In A Gospel Way

Performer: George Jones
Engineer: Lou Bradley
Distributor: Ryko Distribution

Notes: Personnel includes: George Jones (vocals); The Jordanaires, The Nashville Edition (background vocals). Producer: Billy Sherrill. Reissue producer: Mike Ragogna. Originally released on Epic (32562). Although George Jones was well into a career marked by a reputation for drinking like a fish and being quite the rabble-rouser, the release of IN A GOSPEL WAY showed another side of the hard-living country singer. Having grown up with a mother who played piano in church, GOSPEL WAY was not such a far-fetched idea for Jones. He recorded eleven Gospel songs ranging from lushly orchestrated traditional fare ("Amazing Grace") to the rollicking "Mama Was A Preacher Man," co-written by the dulcet-toned Texan himself. The redemptive touch of God is reflected in the tale of a ne'er-do-well who sees the light in "The Baptism Of Jesse Taylor," and the search for absolution in Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me, Lord?" seems a thinly disguised plea for salvation from the rough-and-tumble Jones. Although producer Billy Sherrill's use of billowy string arrangements, crying steel guitar and the Jordanaires and Nashville Edition as background vocalists makes GOSPEL WAY a neat, countrypolitan package, Possum's pain radiates clearly in songs such as "Mama's Hands" and "Release Me (From My Sin)."

Down Beat (9/97, p.53) - 4 stars (out of 5) - "...marvelous vocals....[Jones is] a true `singer's singer' and colossus of country music..."

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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