One man’s “worst song I’ve ever heard” is another man’s “greatest song of all time,” at least, that was the case for George Jones and the track that would become one of his most career-defining hits. But before his rendition of the song would get the chance to settle into the hearts and minds of his audience, producer Billy Sherrill had the most arduous task of the entire recording process: convincing Jones to cut the record at all. And for “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, this was no small feat.
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Jones’ hangups with “He Stopped Loving Her Today” were about the song as a whole. Not something easier to fix, like a key or an arrangement. As Sherrill recalled in Bob Allen’s biography, George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, “He thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing, and that nobody would ever play it. He was going through hard times then. And I was having a hell of a time even getting him into the studio at all. He hated the song, hated the melody, and wouldn’t even learn it. This went on for a long time.”
But in the end, Sherrill won the battle. On February 6, 1980, Jones stepped into the vocal booth to record what he described as a “sad, slobbery tearjerker.” Upon getting a usable take, Jones left the studio, but not before taking Sherrill up on a bet. “I remember his last words to me about the song that day were, ‘It’s too damned depressing! Nobody’ll ever play that thing,’” Sherrill recalled. “I bet him a hundred bucks it would go to number one, and he took me up on it.”
To His Surprise, George Jones Was Wrong About “He Stopped Loving Her Today”
Despite George Jones’ insistence that “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was too depressing and that “nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a b****,” the record sales proved him wrong (and Billy Sherrill right). “He Stopped Loving Her Today” skyrocketed to the top of the charts. It became Jones his first No. 1 single in several years. By the year’s end, the woeful track about a man who “stopped loving her today” with “a wreath upon his door,” signifying his death, was a bona fide country music standard.
Indeed, the career win couldn’t have come at a better time, either. Jones was battling addiction and recovering from a recent divorce from his wife and singing partner, Tammy Wynette. After six years without a hit, Jones knew that if he didn’t turn things around, his career might not have lasted through the decade. Fortunately, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was just the boost he needed. As he recalled in his memoir, I Lived to Tell It All, Jones wrote that the song “did more for my career than all of the others combined. I went from a twenty-five-hundred-dollar act who promoters feared wouldn’t show up to an act who earned twenty-five-thousand dollars plus a percentage of the gate receipts.”
He continued, “I was wanted my show promoters everywhere. I was wanted by network television producers. The magazine requests were limitless. To put it simply, I was back on top. Just that quickly. I don’t want to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career had been salvaged by a three-minute song. There is a God.”
All things considered, the song wasn’t too bad for a “morbid son of a b****.”
Photo by Jasper Dailey/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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