WEEKEND REVIEWS : Pop & Jazz : Jones and Twitty: Still Country’s Good Ol’ Boys

In country music, growing old is no crime. Together, George Jones, 60, and Conway Twitty, 58, have been walking the Earth 20 years longer than the U.S. Senate delegation of their adoptive home state, Tennessee. (Albert Gore is 43 and James Sasser is 55, in case you wondered.) A sold-out double bill Saturday night at the Celebrity Theatre showed that country fans aren’t going to toss aside these old standbys as younger favorites emerge.

Twitty’s romantic ballads provoked appreciative shrieks from some of the women in the audience. A rich, grainy texture has settled into his voice without blunting its authority. That gave soulful grounding to the smoother, pop-tinged arrangements in a set that also included some traditional honky-tonk.

Twitty’s hourlong performance was hampered by occasional Vegas-style posturing and scrubbed, tinkling and whooshing synthesized sounds. But the overall conviction of his singing, and the focus on musical strengths rather than show-biz glitter, made these problems relatively minor. Jones, though apologizing for a flu-diminished voice that lacked authority on up-tempo songs, had enough left to drive home a couple of ballads with the high, keening lamentation that is his trademark. He came through splendidly on “Bartender’s Blues” and “A Picture of Me (Without You),” drawing cheers for his signature pained, lonesome cries.

The flu didn’t stop Jones from being a playful, if blarney-prone, host during his 50-minute opening set. He was also a generous idol, at one point sharing the mike with an ill child, Joshua McBride, on a duet of “Who Will Fill Their Shoes,” under the auspices of the Canadian organization Dream Makers.