan