Burning Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets

Performer: George Jones
Artist: Geogette Jones; Leon Russell; Ricky Skaggs; Dolly Parton; Keith Richards; Vince Gill; Jim Lauderdale; Shelby Lynne; Mark Chesnutt; Mark Knopfler; Marty Stuart; Tammy Wynette
Producer: Keith Stegall; Billy Sherrill; Brian Ahern
Distributor: Welk

Notes: Personnel: George Jones (vocals); Louis Dean Nunley (vocals). Audio Mixer: John Kelton. Arranger: D. Bergen White. While duet recordings are a dime a dozen in the world of country music, nobody does duets like George Jones, whose recordings with Tammy Wynette and Melba Montgomery virtually defined the form. BURN YOUR PLAYHOUSE DOWN collects the honky-tonk hero's previously unreleased duet performances from the 1993 BRADLEY BARN SESSIONS and 1988's FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES, as well as a lost '70s track with Wynette and a 21st-century tune by Jones and his daughter Georgette. While the cuts with artists like Wynette and Dolly Parton--both old hands at the duet game--are as great as you might expect, one of the surprise highlights is a version of the title track with Keith Richards, who turns in one of the finest vocal performances of his career. And revisiting his classic "The Window Up Above" with the help of Leon Russell, Jones proves that he still hasn't exhausted all the interpretive possibilities of even his best-known material. The subtitle of Burning Your Playhouse Down makes plain that this compilation rounds up scraps from the Possum's vaults -- unreleased cuts not from the '60s or '70s, but a more recent vintage, as this relies on recordings from the '90s and beyond. Much of the album gathers up leftovers from 1994's The Bradley Barn Sessions, which was designed as a superstar duet album, so there are plenty of discards left behind, including the title track with Keith Richards, one of the better cuts here, as it has a loose honky tonk vibe. It's no coincidence that the sloppiest vocalist here spurs on the liveliest performance. Apart from an appealingly faithful "You're Still on My Mind" with Marty Stuart, everything else here is crisp, clean, and tasteful -- even Leon Russell's piano feels pristinely digital on "The Window Up Above" -- nothing objectionable, but nothing memorable, either. With the exception of the Keith and Marty tunes -- and the new "You and Me and Time," a duet with Jones' daughter Georgette where George gladly takes a back seat, thereby turning it into a sweet coming-out party for his kid -- it's all too clear why these recordings never saw the light of day in the first place, as they're merely outtakes, not good enough to make it onto the finished product. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine The subtitle of Burning Your Playhouse Down makes plain that this compilation rounds up scraps from the Possum's vaults -- unreleased cuts not from the '60s or '70s, but a more recent vintage, as this relies on recordings from the '90s and beyond. Much of the album gathers up leftovers from 1994's The Bradley Barn Sessions, which was designed as a superstar duet album, so there are plenty of discards left behind, including the title track with Keith Richards, one of the better cuts here, as it has a loose honky tonk vibe. It's no coincidence that the sloppiest vocalist here spurs on the liveliest performance. Apart from an appealingly faithful "You're Still on My Mind" with Marty Stuart, everything else here is crisp, clean, and tasteful -- even Leon Russell's piano feels pristinely digital on "The Window Up Above." The Keith and Marty tunes turn out to be the highlights overall, although also noteworthy is the new "You and Me and Time," a duet with Jones' daughter Georgette where George gladly takes a back seat, thereby turning it into a sweet coming-out party for his kid. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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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