I Lived To Tell It All
This album finds George Jones winding down his years on MCA, where his artistry mostly smoldered, never blazing bright as it had at Epic. Whatever the problems in getting the Voice on tape, there's a poignancy here in hearing a silver-haired man in his 60s trade on his rip-'em-up days as a hell-raiser ("Billy B. Bad"), and verge on self-parody in the drinking songs, as empty as returnable bottles. But even on cruise control, Jones remains the kind of singer who inspires awe and wonder, drawing on tensions that start way down in his gut, not just in his head, crawling inside the melody to pull it seven ways to Sunday, and curling his voice upward just when you think he's coming down. Whatever propels George Jones is dark, brooding, and coiled and ready to strike, and no matter how he tries to hide it in the lighthearted tunes, it's here, all right, meaner than the average Possum, and exposing itself with the occasional flick of its tongue. The trick is in knowing what to look for. That Jones. He always keeps you guessing.--Alanna Nash