Consumer Guide Album

George Jones: Anniversary: Ten Years of Hits [Epic, 1982]
Sure he's inconsistent and self-destructive, but he's such a natural that all his insanity goes into the mix, and such a pro that the greatest performance on all four sides, "He Stopped Loving Her Today," was recorded with a year between the first verse and the bridge. Note also that it was completed in 1980--the strictly chronological sequencing clarifies how he and Billy Sherrill grew into their collaboration. As countrypolitan evolves into country-pop, yielding a standard country best-of on the first two sides, Sherrill gives up on forcing Jones into the mold, instead encouraging his prize to be what he is, the greatest country singer in history--not so much with arrangements, though they do get sparer, as with increasingly hyperbolic and goofy material. Jones's Starday and Musicor best-ofs are as essential as Jimmie Rodgers or Robert Johnson. Side four--ruminative, mannered, dripping with pain--cuts them. A−