An Uncharacteristically Cheerful George Jones

The inalienable rights of a country music fan include life, liberty and hearing George Jones sing about lovers caught up in the pursuit of unhappiness. The problem with Jones’s show Saturday night at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim was that he didn’t pursue unhappiness single-mindedly enough.

The foundation of Jones’ greatness over the last three decades has been his ability to sing the most blatantly lachrymose, maudlin material and invest it with honesty, conviction and beauty. But in a short, 50-minute concert (not counting 15 minutes worth of warm-up and sign-off by his band), the veteran Texan failed to dwell on heartbreak for even two consecutive numbers.

That approach prevented Jones--whose Grammy-winning version of Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today” in 1980 was quite possibly the quintessential country record about lost love--from establishing an intimate, lingering mood in which a sweet spell of commiseration could take hold.

Instead, the “country singer’s singer”--whose hits over the years have ranged from the novelty “The Race Is On” to the disheartened “She Thinks I Still Care”--ran the program in a routinely showmanly way, alternating sprightly tunes with ballads in clockwork fashion from beginning to end.

Vern Gosdin, another respected country veteran, opened with a fine set of understated honky-tonk that turned into a conversation on love’s pitfalls. Gosdin reaped an emotional payoff at the end of his scar-studded exposition with a gospel-tinged affirmation of love’s healing power, and he left to a well-deserved standing ovation.