6-CD boxed set (LP-size) with 174-page hardcover book, 200
tracks. Total playing time approx. 458 minutes. His fans and
country music lovers have been asking for this definite set with
George Jones' early Starday and Mercury s for years. ?
One of Bear Family's most requested sets ... ever! ? The
beginning of the greatest career in country music ? All of George
Jones' classic early s, including Why Baby Why, White
Lightning, Treasure Of Love, Window Up Above, Tender Years, and
twenty more charted hits! ? More than 20 previously unissued
takes and songs! ? Includes the Thumper Jones rockabilly single
and all of George Jones' soundalike s for Dixie! ? All
the era's duets with Jeanette Hicks, Bobbie Ellison, Margie
Singleton, Virginia Spurlock, as well as harmony vocals by Sonny
Burns, Darrell McCall, James O'Gwynn, Floyd Robinson, and Donny
Young (aka Johnny Paycheck). ? Exhaustive newly researched
biography and discography! ? 6 CDs with a 174 page book,
featuring photos from the Jones' family's personal scrapbook! How
It Happened Almost from the beginning of Bear Family forty years
ago, there has been a steady flow of requests to reissue all of
George Jones' Starday and Mercury s. They've been issued
and reissued on scatter compilations on myriad labels,
sometimes rechanneled into fake stereo, sometimes overdubbed,
sometimes edited, and usually without any logic behind the
compilation. As a first step, Bear Family founder Richard Weize
asked Otto Kitsinger, Don Roy and Dave Sax to try to take the
first at a discography of George Jones' early s.
That was more than twenty years ago. After the success of Bear
Family's anthologies of Jones' United Artists and Musicor
s, we decided to take another at making sense of
the frustrating tape logs and session contracts from Jones'
earliest sessions. Then we tried to fill in the multitude of
missing pieces, and figure out who owned what. And then we
commissioned Kevin Coffey to write what is surely the definitive
account of Jones' early years. Finally, we contacted the George
Jones estate for their photos. The result: the last word on the
early s of the first name in country music. Why It
Happened The reason for the years of work behind this set is that
it represents the beginning of George Jones ... the greatest
singer in country music history. Here he's young and vibrant with
everything to prove and nothing to lose. Over the course of seven
years, we hear him become the singer we know so well. There were
occasional dead ends, like the infamous rockabilly single he
recorded as Thumper Jones and the soundalike discs he recorded
for Dixie, and there were some unworthy songs that were forced
upon him or he forced upon himself, but there were also classic
George Jones s, on a par with anything else in country
music history. We hear the raw, unbridled Texas honky tonk sound
give way to classic Nashville. Above all, we hear country music's
greatest singer discover himself The Result These s have
never been heard complete and in sequence before. In
painstakingly cross-checking, we found unreleased takes and even
a few unreleased songs, including little-heard numbers from
George Jones' first sessions in the living room studio of Starday
Records founder Jack Starns. From there, we take in seven
turbulent years that saw George Jones become the gold-standard
country music vocalist, setting the stage for another forty years
of hits. Truly, one of the essential sets in country music, for
historical reasons as much as the pure enjoyment of hearing the
genre's greatest stylist at the top of his game.