Introducing yourself to the greatest country singer of all time is
one of the more complicated tasks a music lover can undertake. George
Jones’s catalog encompasses dozens of regular-release albums, but the
best-ofs are where things get really involved. Hits packages abound,
from truck-stop quickies to semiboxes like the two-CD The Essential
George Jones: The Spirit of Country (the most comprehensive
overview) and the three-discs-that-would-fit-on-two 50 Years of
Hits (nice to have, though larded with remakes). Still, you’ll have
a far easier time if you jump in with Anniversary: Ten Years of
Hits, originally a double-LP released in 1982, now a single CD.

The “ten years” in question cover Jones’s first decade with Epic,
the label of his then-wife Tammy Wynette and the home of producer Billy
Sherrill, who masterminded everything on Anniversary. Like
Jones, Sherrill had a weakness for corn, though here it’s pretty ripe,
as with “Her Name Is…” (three guitar notes finish the title phrase)
and high-stepping goofs like “Old King Kong” and “Nothing Ever Hurt Me
(Half as Bad as Losing You)” (“I’ve had my pelvis ruptured by an angry
kangaroo/But nothing ever hurt me half as bad as losing you”). There
are loads of strings, too. But nearly two decades from the beginning of
his recording career, Jones had just started to dig in as a singer, his
bottomless-blue timbre and upright diction ensuring that when Jones got
hold of a great song, few singers in America could touch him.

There are great ones all over Anniversary, and the best of
them are the most devastated. There’s “The Grand Tour,” about the house
he once called home (objects are the way “she left them when she tore
my world apart”). There’s the self-explanatory “These Days (I Barely
Get By)” and “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will).” And then
there is “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

It’s 1980. Jones has had it. His albums are tanking, no one will
book him (his nickname is “No-Show Jones”), and he’s boozing and
snorting his way to oblivion. His wife hides the car keys so he can’t
go to the bar, so he rides there on a lawn mower. (Beat that, Amy
Winehouse.) So he makes the record of his life. “He said I’ll love you
till I die,” the sudden drop on the last word cuing guitar and
steel pedal; strings, loads of them, come later. High drama that skirts
and evades camp, it’s the most iconic of country singles, sung by the
medium’s greatest practitioner.

George Jones plays at the Paramount
Sun Oct 7.