Peter Stone Brown on George Jones

Peter interviews George Jones and also writes about his favourite George Jones music.

My first introduction to George Jones was in the summer of 1970 at the Sportsmen’s Club in Paw Paw, West Virginia, at an Asleep At The Wheel show where Leroy Preston sang, “The Race Is On.”  I’d been getting into country & western music for a couple of years and various people kept telling me that George Jones was the best.  Not long after, I saw a Jones album, The Race Is On in a tiny record shop in Philly, but Jones looked like such a geeky redneck with his flattop, I was pretty nervous about buying it.  All that changed when my brother taped me The George Jones Story, a two-record set of his (still) best and earliest recordings for Starday and Mercury Records.  The first song to hit me was “Color Of The Blues,” but there was no doubt that this was a singer of rare emotion and power.  Not long after, I went back to that little record shop and bought The Race Is On.