Country music has always been associated with songs of sadness. It makes sense then that George Jones was such a legend of the genre,. Nobody has ever been able to transmit sadness across the airwaves quite like he did.
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Getting deep inside the tragedies and misfortunes of his songs might have been a little easier for Jones than most. He was often living through some circumstance in his own turbulent life that related almost directly to the lyrics. Case in point: “The Grand Tour,” a masterpiece of melancholy that features Jones hitting every nuance and twist in a brilliantly crafted piece of material. Let’s look back at how this country classic came to be and learn the meaning behind “The Grand Tour” by George Jones.
Getting Grand Again
George Jones dominated the ’60s in terms of the country music charts. But by the time the decade turned over, he was scuffling a bit to find the touch. While many blamed the never-ending drama in his personal life for the dip, Jones himself felt that his work wasn’t getting properly handled by his producers and record executives, which is why he decamped for Epic Records.
Jones thought that Epic’s Billy Sherrill was just the guy to transform his work, but their first few records together didn’t do much. To make matters worse, Jones’ wife at the time, Tammy Wynette, was pretty much the queen of the genre. In an interview with Billboard in 2006, Jones spoke about how it took Sherrill a while to understand just how to approach Jones’ vocal stylings.
“He just came up with that sound like he got with Tammy [Wynette], [sings] ‘Ba bum ba bum ba bum,’ build-ups, and it was a little more updated, I guess,” Jones remembered. “He tried to do that with me, but I finally had a talk with him. I said, ‘Billy, I’m country, I’m traditional, I know you’re wanting to cross over with me like you have with Tammy, Charlie Rich and those people, but I’m hardcore and I can’t help it. That’s what I feel, and I can’t do a good job for the label, you or anybody else if I don’t feel it myself.’ I had no problem after that, we’d go in and he got me a good sound. I used my fiddle and steel and good country pickers, and I guess I really just lucked up a little bit on finding the songs.”
Stranger Than Fiction
One of those songs that Jones found was a beauty written by Norro Wilson, George Richey, and Carmol Taylor. And, as was so often the case with Jones, he found himself singing about a subject that hit very closet to home. “The Grand Tour” is a song about a breakup, and, about the time he recorded it with Sherrill, his own marriage to Wynette was crumbling. Bizarrely enough, co-writer Richey would later marry Wynette in a twist that not even Jones’ most devastating songs of woe could have imagined.
If Sherrill had struggled initially producing Jones, he certainly got it just right with “The Grand Tour.” It’s clever how each section begins with Jones singing a cappella, only to be answered by a piano that almost seems to be mocking him before the whole band kicks into gear. Pete Drake provides inimitable support on steel guitar. As for Jones, listen to how he sounds genial at the beginning of each verse as he talks to the stranger, before his emotions get the better of him as he talks about his wife’s departure.
What Is “The Grand Tour” About?
“The Grand Tour” is structured as if the narrator were a real estate agent conducting an open house for potential buyers. But it quickly turns into something different when he explains that, Some things I know will chill you to the bone are waiting inside. From there, he goes through the inventory: a chair, a bed, a photo of the pair, and finally, her rings, all her things/And her clothes are in the closet.
To each of these is attached a bittersweet memory of happier times. When he shows the stranger the picture of her, he can’t help but ruminate on what might have been: Don’t it look like she’d be able/Just to touch me and say, ‘Good morning, dear.’ But since she’s gone forever, that’s an impossibility.
[RELATED: Behind the Song: George Jones, “He Stopped Loving Her Today”]
Alternative Take
It should be noted that some fans of the song believe that “The Grand Tour” doesn’t depict a divorce, but instead a scenario where the wife has died along with their child in some accident. That’s a bit of a gruesome take on it in our opinion, but the important thing is the emotion conveyed by Jones as he brings it all home: As you leave you’ll see the nursery/Oh, she left me without mercy.
“The Grand Tour” proved a massive comeback hit for Jones upon its release in 1974, and helped point the way to another monumental collaboration with Sherrill in “He Stopped Living Her Today.” You don’t need to have lived through that kind of sadness to relate to the song, because George Jones’ performance made sure we could wallow in it with him for the course of those gloriously sorrowful three minutes.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
