George Jones/Jones Boys: Live in TX '65: Brave ballads of
self-torture x "C Jam Blues," "White Lightnin'," "Bony Maronie,"
"B Bowman Bop." Panhandle Rag," "Jole Blon,"
JB trusty/Bladerunner
crooner also cool w girl part on
"We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds," heavy guests too.
Guests incl. steel guitarist Buddy Emmons and fiddlers Red Hayes
and (on "Jole Blond") Rufus Thibodeaux ("Two-By-Four,"
George calls him). The JBs crooner is Don Adams
---android-sounding, strangely(?) satisfying.
Ace notes:
Not many icons of 1950s and 1960s country music ever made a live album during country’s golden age. One of the select few who tried was George Jones, whose producer H.W. “Pappy” Daily hired mobile equipment and taped George and the Jones Boys at Houston’s famous honky-tonk Dancetown USA sometime in early 1965. Although he claimed to have a cold, George was in fine form that night, but significant audio problems that could not have been easily fixed in the 60s caused Daily to shelve the tapes and abandon the notion of releasing any kind of live set on his most eminent discovery.In the 1980s Ace was offered the opportunity to do something with the tapes and leapt at the chance of putting out a selection of
the recordings as a vinyl album tiled “Live At Dancetown USA”. Around a
decade later, we issued the full show as a CD to great acclaim.Our
previous issues of this material on vinyl and CD were taken from
original 2-track mono tapes and mastered that way. This newly remastered
release, re-titled “Live In Texas 1965”, presents the recordings in
glorious mono, as it would have been issued in 1965. A mono mix gives
the listener a more satisfying audio experience. It also reduces the
extraneous hiss and sundry
noise that was considerably more exposed on the raw 2-track tapes. This
new master presents the precious archive material in the best possible
sound, without compromising in any way the integrity of the performances
of George and the Jones Boys as they sounded in a Texas dancehall in
early 1965.
The once-brief booklet has been expanded, with a lengthy new note and some era-appropriate photographs that were not available to us previously, and the instrumental tracks have been correctly titled. All these changes are for the better, we hope you’ll agree.
Few live sets have ever put the listener front-and-centre in the way this one does. You can hear all kinds of shouts from the audience for specific songs, as well as George’s responses. Announcements over the club’s tannoy frequently match or override George’s stage announcements. The atmosphere generated on the tapes is so vivid that you can almost taste the beer and smell the smoke from a thousand cigarettes. There’s an opening set from the Jones Boys, fronted by George’s label-mate and harmony vocalist Don Adams, together with some brief instrumental workouts that showcase the versatility of the musicians...
George himself never had another stab at cutting a live album until the 1980s, so this priceless document of one of the genre’s greatest voices singing most of his important early hits at his 1960s best is all the more valuable for that.
Tony Rounce
― dow, Saturday, 26 November 2022 17:57 (one year ago) link