POP MUSIC REVIEW : Short but (Bitter) Sweet Evening With George Jones

We’ve got some serious gripes with George Jones over the concert he gave Saturday night at the Celebrity Theatre. But not one of them has to do with his singing, which was little short of exquisite.

The main problem was that Jones’ set was a little short, period. Sharing a double bill with his frequent touring partner, Conway Twitty, Jones’ set lasted only 44 minutes--52 minutes, if you want to count the three-song warm-up that his accomplished backing band, the Jones Boys, played before star time arrived.

On this night in particular, a little extra effort on Jones’ part would have been in order. Twitty, brought low by a horrible cold, soldiered bravely but ineffectively through a half-hour homage to the “show must go on” ethic before retreating--presumably to bed rest and plenty of fluids. Jones, who played first, knew his co-star was hurting: he paused during his own set to tell the audience that Twitty was ailing, and asked its forbearance on Twitty’s behalf.

Jones’ short set was all the more galling because he had thrown fool’s bait to the near-capacity house of about 2,500 avid fans, twice drawing cheers by promising to play “till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.” As it turned out, if Jones wanted to catch the 8 p.m. sports roundup on CNN, he’d have had time to towel off, get cozy in his touring coach, and switch on the TV before a single score or highlight was aired.

Jones did make time during his set for a sales pitch on behalf of a brand of pet food he has been hawking lately on the Nashville Network. He even had his bass player, Ron Gaddis, haul out a big sack of the stuff for the edification of any cat or dog owners in the house.

“I don’t need the money, but my creditors do,” Jones said by way of excusing the commercial interruption. Jones also made a pitch for his very good new album, “Walls Can Fall,” advising the crowd that ample supplies would be on sale outside after the set.

But Jones overlooked the most legitimate and effective sales tactic of all: play the damn thing. His 13-song show was built on oldies and included just one track from “Walls Can Fall,” the single, “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair.” Why not play a nice slice of the new record, to go with those fine old hits?

It’s hard, though, to get much dander up over Jones’ huckstering and hokum. For one thing, he delivered the blarney with a folksy charm that made it easy to take, at least until you thought about it afterward and started feeling a bit taken. For another, when one of the two or three greatest male country singers of all time comes through with as much strength, assurance, and radiant pleasure in singing as Jones did at the Celebrity, any number of extracurricular lapses can be forgiven.

It’s especially gratifying that someone with Jones’ track record should be in such good form at age 61. Before cleaning up his booze-drenched act in the mid-’80s, Jones spent 30 or so years living at extremes that sometimes became so crazed that Keith Richards couldn’t even begin to conceive of them. Yes, the show was at least a half-dozen songs too short. But 44 minutes of George Jones on a great night is worth a lifetime pass to see Billy Ray Cyrus.

Jones followed a steady pattern throughout the show: first a wry, up-tempo song, then one of his trademark ballads. Bouncy numbers like the opening “No Show Jones” (a humorous tribute to the boozing days when Jones became infamous for going AWOL on concert nights) let Jones inject humor, yet still impress on purely musical terms with firm, lower-than-low notes that drew whoops and hollers from the crowd.

By the second tune, “Once You’ve Had the Best,” it was obvious that Jones was comfortable and fully in command. Like an ace pitcher who can hit the corners at will, Jones was able to reach and hold those low notes that drop out of a melody line like a sudden dip in the road, or deliver his signature upward slides that embroider a key word or phrase to heart-tugging effect.

At a couple of junctures, jokingly pleading that he had to defer to age and take a break, Jones set loose his six-man band on brief, bluegrass-style instrumental interludes. Each time, the Jones Boys lit out with the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever chasing a Frisbee. Solos got tossed in a controlled frenzy from Andy Burton’s fiddle to Tom Killen’s pedal steel to Kent Goodson’s piano.

Throughout the show, guitarist Jerry Reid (not to be confused with Jerry Reed, the veteran guitar-picker who is a country music headliner in his own right) proved a solid anchor of restraint, choosing his spots well with tasty, twangy fills and brief solos. The Jones Boys were as sympathetic backing their boss on ballads as they were kinetic when he let them run free on instrumentals. The only departure from Jones’ otherwise thoroughly traditional honky-tonk backing was the superfluous use of synthesized strings for sweetening on a couple of ballads.

An opening segment that included “The Race Is On” and “Bartender’s Blues” established that Jones was equally attuned to rocking for fun and crying with need. The middle of the set offered a nice progression of themes--”A Picture of Me (Without You)” portrayed a man left abject by the loss of love; “She’s My Rock” and “Tennessee Whiskey” followed it with tales of reprobates saved by the redeeming power of love. The ebullient “She’s My Rock” made you feel Jones’ joy, and the fervent “Tennessee Whiskey” the depth of his thankfulness.

“He Stopped Loving Her Today,” a classic Jones ballad that in lesser hands would be sunk by the song’s heavy-handed melodrama and cheap irony, provided the show’s defining moment. Bidding farewell to a titanically lovelorn friend who finally has gotten over his sorrow (by dying, that is), Jones, as he views the casket, declares, “first time I’d seen him smile in years.” The phrase is fraught with the potential for ruinous hilarity. But Jones’ quavering, pained cry suffused the moment--and the entire song--with eloquent sorrow.

“I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair” was an apt set-closer, a good, rockin’-country song (sadly neglected by country radio, which seems all-too-eager to elbow veteran performers aside in favor of younger blood, it peaked recently at No. 51 on the Billboard airplay chart). In it, the weather-beaten Jones declares himself sufficiently fit, frisky and motivated in his 60s to keep on singing country music indefinitely: “Retirement don’t fit my plans; you can keep your seat, I’m gonna stand.”

Jones’ performance of that song, and his set as a whole, was all the proof you needed. Earlier in the show, he had sung the hymnal “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes,” a 1985 hit that asks who will uphold the tradition of country music greats like Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. The new generation of Garth Brooks and Clint Black has a way to go in proving it will have the same endurance. As for George Jones, he’s filling his own shoes just fine.

Twitty’s decision to perform was brave, but ill-advised. On songs like “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love” and “You’ve Never Been This Far Before,” he was able to stay in the lower register of his usually rich baritone and sound passable, if greatly diminished. When he tried to reach for higher notes, his voice would give out, or he would fall into fits of coughing, followed by water-sipping and throat-spraying, that interrupted the performance.

The 59-year-old star’s set was notable in breaking with his longstanding tradition of hardly ever speaking to his concert audiences. Twitty delivered a veritable dissertation, explaining that he was badly under the weather, but reluctant to cancel a show when “in all the 36 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve missed nine shows.” Then he went on to talk at length, and with some good laugh lines, about his theory and practice as a singer of ultra-romantic ballads.

Twitty’s blend of country with middle-of-the-road pop arrangements is surprisingly effective when he is in good voice, with the warmth and romantic conviction of his delivery overriding the saccharine aftertaste of the tinkly-chime electronic keyboards that figure prominently in his live sound. With the voice virtually shelved, the arrangements sounded particularly hollow.

But critiquing Twitty on a night like this would be like judging Mickey Mantle or Joe Namath by their final, injury-hobbled playing days. He simply wasn’t physically up to it, and the audience cheered him for even trying. Twitty promised that “I’ll be back in about a year. I’ll do two shows for you in one.” Coming from a man famous for his refusal to indulge in idle stage pronouncements (or any stage pronouncements), you can probably rely on it.