I Lived to Tell It All Read online

  I was often drunk and didn’t pay attention, but the next day the guys in the band would talk about the whispers they had heard and about some fans who had asked them if George Jones knew more about that slaying than he was telling. Occasionally, a drunk would actually ask one of the Jones Boys if I’d done it. Given my condition during those days, I’m glad he didn’t ask me. The fight would have been on before he finished the question.

  In the summer of 1966, a man working in Dallas told someone that he had killed a girl after my show. The man he told called the police. There was an arrest, and in September former Houston gas-station worker Victor Eugene Miller II was convicted of murder. Ironically, his nickname was Roger Miller, the name of another famous country singer. His trial was covered by a press that often continued to mention that Jackie had spent her last hours with me.

  Miller was handed a life sentence.

  Perhaps twenty stories about the killing appeared in the Houston Chronicle, some of which I still have. I have no idea how many stories appeared in other newspapers around the world. Detective, a popular crime magazine at the time, ran a multipage spread, complete with pictures of Jackie and me. The implication about her death and George Jones was obvious. The results of the bad publicity can’t be measured, not even to this day. Members of my family, still living in Texas, had to put up with the whispers and stares, but said little to me about it.

  The investigation, from the time of the murder to Miller’s sentencing, had taken almost ten months. Some folks will remember it forever. Two days after the killing, Sheriff C. V. Kern was quoted in the Chronicle: He said the case would be cleared up in a week.

  Chapter 8

  Looking back, I think I was newsworthy in that murder not only because of my recording career but also because my performance venues had become more and more important. It’s true that I was still out there on the “kindlin’ circuit,” working one-night stands in dives where my songs were just backgrounds for brawls. That syndrome would last for years to come.

  But I had also been playing the nation’s big auditoriums on package shows in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Miami, Boston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and other major cities. All of that was a pretty big step from Vidor.

  And I had helped make history in 1964 when I was a part of what some folks think was the most important country music show ever performed up to that time—the first country show at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

  Press came from across the nation to see if hillbilly singers (that’s what we affectionately called each other) could draw enough Yankees to fill the giant room. As it turned out, the show was held over for three additional performances. Each was sold out.

  Imagine, that was twelve years before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson staged their famous Outlaw movement, one of the most successful marketing schemes in country music history. Dolly Parton was a senior in high school. It was the year Merle Haggard had “Sam Hill,” his second single record, and five years before Johnny Cash got his network television show.

  Garth Brooks was two years old.

  Yet there we were, ten country singers with their bands, in the world’s fashion and financial center to perform music that could be heard mostly on about two hundred and fifty small AM radio stations tucked into the nation’s heartland. Those of us on the program wondered if anybody would come.

  The New York Times gave us a generally favorable review. “The country music jamboree was as ambitious, colorful, star-laden, uneven, beautiful and banal as a circus,” wrote Robert Shelton in the May 18, 1964, edition. “There was a bit of noise, a lot of nostalgia, but enough good music-making for this circus to be one that country music fans would long remember,” Life and Time magazines later wrote about us.

  I wish Shelton hadn’t called our show a circus. He obviously liked it and saw that the fans liked it too. But he just couldn’t stand to be too kind to music that was still thought to be the anthem of the ill-educated common class.

  Garth, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, George Strait, and Brooks & Dunn—any one of those acts could play alone at Madison Square Garden today and sell out the place.

  Thirty-one years ago, it took the combined efforts of Ernest Tubb, Buck Owens, Webb Pierce, Bill Monroe, Bill Anderson, Stonewall Jackson, Skeeter Davis, Porter Wagoner, Leon McAuliffe, and me. The show’s master of ceremonies was Ralph Emery, who was then the nation’s leading overnight country disc jockey on Nashville’s WSM, one of the few AM powerhouses that programmed our music.

  Patsy Cline would have been on the show, but she had died in a plane crash the previous year. Some fans kept hollering for Jim Reeves, who wasn’t there and who would die in a plane crash later that year.

  I’m glad I got the opportunity to perform but regret the impression I made the first time I played New York City. I was back there with the Jones Boys in 1993 and found out that some fans still remembered my 1964 entrance. Or, more specifically, my exit.

  I was accustomed to giving the fans my all. Remember, my usual set in rural roadhouses was two hours, followed by a break, before two more hours.

  But Ralph Emery remembered that in New York I was told I could do two songs. Two songs! I had driven my band all the way from God knows where, paid for their lodging and meals, only to be told that I could sing for about six minutes. I don’t like to be told what to do regarding many things. I refuse to be told what to do regarding my music.

  Ralph remembered that the 1964 New York City show was also my introduction to performance unions. Working the South, I was accustomed to some good ole boy running a rickety soundboard while trying to mike the singer and sometimes all of the musicians through one microphone. He usually shone a single spotlight too, moving its beam to whatever musician was taking a break. The lead and bass guitars usually had amplifiers that they set on top of folding chairs. Not too much was too sophisticated.

  In New York there were too many unnecessary jobs and too many people to do them. My God, we were trying to put on a country music show, not a Broadway play. Everybody working on the production belonged to a union. And all of those unions said the show had to end promptly at 11:30 P.M. If the show ran overtime, Ralph remembered, the promoter would have to pay a five-thousand-dollar fine, plus double the hourly rate to each union member in the house. That was a lot of money in those days.

  Needless to say, the promoter put a lot of pressure on Ralph to keep the show running on schedule and to be sure it ended on time.

  I walked onto the stage, and about eight spotlights hit me in the face. I was blinded. I could hear the crowd, but I couldn’t see it. I opened with “White Lightning” and was thunderstruck when the crowd’s applause exploded. I had feared those people wouldn’t know my music, but I could faintly see a few in the first row singing along.

  I felt accepted, and I felt good. I felt no urge to quit. I eased into “She Thinks I Still Care,” and the people applauded all the way through the instrumental introduction and into the first verse. At that moment I would have forgiven the Yankees for winning the Civil War.

  I guess the crowd expected me to leave the stage at the end of that second song, the way the previous acts had done after two tunes. I went into a third.

  Ralph was down in something like a hole. Maybe it was an orchestra pit. With the blinding lighting, I couldn’t see him too well either, but I could make out his silhouette. He seemed to be jumping and waving his arms a lot. He kept shouting into a microphone, and I could hear the echo of his distorted voice floating around the room.

  “Thank you, George, for those great songs,” he said. “And now let’s bring out our next performer.”

  “Why’s he saying that,” I wondered, “when I’m still singing?” To hell with the unions. I was still wondering why Ralph kept trying to bring me off as I went into my fifth song.

  What I didn’t know was that the promoter had told Ralph to do whatever he had to do to get me off the stage. The clock was ticking toward eleve
n-thirty and the crowd still hadn’t heard the show’s closing act—guess who?—Buck Owens.

  Bill Monroe, who had been one of my idols since the 1930s, could see Ralph’s dilemma and walked quietly to the announcer’s side.

  “You can’t get George to come off, can you?” I would later learn he said.

  “No,” Ralph replied, “and I think the promoter is going to have a heart attack right after he loses his shirt on this show.”

  I guess the union stewards were licking their lips, anticipating all the money they were going to make when the show ran overtime.

  I just kept singing. I was standing in the middle of the biggest and most important stage I had ever been on when they grabbed me. In front of thousands of people, Monroe and a member of his band slipped out of the shadows, into the spotlight, and put an arm under each of my arms. They physically lifted me off the floor. My voice trailed to silence as I was pulled from the microphone’s reach.

  Still, I kept singing and even began to kick a little. But that didn’t help. I was too high off the floor for my feet to touch it. That’s how I left the stage—smiling, kicking, and singing.

  My band didn’t know what was going on. They had fought many promoters through the years because I hadn’t gone on. They weren’t used to fighting one because I had stayed on. So they just stopped playing, gradually and one at a time. The music came to an awkward halt. By then a lot of the crowd was mumbling.

  I was embarrassed. But I couldn’t get mad at Bill Monroe for two reasons. First, he was much bigger than me, and second, he was my hero. And he had only been trying to help Ralph, who had done as much as anybody there to spread the popularity of country music.

  Buck’s musicians were plugging into my band’s amplifiers before some of my guys had even gotten off the stage. Buck had been told to get through his two songs in a hurry, and he did. Applause hadn’t even died from his first when he was well into his second.

  Buck sounded his last note, and Ralph screamed something into his microphone about “Country Music Comes to Madison Square Garden is now history!”

  Somebody stopped an official time clock at 11:29:40. The program had ended twenty seconds before deadline! The promoter had saved thousands of dollars. The people had gotten more than their money’s worth. Everybody was happy—even me.

  Ten singers and sixty band members walked out of what was then one of the nation’s largest indoor arenas. Thousands of people heard the show, scores of reporters saw it.

  But only one person had sung five songs.

  I might have been thinking about that show, but I doubt it, when I played a show later that year with Melba Montgomery. Once again, people made a fuss about how long I stayed onstage. Once again, I thought they should be happy I had made it to the stage.

  At that point in my career, I was missing perhaps 10 percent of my shows because I was too drunk to get to them or too drunk to go on after I did.

  Melba remembers that she and I were part of a package show promoted by Carlton Haney, a big country concert promoter during the 1960s and 1970s. Country stars used to work hard to please him so he would use them on additional shows. Carlton indirectly paid a lot of entertainers’ bills in those days.

  A lot of acts actually feared him. Not me, not anytime, and especially not when I was drinking.

  Melba, the Jones Boys, and I were playing Charlotte, North Carolina. Carlton told Melba and some of the lesser-known acts that they could only do two songs. He told me I could do five.

  What about the audience? What if they liked Melba and wanted her to do more? Why shouldn’t she? She was working hard to establish her career. The people had seen me before, but most of them had never seen her in person. So once again I didn’t like the time limit, but I might have cooperated—until some idiot yanked the microphone out of Melba’s hand in front of the crowd.

  She had politely done what she had been told—sung her two numbers—and was about to leave the stage when some geek from the wings grabbed her microphone from her. It was like he was saying, “We’ve had your two cents, now get out!”

  Rage flew all over me. I went out and did my five songs, took my applause, then started for the side of the stage. From there I called Melba.

  She came out, and we sang our hit duet, which we weren’t supposed to do.

  Carlton began to holler at me from the wings, and I pretended not to hear him. Melba thought we were through and started to leave. I grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the microphone. We began to sing songs for that crowd that we had never sung together in our lives. I would have sung “Chopsticks” just to stay onstage and get back at those staging people for the rude way they had treated Melba.

  Carlton Haney is a fat man with big yellow teeth and a thick Southern accent. He never called me George. He called me “Geoawge.” It took him forever to say anything, and he always seemed to get three syllables out of one.

  Melba said he was patting his chest at the side of the stage when she and I went into our tenth song. He seemed to be sweating a lot. We eventually sang every song we had recorded on our album. Because we hadn’t rehearsed the tunes, we made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t let her leave the stage. The people were going crazy, and so was Carlton—in a different way.

  I noticed I didn’t hear him screaming anymore. I glanced to the side, and he was gone. I turned back to face the crowd and jumped at what I saw. There, kneeling in front of me with his back to thousands of fans, was Carlton Haney. He was a short and obese man when standing. On his knees, he looked like a forgotten frog on a lily pad.

  “Geoawge,” he pleaded, his voice leaking into my microphone, “you’ve got to git off this heere showah.”

  With that, Melba and I walked offstage and Carlton struggled to his feet. He was stiff and limping when the curtain was closed.

  I don’t know why I did what I’m about to tell you. But then, I frequently didn’t know why I did things when I was drinking.

  The Jones Boys, featuring Johnny Paycheck, and I were playing a show and dance for the fire department in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1964. Everyone in the show had gotten up early and had been drinking all day. By show time I was soused.

  The Jones Boys went on and played an entire set without me. I was too drunk to come out of the dressing room.

  “We’ll be right back after our break with George Jones,” Johnny told the crowd. A few had grumbled, but not much more. There was plenty of time left in the evening, and most of the audience expected to hear me sing plenty.

  Johnny said he came into the dressing room and we argued about whether I would go on. He yelled and kicked things and threatened to whip me if I didn’t. I’d heard it all before.

  Johnny and another Jones Boy helped me to my feet and ushered me up to the side of the stage. The crowd couldn’t see me. He and the band walked onstage to mild applause and picked up their instruments.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Johnny yelled, “give a big hand to George Jones!”

  The band kicked into “White Lightning” and fans ran to the front of the stage. I stood behind the curtain and wobbled. Then I began to shake my head no. The music stopped.

  Johnny, the only one who could see me, walked over to me as the crowd began to mumble and stir.

  “Wonder if he’s even here or if he’s somewhere drunk,” someone yelled.

  “I’ll bet he’s drunk again,” another said.

  The people, without realizing it, were working themselves into a simmering anger that I would eventually ignite.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Johnny said to me in the wings.

  “I ain’t going out,” I slurred, “unless you introduce me as Hank Williams.”

  Hank had been dead for eleven years.

  Johnny argued some more, but the promoter and the people were putting pressure on him. I was too drunk to feel it.

  So Johnny walked back to the center of the stage, blushed, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry about the de
lay, but the wait was worth it. Here to sing for you-all is Hank Williams!”

  Now everybody knew I wasn’t Hank Williams. But the people were so determined to have a good time that they went along with it. But I didn’t. I refused again to go onstage.

  The music stopped a third time, and it wasn’t a charm. I could feel the floor shake as Johnny stomped toward me. I smiled and staggered but didn’t budge from my spot. Our conversation was so loud the crowd could hear us out front.

  “I ain’t coming out,” I told him, “unless you introduce me as Johnny Horton.”

  Horton had been dead for four years.

  “All right, you son of a bitch!” Johnny yelled, “I’m whipping your ass right here. When you go out there it will be with a bloody nose.”

  He began to dance around and churn his fists. He was drunk too, so he occasionally bumped into the curtain. It bulged each time he did. From out front, it must have looked like someone backstage was beating it with a broom.

  “I mean it, asshole,” he said. “I’ll call you Johnny Horton, but if you don’t come out, I’m coming back for you. You can sing as Hank Horton or Johnny Williams for all I care, but you’re liable to sing laying down. I swear I’ll whip your ass.”

  “Did he say whip my ass?” somebody out front said.

  The crowd had waited through one entire set and false introductions. The people were getting mad. Real mad.

  They began to boo loudly as Johnny lumbered back to the microphone. “Here’s Johnny Horton,” he said, adding nothing else.

  The band once again broke into “White Lightning,” and George Jones, alias Hank Williams, alias Johnny Horton, stumbled toward the microphone at center stage.

  I slowed my walk enough to sing “Back in North Carolina,” the first half of the first line of “White Lightning.” I never stopped walking, and I never sang another word. I went right across the stage, into the wings, and out the back door.

  And the audience rioted.