Gospel Collection
Who dares trot out the contradictions between Jones’s dissolute life and the sentiments of these songs when the man has always been such a True Believer of some sort? He calls this his musical response to the infamous 1999 car wreck that caused him to finally give up booze, caffeine, and tobacco. Circuit-preacher’s son Billy Sherrill, who guided Jones’s 1970s commercial ascension, came out of retirement to produce these 24 songs (on two discs) and, especially for a guy accused back then of gussying up country too much, he forges an austere sound. Jones’s voice can’t execute the many twists, turns, and tricks it once did, but it’s still ripe with deep feeling; when he sings "I’m so tired and so weary," you don’t doubt him. So forgive them both for tryingtoohard occasionally ("The Old Rugged Cross") and appreciate this for the old-school testimonial, musical and spiritual, that it is.--John Morthland