One of the best parts of the recent Ken Burns series Country Music was not even a part of the broadcast. The segment features stories from many of the people behind the song. Unfortunately, George Jones passed away in , but we get the story from songwriters Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman as well as from producer Billy Sherrill and others. Songwriter Bobby Braddock started writing the song and then took it to Curly Putman for help in finishing the song. The song took a long time to write. Braddock and Putman started working together during the Spring of , then took a break. They finished the first version of the song in Fall of Braddock initially was not too impressed with the song or the character.
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Needless to say, those are broad descriptions that limit the scope of a type of music that encompasses many different musical strategies and is capable of conveying the full range of the emotional spectrum. After all, the song is pretty much just three chords. And the song itself, composed by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, contains the sadness, which was then amplified to majestic proportions by the production of Billy Sherrill. All of those disparate elements and unique personalities meshed to create this one-of-a-kind recording from It continues to amass honors, including selection by the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board in and numerous occasions when it was named greatest country song of all time on various media lists. George Jones was at a low point, both personally and professionally, in Substance abuse had wrecked the trajectory of one of the finest careers in country music, and his previous few singles and albums were lacking in comparison to some of his best. That something turned out to be a spoken-word middle section in which the woman comes back to visit the man at his funeral. Jones was on the mend in his personal life when he headed into CBS Studio B in Nashville to record the song, but it still was a battle to get the right performance from him. In the chorus, the strings come alive and soar to a crescendo as Jones delivers the refrain in the midst of it all.
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It has been named in several surveys as the greatest country song of all time. The song was Jones's first solo No. The melancholy song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman. As of November 13, , the single has sold , copies in the United States. Alan Jackson sang the song during George Jones' funeral service on May 2, By , Jones had not had a number one single in six years and many critics began to write him off.
Whether or not you agree that George Jones ' hit 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' is the greatest country song of all time, we can all probably agree on one thing: The song is Jones' most famous hit. And there's a reason why the mournful ballad is so heart-wrenching -- it was recorded at one of the Possum's lowest points. Perhaps Jones was so hesitant to record the song because by , he had all but destroyed his personal and professional life with substance abuse. He didn't need to record another sad country song -- he was living one.
