Yallwire News

Country Music Hall of Fame member George Jones (frequently referred to as "the greatest living country singer") celebrated his 80th birthday at a party in Nashville this week with some of his closest celebrity friends.

Those in attendance included Travis Tritt, Billy Joe Shaver, Jason Michael Carroll, Bryan White, Joe Diffie, Guy Penrod, The Kentucky Headhunters, Elaine Roy of The Roys, Jamie Dailey of Dailey & Vincent, The McClymonts, Ken Mellons, Billy Yates, TG Sheppard, Billy Gilman, John Conlee, Jeanne Pruett, Jack Greene, Bo Bice, David Lee Murphy and many more! Wayne Newton sent a special jazz trio to perform and read a special note.

A native of Beaumont, Texas, Jones began his career as a radio host and has successfully scored over 150 hits during his fifty-plus year career. Many attempts have been made, but rarely capture in words the immense, singular gifts that have made George Glenn Jones one of the most influential singers in country music history. He is the undisputed successor of earlier primitive geniuses such as Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell - singers who, in turn, so heavily influenced him in his formative years.

Born in a log cabin on an oil patch settlement in a remote East Texas region known as the Big Thicket, Jones found early refuge in music from the rages of an alcoholic father. As a child, George sang for tips in the streets of Beaumont, Texas, where, at an early age, he moved with his  parents into a government-subsidized housing project. Roy Acuff, Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell comprised Jones's youthful triumvirate of influences.

Jones launched his recording career in the early 1950s, and with the turn of the 21st century he is still going strong. It is more than sheer longevity, or the almost near religious purity of his hard-core country instincts, that  has made him such a towering, influential figure. In many ways, Jones is one of country music's last vital links to its own rural past - a relic from a long-gone time and place before cable TV, FM rock radio and shopping malls; an era when life still revolved around the Primitive Baptist Church, the honky-tonk down the road, and Saturday nights listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. The fact that Jones has changed little over the years, and at times seems to be genuinely bewildered by the immensity of his own talent and the acclaim it has brought him, has merely enhanced his credibility.

In 2008, Jones received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor. In 2009. he released the album A Collection of My Best Recollection, exclusively through Cracker Barrel Music.

For more information, visit George Jones's official website!