Hall of Fame inductee and tractor lawnmower enthusiast, George Jones - affectionately known as "The Possum" and occasionally referred to as the "greatest living country singer" - has always made great country music and these two efforts from 1985 and 1986, while not his definitive work, are certainly no exception.
Released at a time when Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and co. were tearing up the rulebook, to a certain extent, with their infectious back-to-basics "neo-traditional" stylings, Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes and Wine Colored Roses, stand up well alongside the music released at the time and still sound rather good today.
George Jones: Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes
The famous title track and opening number of the first album included here, memorably had Jones wondering out loud as to who was capable of replacing the likes of Willie Nelson ("The Red-Headed Stranger"), Johnny Cash ("The Man in Black") and Merle Haggard ("The Okie from Muskogee") when said legends were no longer around.
While the names mentioned on this, one of George Jones's career-defining songs, are certainly iconic - and may well have seemed irreplaceable in the mid-'80s - the "new breed," such as the two singers mentioned above, were well on their way to providing answers to this question, suggesting that country music could, and indeed would, survive, despite the inevitable loss through death and old age of some of its biggest stars.
Elsewhere on the record, The One I Loved Back Then (The Corvette Song) and A Whole Lot of Trouble for You are wonderfully groovy and display a goofy quality not often heard these days, while tender ballads showcasing Jones' highly distinctive, heart-wrenching vocal abilities are well catered for, in the form of the touching duet with Lynn Anderson, If You Can Touch Her at All and That's Good-That's Bad - another duet, this time beautifully sung with Lacy J. Dalton.
George Jones: Wine Colored Roses
Wine Colored Roses hit the shops a year after Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes and was another commercial success - reaching number five in the country charts and yielding three further Top 30 singles (...Shoes had got to number six, with three of its songs breaking into the Top 10).
Once again, the title track and lead-off number is probably the stand-out moment on the record, kicking proceedings off nicely with its highly hummable chorus and sublime instrumentation. Jones's vocals are as powerful as ever as he wrings every last drop of emotion from material that is not generally considered to be as strong as that of his '70s peak.
Indeed, if not sung in a voice as warm and as easily identifiable as George Jones's, one or two of the songs here would be fairly average. Tracks like The Right Left Hand, The Best of Me and the duet with Patti Page, When You Were Mine, however, certainly do not fall into that category and stand up well in their own right - the latter even evoking memories of some of the loveliest Bobby Bare and Skeeter Davis collaborations.
George Jones: Two for One
As highlighted earlier, country music in the mid-1980s was going through something of a radical change and on the verge of being taken to new and even more dizzying heights by the arrival of the record-breaking Garth Brooks.
At the time - and certainly a few years later - therefore, these records may have sounded a little old-fashioned to the record-buying public, but listened to today with an inquisitive ear, they stand up as fine examples of the best country music had to offer before the neo-traditional tidal wave hit and swept away the dominance of the 'old guard'. They are also a clear reminder of just how unashamedly sad and emotional country music used to be.
Adrian Peel - Adrian is an English freelance writer and journalist currently living in Mexico. Over the past eight years, he has had articles, features ...
Join the Conversation