50 Years Ago: George Jones Records Overlooked Country Classic
Many regard George Jones as the greatest country singer of all time. It’s due to the incredible studio performances he turned in with songs like “The Grand Tour” and “The Door” in 1974, and of course “He Stopped Loving Her Today” from 1980—a song that many regard as the greatest country song of all time.
But one of the most remarkable things about the George Jones legacy is how you can go up and down through the songs, albums, and eras of his catalog and find incredible moments and stellar performances, even with songs that didn’t exactly perform well on the charts, or that are not immediately named along with his other top tracks. The song “The Battle” is definitely a great example of this, which George Jones recorded 50 years ago today, October 24th, 1975.
As the eventual title track to George’s February 1976 album, “The Battle” came out in the aftermath of George’s divorce from Tammy Wynette, and at a time when his career was in a commercial slide. George’s drinking and other demons were manifesting themselves in very public ways in the mid and late ’70s. It was around this time period when the nickname “No Show Jones” began to emerge due to missed tour dates, and souring sentiment on him in the public.
But when it came to the songs and albums George Jones was recording at this time with producer Billy Sherrill, they were still second to none. It really was George Jones at his creative peak, even if it wasn’t his commercial one.
Written by Norro Wilson, Linda Kimball, and Tammy Waynette’s manager George Richey who would go on to marry Wynette later on, “The Battle” interpolates scenes from a battlefield with scenes from a lover’s spat in a bedroom in a way that’s immediately relatable to an audience. Billy Sherrill’s use of snare drum gives the song that Civil War aspect. Sherrill’s signature string/choral arrangements and modulating chords leading to a rising crescendo before a lyrical resolution allows the song to symbolize all the seasons of a lover’s quarrel in under three minutes.
Like so many of George’s most iconic songs, “The Battle” feels like a song that only George Jones could sing and make work. The way it highlights the contours of The Possum’s voice, brings the pain out in his tone, and was married to his real life experiences at the time makes it so starkly believable and deeply touching in a way that few if any other performers could achieve.
Tammy Wynette said it best in a quote included in the 1999 reissue of The Battle album that is full of songs that feel inspired by their breakup, including a song George and Tammy wrote together called “Wean Me.” “It’s funny, George and I have lived our life in our music,” Wynette remarked. “It’s all there…the fans don’t have to ask.”
It wasn’t that “The Battle” was completely overlooked in its era. The song hit #16 on the country singles chart, which wasn’t terrible. But it had to feel like a disappointment for a title track, and for a song that feels so epic-sounding today.
The membrane between love and war feels incredibly thin and delicate. Few songs capture this truth, the whims of the heart, and the swirling emotion of moments like “The Battle.”
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October 24, 2025 @ 12:04 pm
As I get older, these anniversary articles are cutting too close to reality.
The Battle:
Songwriting: C
Production: F (Sherril got way too gimmicky)
Vocals: A+
October 24, 2025 @ 12:14 pm
Its a weird song to be sure, but Ol’ George pulled it off. I make no apologies about Sherrill, I liked what he did in general. I see this as a cool deep cut from George.
October 24, 2025 @ 3:08 pm
Sorry Trigger, but the most overlooked George Jones song is “The King is Gone (So are You). That first line (Last night, I broke the seal on a Jim Beam decanter that looks like Elvis…) is classic. The following lyrics tell the story of a man who is heartbroken and uses the Elvis-shaped bottle of Jim Beam and a Flintstones Jelly Bean jar to drink his sorrows away.
Gotta love it ! LOL
October 24, 2025 @ 3:40 pm
I firmly believe that he stopped loving her today is the greatest song ever written and he sings it magnificently no one would dare to ever try to sing that song because he’s saying it so well the first time around
October 24, 2025 @ 5:38 pm
I can live without pretty much all George Jones after starday and into the early 80s, a few notable exceptions like his “King of Broken Hearts” album and Walk Through this World with Me. The Corvette song, the king is gone, I don’t need your rocking chair…. that’s when he sounded good again. I agree with Jones’s opinion on “He Stopped Loving her today”, aka “that morbid son of a bitch”…
October 24, 2025 @ 8:04 pm
The best song on this album is “I still Sing the Old Songs”.
Trig,
What inspired you to write an article about this song? I love that you did, but it seems really random.
October 24, 2025 @ 8:36 pm
Well specifically, I keep tabs on historical dates in country, and try to highlight cool things that happened on those dates when I have the time and inclination. Specific to this song, I’ve always been intrigued why “The Door,” “The Grand Tour,” etc. are considered signature songs from George Jones, but this title track isn’t. I understand why some said above that the songwriting and production is overwrought. This song wouldn’t work with anyone else. But it works perfectly for George.
October 24, 2025 @ 8:57 pm
Well, David Allan Coe, had a song called “Love Is a Never Ending War.” I heard it on a CD, and I’m not in the mood to go Goggling as to how it did–or even if it was a single, but he did a great job with it.
October 24, 2025 @ 9:50 pm
Yeah, it’s on “Son of the South,” which is the album with DAC rockin’ the most atomic mullet ever known to man, and holding his son Tyler Mahan Coe as a baby.
Coe also wrote “I Still Sing the Old Songs” that appears on the album “The Battle.”
Both Jones and Coe used Billy Sherrill as a producer, so there’s close ties there.
October 25, 2025 @ 3:05 pm
It’s always a mystery of why some songs hit and others don’t…Hard for me to be objective about The King of Broken Hearts…He did record alot of toss away material , but when he sank his teeth into the right material- Just Magic
October 26, 2025 @ 2:45 pm
That song sounds like George added his vocals over David Allan Coe’s original.
And Dave sings it much better.
October 25, 2025 @ 5:12 am
I think George Jones is a good vocalist but the greatest? I am not so sure he is. Maybe, maybe not but he has some competition. All a matter of opinion. I like the “Battle”. “I think I stopped loving her today” is outstanding. I recall reading somewhere that the recording of the song was put together from the best parts of many takes.
October 26, 2025 @ 3:03 pm
The term “greatest” annoys me. One voice doesn’t fit them all. Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” wouldn’t sound the same if Brook Benton did it.
And George couldn’t sing in other genres, unlike Conway Twitty and especially David Allan Coe, who could do a convincing vocal in a lot of genres, be it blues, soul, country or rock.
Ray Charles did a lot of good for country music, but he sang country as soul songs, it was never a country vocal. Same with George; he’s too stuck in country to be convincing in other genres. Unlike his peers Merle and Willie, who did jazz and pop vocals as good as anyone, George sounded country, even if Sherrill produced pure pop muzak tracks.
One could argue that George is a great country vocalist, sure, but is he better than Merle? Better than Conway?
Not in my opinion. George tends to bore me after a few songs, he’s too sloppy with his vocal tricks (and song picks), he use them all in almost every song, often over-singing. Merle and Conway shows a lot more restraint and diversity.
October 26, 2025 @ 5:41 pm
You’re absolutely right. Jones could knock that Hank Williams adjacent stuff out of the park in the 50s, like “Don’t Stop the Music”, but calling him the GOAT, there’s some heavy competition, like George Strait for one, and when you talk all genres, I’ll go to the mat for Bob Dylan making his weird voice work on pretty much anything. But it’s a pointless question. And one minute I might say it’s Dan Boeckner or Isaac Brock, or for women, I think there’s a convincing case that Kacey Musgraves has the best living female voice. Or Elizabeth Stokes. But few of these people could pull off the others ‘ best work convincingly, as song selection production, instrumentation, writing, etc, all play such a huge role. Mark Collie’s “Even the Man in the Moon is crying” is one of my favorite songs of all time, despite being fairly indifferent to Collie overall, and Merle himself had a pretty weak few years between If We Make it through December and Footlights. And I love James Murphy’s way on singing on LCD tracks. Or Mick Jagger. And Keith does the best version of Sing Me Back Home. It’s endless.
October 27, 2025 @ 3:43 pm
Who’s gonna fill there shoes, white lightning, but there’s nothing like the chills that start from head to toe when, Hello Darlin starts ,or youve never been this far before, It’s only make believe , but 1 thing that tops this is when it’s your 16th birthday and your phone rings ,Happy Birthday Darlin, my cousin was a d j at a music station and he asked Conway to do it .
October 25, 2025 @ 6:02 am
Everybody wishes they could sing like George Jones, but nobody can.
October 25, 2025 @ 1:23 pm
Declaring Jones the greatest country vocalist of all-time, by rote, has become a disservice, by now. If someone’s a new listener who comes to Jones after hearing that preamble, they’re likely to respond with something like “THAT’s the greatest singer of ALL-TIME? Really??” I think Jones was great on the dark material and good, but not earth-shattering on the fun, up-tempo stuff, but he grows with you, over time. There are a lot of country singers who are equally great, in their own ways. (I’d name Waylon himself, who gave something like that laudatory quip about Jones, for one.)
Seems like a similar thing may happen with Keith Whitley. I was listening to a CD by Aaron Lewis and I heard him cite Keith Whitlley to self-vouch for his country bona fides. The new, hoped-for-comeback single by Joe Nichols “Goodbyes Are Hard to Listen To” name-checks “Haggard and Whitley,” rather than “Haggard and Jones,” which was standard in the ’90s. And I saw Tracy Lawrence on Y-T: He has Keith Wihitley literally tatooed on his forearm–along with Haggard, Jones and Strait–as his “Mount Rushmore.”
Whitley was great, but he left a small body of great songs (none of which he wrote).
Thirty years ago, country sophisticates would name Lefty Frizzell as the greatest, to show that their knowledge ran deep. Funny, I see recent lists, where Lefty is left out of the top twenty.
October 25, 2025 @ 6:54 pm
There’s the alcoholism issue, but also I think Billy Sherrill, Jones’ producer, was much better at working with women. His heart was into Tammy and Tanya at the time, can’t explain why.
October 26, 2025 @ 3:12 pm
I can think of a reason or two why he was more into those girls, rather than into the Possum, but that’s probably politically incorrect to write these days.
October 26, 2025 @ 12:20 pm
In country music only one name stands above George Jones and that’s Jones’s hero, Hank Williams. Sorry if you don’t like it.
October 26, 2025 @ 3:21 pm
Depends.
Willie and Dolly surely ranks above them both among the general public’s knowledge, and as for quality and integrity, nobody ranks above Merle.
The problem with George is the massive over-production, sound-wise and quantity-wise. I own all the Bear sets from his 50’s to 70’s recordings, and it’s messy, to say it kindly. It’s easy to overdose on George (and on Willie and on Lefty, frankly, poor Lefty lost it during the late 50’s.).
October 27, 2025 @ 1:23 pm
Lefty had a few great tracks in the 60s, but his second version of “Stranger,” from the Sad Side of Love, is one of his great tracks. Willie – yes – to quote a recent Jeff Tweedy interview about Twilight Override….”I like to leave them wanting less….”
October 27, 2025 @ 5:50 am
Whenever Jones is spoken about, there are always gonna be naysayers who cannot stand the idea that one guy is referred to as the GOAT. I get it.
I will say, though if you were to take a poll among the many legends of the genre, Jones would unquestionably be at the top as far as vocalists go. Jones peers for the most part consider him to be the guy, even the folks who don’t like him admit that. I think if you polled Country fans age 40 and up, by far George wins that debate and it’s not even close. ( its been done) Jones vocal style was massively influential. You can try and make a case for Haggard, but let’s get real, Hag is mostly cited for his songwriting, sure his vocals are pleasant enough and maybe he’s in the top 10 for vocalists, but not ahead of Jones. No way. You could make a case for Ray Price, but again he’s no where near as influential as Jones. Lefty belongs in the conversation, but his legacy is fading with time. Sadly. Whitley? I would say he’s in the discussion but man, he died young and left a short body of work. Johnny Bush had an outstanding voice but lacks name recognition. Gene Watson could be in the argument and I do think he’s in the top 5, but doesn’t have the amount of hits others do. Gosdin? Hes great but more of an asterisk than a contender for The GOAT.
A couple commentors above reference Jones early Starday recordings done in Pappy Daileys living room. Get frigging real people, that era of Jones was where he was shamelessly aping Hank Williams. It was only a start. Jones later developed his OWN vocal style and he really vocally came alive in the 60s. The Mercury albums were pretty epic as were the ones on United Artist label. His voice was deeper, the baritone was coming along nicely, but that signature vocal technique of dipping down into a low register and then going up an octave in one phrase, was all over that time period. And when Paycheck was in the band it almost felt like a competition, both men pushing each other to greater heights. No im not saying Paycheck was the influencer, that’s been debated endlessly, but certainly Jones was peaking at that time.
The other great era of Jones was the 70s with He Stopped Loving Her Today. He had cleaned up a bit, got off the coke for a time and was all in on career again.
And can you really top Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes? That’s Country Gold along with Still Doing Time and Rockin Chair.
October 27, 2025 @ 7:12 am
“if you were to take a poll among the many legends of the genre, Jones would unquestionably be at the top as far as vocalists go.”
Exactly. And I get that some might not personally feel that way. But the idea that people are shocked that someone or anyone thinks that George Jones is considered the greatest country vocalist of all time is almost to be ignorant to the history of country music. You might dispute if George Jones is the greatest. It’s kind of indisputable that generally speaking, he’s considered the greatest by most in country.
October 27, 2025 @ 8:06 am
One of Billy Sherrill’s greatest accomplishments was that despite George’s severe addictions he was able to somehow get him in front of a microphone on a “good” day to coax an excellent vocal performance. To see photos of a disheveled George during that era it’s nothing short of miraculous.
I played The Battle as a new single on the radio. I’m a big Jones fan but I thought that song was mediocre although George’s performance was spot on. Recall that song was not well-received by listeners. More requests for George’s earlier hits than that new single.
Both sides of his previous single had charted consecutively and performed poorly [Memories Of Us #21 & I Just Don’t Give A Damn #92] His ill-conceived duet with Tammy Wynette “God’s Gonna Get ‘cha (For That)” preceded the solo release stalling at #25. George’s subsequent single “You Always Look Your Best (Here In My Arms)” peaked at #37. George’s country chart performance was in a very cold phase at that time.
However George did turn things around by late 1976 with his #1 duet with Tammy “Golden Ring.”
October 27, 2025 @ 5:00 pm
His best ignored song was Wild Irish Rose.
October 27, 2025 @ 7:18 pm
Ive listened to a lot of jones stuff, even tbe real old stuff and i hadnt heard this one. I do think the song is kind of average, the production iffy, but george is in fine form. For the time it was ok. Today, it would be better than anything out but thats another story. I love articles like this though.