She is the woman behind legendary country music artist George Jones. Now, Nancy Jones is giving us an intimate look into her husband's life through the lens of their more than 30 years of marriage in her new memoir, Playin' Possum: My Memories of George Jones . Millions of people know the name of the iconic country singer. Yet few people know that behind the man and his golden voice was a strong, feisty woman who not only saved his life from cocaine addiction, alcoholism, and other abusive and self-destructive behaviors but also was instrumental in saving his soul. Nancy doesn't shy away from telling his full story...the good and the ugly. We sat down with her and book editor and New York Times best-selling author Ken Abraham to learn about the true life of Jones, including her favorite song of his, the biggest misconceptions about the country legend, how Nancy helped him overcome addiction, her favorite memories with him, and how her own near-death experience finally led her to write the book. This is a LifeMinute with Nancy Jones.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Nancy Jones and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:06 She's the woman behind one of country's greatest artists of all time, George Jones.
00:17 And now Nancy Jones is giving us an intimate look into her husband's life through the lens
00:22 of their more than 30 years of marriage in her new memoir, "Playin' Possum."
00:27 Millions of people know the name of the iconic country singer, but few people know that behind
00:31 the man and his golden voice was a strong, feisty woman who not only saved his life from
00:37 abusive behaviors, but also his soul.
00:41 Nancy doesn't shy away from telling his full story, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
00:45 We sat down with her and book editor and New York Times bestselling author Ken Abraham
00:50 to learn all about it.
00:51 This is a Life Minute with Nancy Jones.
00:55 I wanted to tell the true story of George Jones.
00:58 You know, George, bless his heart, he's got so many stories out there and some of them
01:03 are true and some of them are not.
01:06 So when I had COVID real bad and died in the hospital, I died for 10 minutes without a
01:14 pulse and lost all my hair and 70% of my right lung and had to learn how to walk again, was
01:23 down to 92 pounds.
01:25 So months and months and laying in that hospital, I'm thinking, you know, nobody could ever
01:31 really tell the story of George Jones except me.
01:34 We were together 32 years, married 30 years, so I just felt like it was God brought me
01:41 back to tell this story.
01:42 Well, I first met Nancy a few years back whenever I was working on another project with another
01:46 country music artist, Randy Travis.
01:48 And everybody said, "If you really want to know how Randy and George Jones interacted
01:54 and George looked at Randy as a son and Randy looked at George as a father, really did.
01:59 He said, "You really need to talk to Nancy Jones."
02:02 So I set up an appointment and met with Nancy Jones and boy, she has some incredible stories.
02:08 And most of those ended up in Randy's book, too, I think.
02:12 And so we had fun and just hit it off.
02:14 So when Nancy decided she wanted to write a book, she gave me a call and said, "Would
02:18 you be interested in working together on a book?"
02:20 And she told me some of her experience that she had just mentioned about almost dying
02:25 and that God had brought her back to life to tell this story.
02:28 I said, "I'm in.
02:29 I want to help.
02:30 I want to be a part of this."
02:32 I didn't always want to do a book.
02:34 Laying in that hospital, you know, months at a time, your brain just going like, "What
02:40 can I do?"
02:41 You know, I don't want to leave this world, which I already left then and came back.
02:46 But I didn't want to leave this world and not be able to tell my story of George and
02:53 to tell it to his fans and let them know the truth.
02:56 And in this book, I didn't sugarcoat anything.
02:58 I told the truth.
03:00 And even though it hurt and I cried and I laughed, but I wanted the real truth out there.
03:08 We had a good time.
03:09 And Nancy's a great storyteller on her own.
03:11 She probably could have written a book without me, for sure.
03:13 But thank you for including me.
03:14 I appreciate it a lot.
03:16 But she's a great storyteller.
03:17 But there's a lot of information out there about George Jones.
03:20 And as Nancy said, some of it is true, but a lot of it is misinformation.
03:24 A lot of it is just downright lies.
03:27 Things have been written for years and years.
03:29 And so this is a real wonderful opportunity for Nancy to say, "Okay, this is really
03:34 what happened.
03:35 And I spent 32 years with this man.
03:37 I know him better than anybody in the world.
03:39 And I can tell you the true story."
03:41 And so that's what we've tried to do in this book.
03:42 And we did have some fun.
03:44 We shed some tears because sometimes even as a writer, you almost feel like you're
03:49 taking a knife and scraping across wounds that have not had a chance to heal yet.
03:54 And even though some of these things that Nancy experienced in the book, and some of
03:57 them are pretty graphic, some of those things happened a long time ago, when you start talking
04:02 about them again, they trigger those emotions and the responses.
04:06 And we went through some of that, didn't we?
04:07 So there were some tears, but there were also some really fun laughs because going through
04:12 all the pictures and the music and the life that she shared with George Jones, just incredible.
04:18 The most incredible for me was the fact that George didn't like the song, "He Stopped
04:21 Loving Her Today."
04:22 No, he didn't.
04:23 He didn't like that.
04:24 One of the greatest songs ever written, one of the greatest country songs ever recorded,
04:29 and George didn't like it.
04:30 And he bet Billy Sherrill, the producer, Billy bet him that it was going to be a hit song.
04:35 And George said, "No, nobody's going to want to hear that morbid," and he said,
04:39 "S.O.B.
04:40 song."
04:41 And Billy said, "Nobody's going to want to hear that song."
04:43 And Billy said, "I'll bet you a hundred bucks."
04:45 And George lost that bet because millions of people have heard that song and still hearing
04:50 it today around the world, hearing George Jones sing, "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
04:55 That was a surprise to me.
04:56 I love it, yes.
04:57 He stopped loving her today.
04:58 It's a very sad song.
04:59 It is a sad song.
05:06 Nancy said there was a lot of sadness in her life as she stood by her husband through the
05:09 darkest hours of his addiction.
05:12 You got to believe in the good Lord.
05:14 You've got to ask God to help you, and you've got to love the person you're working with.
05:20 And as George used to say, "You can't nag me."
05:25 But I didn't.
05:26 But without Jesus Christ, I would have never been able to do what I did, and neither could
05:32 he.
05:33 So he always gave me credit for him getting over all of this stuff, but I give it to him
05:42 and the good Lord.
05:43 And George went to several different rehab centers for help on a couple of different
05:48 times during his life, but he found a way even in the rehab center sometimes to get
05:53 drugs and that sort of thing.
05:54 Came out of the rehab worse than he went in.
05:57 And so that wasn't enough.
05:59 There needed to be something in George, and Nancy knew that, that there was a good man
06:03 in there.
06:04 And her faith and belief in God and belief in George, she wasn't going to give up.
06:09 And she knew that if she could get him away from that stuff, he could be the man that
06:15 she really wanted him to be and that George wanted to be.
06:17 That was the best part.
06:19 What I wanted to really get across in this book is that all you got to do is reach your
06:25 hand out and God's going to take you and He's going to help you.
06:28 All you got to do is believe.
06:31 And once you start believing in Jesus Christ, He's not going to make it really hard for
06:36 you.
06:37 He is going to walk you through it and He's going to help you.
06:39 And that's what I want to help a lot of people that say, "Oh, I can't do it.
06:44 I quit.
06:45 I'm not going to do it."
06:46 All you've got to do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you can do anything you want
06:51 to do.
06:52 And that's coming from a woman who went through quite a lot along that road.
06:58 And George put her through quite a lot too, as you know.
07:01 Some of those things were just really ugly and not easy to get through, but Nancy wouldn't
07:04 give up and she had the faith to hang in there with George and prayed for him.
07:09 And you weren't what we would say a spiritual giant or anything like that.
07:12 No.
07:13 But she just had a simple faith that God could do something in this man and I'm not going
07:17 to give up.
07:18 And there was a lot of good times too.
07:20 How did the couple meet?
07:21 Oh, that one's a funny one.
07:24 I was not into country music at all.
07:27 I'm a Credence Clearwater girl, honey.
07:30 Give me Credence and I can clean.
07:31 Old time rock and roll.
07:32 I could clean a house in 10 minutes and turn that music up.
07:35 My house will be clean.
07:37 But the thing is I did not like country music.
07:41 But whenever my girlfriend kept begging me to go to New York, "I don't want to go by
07:45 myself.
07:46 Please go with me."
07:47 I'm like, "I don't want to go.
07:48 I haven't lost anything in New York."
07:51 But I came with her and that night after his show, well before when I was watching him
07:58 on the stage, I'm like, "How in the world is that man singing those songs and he's not
08:02 even opening his mouth?"
08:04 I couldn't understand that.
08:05 I'm like, "Golly."
08:07 But he was wonderful.
08:08 So then I started liking country music.
08:12 And then also that night he just talked and talked and talked.
08:16 It was like he was spilling his heart out.
08:19 He's going to listen to me.
08:21 And I did.
08:22 And I heard a lot of things that I knew that he was crying for help.
08:27 And by the time that it was time for me to go home, he was like, "I don't want you to
08:32 go."
08:33 Well, I'm like, "I got a job.
08:34 I got two girls."
08:35 I'm going, "Well, I flew home commercial," which he charted a plane.
08:42 And when I landed after I'd been at airports all day long, when I got to my house, there
08:48 was a strange car there.
08:50 He had rented him a car, too, and was sitting in my driveway.
08:54 And the rest is history.
08:56 And 32 years later, that's right.
08:58 32 years, quite the feat.
09:00 Her tips for a long, successful marriage?
09:03 You got to have patience.
09:04 I know that there's so many people get married and they take advantage of, you know, for
09:10 being with them the rest of your life.
09:13 And if you've taken that oath, then you should mean that oath.
09:17 And if you get mad at somebody, and next thing you say, "I'm going to get a divorce," no.
09:23 Talk it out and quit talking it out with other people.
09:27 They do not know what you two are going through.
09:31 It's none of their business.
09:32 It's between you and your husband.
09:34 And if you can do that, you can save your marriage.
09:37 And don't ever go to bed.
09:39 It doesn't matter how mad you are.
09:44 Don't go to bed without saying, "I love you," because you never know if that's the last
09:48 night.
09:49 I think my fondest memory of George Jones is when I heard him pray to God that if I
09:58 can get over, because he hit that bridge and died twice in the helicopter, and that was
10:05 in 1999.
10:07 And when I heard him praying, "God, if you get me through this, I'll never touch a cigarette.
10:13 I'll never touch liquor again.
10:16 I will be the husband my wife wants," and that was my fondest memory.
10:21 As many times as I heard him say, "I won't drink tomorrow.
10:25 I won't do it tomorrow."
10:26 Well, I didn't believe him then, but when he did it this time, I believed him.
10:31 And so that was from '99 to 2013, almost 14 years, I had the perfect husband.
10:39 - Yeah, and I think one of the things too that struck me, just the happiness that they
10:45 shared as a couple for all those years, going through the tough times, but then the happy
10:49 times also.
10:51 Some friends of ours told us a story that, so they went into a restaurant outside of
10:55 Nashville and they heard these people laughing like crazy, just laughing uproariously and
11:00 hilariously.
11:01 And they looked around the corner and there's George Jones and Nancy Jones just having the
11:05 time of their life, just having dinner and just laughing and just enjoying being together.
11:09 - 'Cause he was funny.
11:10 He could say things that you'd be on the floor laughing and he's like, "What are you laughing
11:16 at?"
11:17 He was just a funny person and didn't even know he was funny, but he was a very caring
11:22 person.
11:23 So your heart will feel all of this and you'll know that you're gonna fight for this man
11:31 and you're gonna get those demons out of him.
11:34 And like I said to Ken, you got one demon out, you thought, "Well, I did good."
11:39 Well, the next thing you know, there's some more in there.
11:41 So it was a battle, but I didn't mind fighting that battle.
11:48 Him was riding around.
11:50 I'm like, "I hate getting in the car every morning and riding around, but you want me
11:58 to tell what I did?"
11:59 - I'm glad, yeah.
12:00 - Okay.
12:01 - He was the type that could jump up, put his baseball cap on, "Let's go."
12:05 Well, "Hello, I'd like to put some makeup on.
12:08 I'd like to comb my hair."
12:10 Well one morning he's already in the garage honking the horn.
12:14 I'm like, "Hmm, this is gonna make me mad."
12:17 So he was honking the horn.
12:19 "Well, I'm trying to get dressed.
12:22 So here I go through the house.
12:23 I had my panties on and no bra."
12:27 'Cause he's mad 'cause I hadn't come out yet.
12:29 So I go out, I sat down in the car, just like that.
12:35 And he didn't look over there 'cause he was ready to go.
12:40 So we had a long driveway.
12:44 So I was like, "Oh God, please let him look over here."
12:48 And he got all the way down to where the gate was.
12:52 He looked over and said, "What are you doing?
12:54 Get in the house and put some clothes on."
12:57 He never honked that horn again.
12:59 Never did.
13:00 Never.
13:01 Never.
13:02 He learned a lesson on that one.
13:03 He did.
13:04 He did.
13:05 I think a lot of people thought George was mean.
13:07 And Nancy can speak to that a lot better than I can.
13:10 But a lot of people thought George Jones was mean because they knew that he had an addiction
13:14 to cocaine.
13:15 They knew that he drank a lot.
13:18 And it was common in the music business that George was sometimes out of control.
13:22 Oh, very much so.
13:24 And missed a lot of concerts.
13:25 He was known as No Show Jones for a lot of years until Nancy helped him get along on
13:30 that.
13:31 But there was this other part of him that people didn't know that Nancy has known all
13:35 these years that we want to come through in the book.
13:38 And I think it has.
13:39 I hope it has.
13:40 I believe it has.
13:42 But that George was also just this wonderful person who had such a kind heart, compassion,
13:48 willing to help other people.
13:50 Most of the young musicians in Nashville, Tennessee look at George Jones as a hero.
13:54 Look at him as that's the kind of guy that I want to be because he just had such an incredible
14:00 ability but also because of the way he lived outside of those times of cocaine and alcohol
14:06 addiction.
14:07 He was really a wonderful man.
14:10 He just could not beat the life that he had of drinking.
14:16 And once that was gone, oh my gosh, it was fun.
14:21 He was always funny, but you knew if he had a drink or two that it was fixing to start.
14:27 It was going to be a bad day.
14:30 But all of that, when that was gone, you couldn't have asked for a better person.
14:33 And kind.
14:34 The children you thought had cancer that he was so concerned about?
14:40 Yeah, we were in Canada on the bus and I pulled the curtain back and I said, "George, look
14:45 at those kids."
14:46 It was about 10 of them out there.
14:48 They had no hair.
14:49 He said, "Oh my God, those kids have cancer.
14:53 Get them a t-shirt and a CD and a cap."
14:56 I said, "Okay."
14:57 He said, "And I'll sign them."
14:59 So he's signing all of this and here comes the road manager and he said, "What are you
15:04 doing?"
15:05 And George said, "Well, Nancy opened that curtain and all them kids down there's got
15:09 cancer.
15:10 I wanted to give them something."
15:11 And he said, "They have headlights."
15:14 They didn't have cancer at all.
15:16 They had headlights.
15:17 Yeah, their mom shaved their head.
15:18 He said, "Well, I don't care.
15:19 I still want to give it to them."
15:23 Nancy says George's nickname wasn't his favorite in the beginning.
15:27 Because that was his nickname, Possum.
15:30 And when he first got that name from Ralph Emmer and Tommy T. Contrary, a disc jockey,
15:36 he hated it.
15:38 And what they did on some album cover, if you looked this way at him, he had that little
15:42 turned up nose and that little burr haircut, he called it.
15:46 He looked like a possum.
15:48 And he actually hated it.
15:50 But then whenever he'd do a show or something and somebody'd holler, "Hey, Possum!
15:57 Love you, Possum!"
15:58 He's like, "Man, I kind of like that."
16:00 So Possum stuck.
16:02 And that was why I wrote the book, "Playing Possum."
16:04 "Still Playing Possum" today, yeah.
16:06 Well, it was a concert that took place in Alabama a couple months ago where Nancy had
16:11 a number of major country artists come.
16:14 And the whole idea was, "We're still playing Possum.
16:16 We're still playing Possum's music."
16:18 And they did.
16:19 George was a hero.
16:20 I mean, he was a star.
16:21 He was a rare commodity.
16:22 I don't think there's a greater singer anywhere.
16:32 Every one of those artists, 30, 32 artists?
16:34 32 of them.
16:35 And you invited each one of them personally, right?
16:37 I did.
16:38 I called each and every one of them.
16:39 It was his 10th anniversary of his death.
16:42 I called each and every one of those artists, and not a one said no.
16:48 And they were there, and they sung one of his songs.
16:52 And it was just a magical, magical night that night.
16:56 You got Tanya Tucker.
16:57 You got Jelly Roll.
16:59 You got Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley.
17:03 Winona.
17:04 Good gosh, Joe Nichols.
17:07 Winona Judd, yeah.
17:08 Winona Judd.
17:10 Just really big artists, and not a one of them said, "Hey, I'm not going to do it."
17:17 One led to another, another, another.
17:20 It was just wonderful.
17:21 Just wonderful.
17:22 It was just incredible.
17:23 One of the most touching moments of that whole concert evening was when Randy Travis came
17:29 out on stage.
17:31 Randy just loved George Jones, loved Nancy Jones.
17:34 Randy cannot sing.
17:35 He's had a stroke back in 2013, not really, right before George passed away, or right
17:39 after George passed away.
17:40 Right after.
17:41 And he couldn't sing, but he wanted to be there that night for Nancy and to honor George.
17:47 And when he just came out, it was just a really touching moment, wasn't it?
17:50 Oh, I was crying my eyes out, because I remember Randy, you know, big tough Randy, and him
17:57 and George in the studio singing, and George trying to out-sing him.
18:02 He's trying to out-sing George.
18:04 And then when he walks out, you know, have to have help to walk on the stage.
18:09 I was bawling.
18:10 I was crying so hard.
18:13 But I was just glad he was able to just come out there.
18:16 And the fans just went crazy.
18:18 They did.
18:19 It was music at its best, and especially country music at its best.
18:22 I love Jamie Johnson.
18:25 I love Dierks Bentley.
18:26 Why not?
18:27 Oh, my God, you can't help but love that woman.
18:30 She's got a voice that won't stop.
18:32 I love the ones that really sing country music.
18:37 Old-time country.
18:38 Old-time country.
18:39 Traditional country.
18:40 And that Jamie Johnson, I'm so proud of him.
18:43 He has come such a long way.
18:45 And that night at the show, him and Wynonna did "Golden Rings," and it was just a beautiful,
18:53 beautiful redemption of that.
18:54 It was just cold chill bumps.
18:59 My best life advice, believe in the good Lord.
19:03 Once you believe in God, you're going to feel so much better.
19:06 I mean, just whenever I was in that hospital, and I never cried not one time the whole months
19:13 I was in there.
19:15 But I felt light.
19:17 I felt like I was floating, you know.
19:20 And it's, when you accept the good Lord, I can't tell you how you're going to feel, but
19:26 you will know the difference.
19:28 You will know that God is with you in every step you take.
19:33 And I know that God is with me.
19:35 And when I was doing this book, I have to say, I'm thinking, you know, there is some
19:41 bad things in here that George did.
19:44 But I wanted to tell the truth.
19:47 And I thought, I'm not going to do this book.
19:50 And my business manager looked at me and said, "It's not your book.
19:53 It's God's book."
19:55 And that's why I continued to do this book.
19:59 And I'm just blessed to know that God is with me every step I take.
20:06 I know if I reach my hand out, He's going to grab it.
20:10 And it's a feeling you cannot explain unless you have accepted the good Lord.
20:16 And since this is Life Minute, we had to ask Nancy what she thinks George's best life advice
20:21 would be.
20:22 He would probably say, "Don't do what I did."
20:25 And he would also say that, "I wish that I would have listened a long time ago."
20:33 And he was raised in the church.
20:35 He was raised Pentecostal, his mother was.
20:38 And he sung in church.
20:39 And he'll probably say, "I wish I would have listened to my mom when I was younger and
20:45 not do the things that I did."
20:48 But I think that's what he would say.
20:50 And he would also say that he's proud of me for going out there and telling the truth,
20:57 even if it hurts.
20:59 He was the one that never would lie to you.
21:01 If he was drunk, he was drunk.
21:04 I remember one night, he missed a show.
21:07 So two nights later, the show was rescheduled.
21:10 And I said, "George, don't go out there and tell them you were drunk.
21:12 Just say you were sick."
21:14 He looked at me like, "Oh, yeah, okay."
21:17 He goes on the stage.
21:19 And the first thing he says, "But you put me under the bus.
21:22 My wife wanted me to tell y'all that I was sick, but I was not.
21:27 I was just drunk."
21:29 And I'm like, "Thanks for putting me under the bus."
21:32 But that's how he was.
21:35 And he was an honest person.
21:36 - Yeah.
21:37 And one of the things, too, that he always said, too, was, "Step right up and come on
21:41 in," right?
21:42 - Yep.
21:43 Step right up, come on in.
21:44 - Step right up.
21:45 And we have that.
21:47 At the gravesite, well, I guess I can tell you another funny one.
21:51 We bought like 60-something plots out there.
21:55 When he was still alive, he kept looking for, "I'm gonna be buried here.
21:59 You're gonna be buried here."
22:00 I said, "We don't need 68 plots."
22:03 He looked at me and said, "I'm not gonna be crowded out here."
22:06 I'm like, "Oh, my God, you're gonna be dead.
22:09 You can't...
22:10 Wow."
22:11 - He's not gonna be crowded.
22:12 - And the funeral home put a fence all the way around it.
22:15 Well, I went out there and they had closed the gates, and I just didn't like it.
22:20 So I went up to them and I said, "Y'all can't close the gates.
22:23 I will never, ever let Georgia's fans not come in here."
22:28 So they put me a big sign up there that says, "Step right up, come on in."
22:33 I'm gonna keep this memory alive because I'll tell you, there was nobody loved country music
22:40 any more than George Jones.
22:43 And I'm gonna keep it alive by doing this book also, but also by having people to remember
22:51 him about how he fought so hard to sing country music, and he felt country music, and he was
22:59 given that golden voice by God.
23:02 And I just feel like, you know, doing the things that I'm doing now, even like doing
23:07 that tribute show, and anything that I can grab on, I will to keep Georgia's legacy alive.
23:21 To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV on iTunes and all
23:26 streaming podcast platforms.
23:27 (upbeat music)