I Am What I Am

Performer: George Jones
Artist: The Jordanaires
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Personnel: George Jones (vocals, guitar); The Jordanaires, Millie Kirkham (background vocals). Producer: Billy Sherrill. Reissue producer: Al Quaglieri. Recorded at CBS Recording Studios, Nashville, Tennessee. Includes liner notes by George Jones and Glenn Gass. Digitally remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York). This is part of Legacy's American Milestones series. George Jones spent much of the late 1970s in a cocaine and alcohol-induced haze, spiraling down into a state of dissipation that eventually landed him in the hospital. A well-publicized stint in rehab was followed by the recording of I AM WHAT I AM, an album that bears the imprint of Jones' rough and rowdy past, as well as his uncertainty over what the future held. Drinking is the central focus of many of the songs on I AM WHAT I AM. Best among them are "If Drinking Don't Kill Me, Her Memory Will," a tune destined to be remembered as one of Jones' signature tunes, and "I've Aged Twenty Years In Five." Elsewhere, Jones sings about barroom pickups ("A Hard Act To Follow," "Brother To The Blues"), patient women and their philandering husbands ("Good Hearted Woman," "Bone Dry"), and good old fashioned cheating ("I'm The One She Missed Him With Today"). Of course, what really distinguishes I AM WHAT I AM is the presence of "He Stopped Loving Her Today," easily the best single of George Jones' later career. As on most 1980s country records, the slick production is an acquired taste.

No Depression (7-8/00, p.95) - "...The rarest of Nashville creations, an album that demands to be taken seriously as a comprehensive, complex work of art....[a] masterpiece."

George Jones is the greatest of country singers but he has also been a victim of the infamous hard-living honky-tonk lifestyle. Though he's gone through several phases, from rockabilly to honky-tonk to countrypolitan, his melismatic, Lefty Frizell-influenced style has remained at the core of his unique sound. His stormy marriage to Tammy Wynette (1969-75) included duet albums of love songs and bitter recriminations. By the late '70s, his drinking and cocaine addiction had made him so unreliable that he was known as "No Show Jones." In 1979 he received medical treatment and staged a significant comeback with I AM WHAT I AM, which included his greatest single, "He Stopped Loving Her Today."

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