the News blues

Oh my gosh I hate the news.

One story more lurid and horrible than the last, only to be overshadowed by the horror and lurid-ness (?) ["luridity"??] of the next one....

Taking Journalism in high school, I may have imagined, for 10 minutes, that I would write news stories as a career -- how??!!  I can't even stand to read them - !

From the explosions at the Boston Marathon, to -- George Jones dying.
No, that's false sentiment -- that's silly, George Jones dying is not in the same league with the Boston Marathon incident -- but -- it's someone else who's dead, and it -- ain't good. ...

You know?  Why can't News ever be good ??

Brain-wise,
the Boston Marathon explosions
are in a completely different Information-Set
from
George Jones' passing.

But emotion-wise,
I somehow experienced it as,
One-Damn-Thing-After-Another.
Like,
"And now, George Jones??!!  Oh, man !!!!"

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But Jones lived a good long life -- any person who was a partying star in the 70s -- for them to live to be 81 is like regular people living to be 131, so -- he did well. 

And it gives us an opportunity to contemplate his music and artistic accomplishments -- gifts to us....
Rolling Stone's article, "100 Greatest Singers" contains these paragraphs about Jones, written by James Taylor ("You've Got A Friend"; "Fire and Rain") --

Born September 12th, 1931
Key Tracks "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "She Thinks I Still Care," "(We're Not) The Jet Set"
Influenced Garth Brooks, Elvis Costello, Alan Jackson

George Jones doesn't sound like he was Influenced by any other singer:  He sounds like a steel guitar.  It's the way he blends notes, the way he comes up to them and comes off them, the way he crescendos and decrescendos.  The dynamic of it is very tight and really controlled -- it's like carving with the voice.

He has had a huge effect on all of country music -- you can hear a direct line from him to Buck Ownes to Randy Travis to George Strait.  The Beatles listened to Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, and I think through them, George Jones' sound informed McCartney's style -- McCartney had that George Jones swoop, as I call it.

The first time I heard George was on a copy of his greatest hits.  I was already familiar with Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner, but not George and his West Texas thing.  I was amazed at what he was doing with his voice.  Since then, I've covered a couple of my favorites -- "Why Baby Why" and "She Thinks I Still Care" -- and I wrote a song called "Bartender's Blues," where I tried to sound as much like George as I could.  And then he recorded it himself!  It was one of those things where it all comes around.

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-30-