George Jones funeral at Grand Ole Opry (+video)

George Jones: The country music star, George Jones, will be honored with a funeral at the Grand Ole Opry on Thursday.

By Chris Talbott and Hillel Italie,?Associated Press / April 29, 2013

A public funeral will be held at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville for country music superstar George?Jones, who died Friday.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Publicist Kirt Webster said in a statement that the public funeral will be held Thursday starting at 10 a.m. Webster says Jones would have wanted his fans everywhere to be able to pay their respects along with his family.

A private visitation for family, friends and fellow performers will take place Wednesday evening. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that contributions be made to the Grand Ole Opry trust fund or the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

George?Jones, the peerless, hard-living country singer who recorded dozens of hits about good times and regrets and peaked with the heartbreaking classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today," has died. He was 81.

"Today someone else has become the greatest living singer of traditional country music, but there will never be another George?Jones," said Bobby Braddock, the Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter who provided Jones with 29 songs over the decades. "No one in country music has influenced so many other artists."

He did it with that voice. Rich and deep, strong enough to crack like a whip, but supple enough to bring tears. It was so powerful, it made Jones the first thoroughly modern country superstar, complete with the substance abuse problems and rich-and-famous celebrity lifestyle that included mansions, multiple divorces and ? to hear one fellow performer tell it ? fistfuls of cocaine.

He was a beloved and at times a notorious figure in Nashville and his problems were just as legendary as his songs. But when you dropped the needle on one of his records, all that stuff went away. And you were left with The Voice.

"He just knows how to pull every drop of emotion out of it of the songs if it's an emotional song or if it's a fun song he knows how to make that work," Alan Jackson said in a 2011 interview. "It's rare. He was a big fan of Hank Williams Sr. like me. He tried to sing like Hank in the early days. I've heard early cuts. And the difference is Hank was a singer and he was a great writer, but he didn't have that natural voice like George. Not many people do. That just sets him apart from everybody."

That voice helped Jones achieve No. 1 songs in four separate decades, 1950s to 1980s. And its qualities were admired by more than just his fellow country artists but by Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, James Taylor and countless others. "If we all could sound like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George?Jones," Waylon Jennings once sang.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/BwC7Kd0xv1Q/George-Jones-funeral-at-Grand-Ole-Opry-video

modesto st louis weather guinea bissau google stock google stock china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23