I wrote about him last year in Commentary. This is part of what I said there:
Country music, needless to say, has changed greatly in the quarter-century since Jones last topped the charts. The “hard” style of his generation of country singers and their legendary predecessors long ago gave way to a slicker, youth-oriented sound. The music of such contemporary country acts as The Band Perry and Lady Antebellum is often all but impossible to distinguish from the pop-rock from which it derives, save for the distinctive red-state accents in which it is sung.
But while today’s country stars prefer to steer clear of Jones’s piercing pathos, what they do remains recognizably related to what he did (and continues to do). Like him, they are professional purveyors of a commercial music that is created collaboratively–and their music, like his, continues to appeal to the working- and middle-class listeners whose everyday lives are portrayed in its lyrics. That is part of what makes country music commercial: it tells ordinary Americans the truth about their lives. What makes the best of it art is that it does so with simplicity, economy, and beauty, and no country singer has ever been more truthful–or more artful–than George Jones….
He’ll be remembered.
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George Jones sings “The Grand Tour”: