George Jones hid his rockabilly records behind the name Thumper Jones
When Elvis exploded in 1956, a broke young George Jones reluctantly cut some rockabilly, but insisted it be credited to Thumper Jones so the flops would not shame him. He tried to buy the masters to bury them and failed. He later joked that he used those records as Frisbees.
Jones was born in Saratoga, Texas, in 1931 and grew up in the Big Thicket region with a brother and five sisters. His family acquired a radio when he was seven, and he would beg his mother to wake him on Saturday nights so he would not miss Roy Acuff or Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry. His father, a hard-working shipyard hand, drank heavily and could be abusive, sometimes rousing the boy at night to sing for his friends. A historian later observed that rather than killing the urge, it made Jones someone who had to sing. He got his first guitar at nine and busked in Beaumont.
Leaving home at 16, he played on radio in Jasper and met his idol Hank Williams, whom he later said he could only stare at. After Marine service he cut his first record in 1954 in a Starday co-founder's living room, where egg crates on the walls failed to block passing trucks and takes had to be restarted. His producer Pappy Daily kept scolding him for imitating Williams and Lefty Frizzell too closely.
Success came in stages. Why Baby Why was a hit in 1955, when he toured alongside Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, and White Lightning, written by The Big Bopper, gave him his first number one in 1959. Even then he drove a 1940s Packard painted with his name and phone number, working rough rural honky-tonks. He wrote or co-wrote songs that became standards for others, while his phrasing grew more supple under Frizzell's influence; Jones said Lefty could stretch one word into five syllables.
Addiction earned him the nickname No Show Jones, yet in his final decades admirers called him the greatest living country singer. Merle Haggard recalled Jones once leaving his own tour and renting a Lear Jet to Amarillo because Haggard's low note had changed his life. Jones died in 2013 at 81.
Source: George Jones
