Long Before Tammy, George Jones Perfected the Country Duet With a Different Singer Who Was “Nervous As a Cat” During Their First Meeting

People have been singing together in some form or another—whether a formal duet or otherwise—since time immemorial, so it’s impossible to pin the birth of the “country duet” on any two people. However, if ever there were a pair to do so, George Jones and Melba Montgomery would be two plausible candidates. Their first song of this kind came out in March 1963. “We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds” was a major success in the country market, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and spurring a wave of covers by Hank Williams Jr., Kris Kristofferson, and more.

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Although Jones’ musical legacy is often more closely linked to his third wife, Tammy Wynette, the country singer once admitted, “Truthfully, Melba fit my style of singin’ more than Tammy. I hate to use the word hardcore, but that’s what Melba is. A down-to-earth, hardcore country singer. She don’t mind sayin’ ‘a-fore I get back’ instead of ‘before.’ And that’s the way I am,” per Bob Allen’s George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend.

While Montgomery was working as Roy Acuff’s featured female vocalist and cutting singles with Nugget Records, Jones first heard her distinct Southern drawl on the radio. Jones asked his manager, Pappy Daily, to set up a meeting with Montgomery at a local hotel. “The day she walked into the Quality Inn, I immediately asked her if she had a song she thought she and I could record. I really wanted her as my duet partner,” Jones wrote in his memoir, I Lived to Tell It All.

Melba Montgomery Shares Her Side of Meeting George Jones

When George Jones asked Melba Montgomery if she had a potential duet in mind for the two of them, she started singing “We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds” a cappella. “I fell in love with the song instantly,” Jones wrote in I Lived to Tell It All. “I began to sing harmony and actually finished the song with her the first time I heard it.” It was a bold move on Montgomery’s part, especially when one considers how she was feeling that day at the hotel.

“I was nervous as a cat!” Montgomery later said, per Bob Allen’s biography of Jones. “Not only was it my first major session, but it was with George Jones. George had been out roarin’ the night before, and nobody even knew where he was up until an hour before the session. When he finally showed up, he was in a really good mood, and the whole thing came off well.”

And indeed it did. The record the pair cut became a Top 10 success. It also seemed to set off a domino effect, with countless other country duos pairing up and releasing duets of their own. In hindsight, Jones believes that he and Montgomery struck something special with that particular song.

“I had giant records years later with Tammy Wynette,” Jones wrote in his memoir. “And there were many other successful duet partners, such as Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. I’m not saying Melba and I were the first to sing male-female duets in country music because we weren’t. And I’m not saying we were the best. But Melba said recently that she thinks we popularized the male-female format, and I agree.”

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