It Was 50 Years Ago Today: George Jones Makes a Rare Appearance Atop the Country Charts With “Walk Through This World With Me”
April 4, 1967
“Walk Through This World With Me” by George Jones
#1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, April 1-14, 1967
George Jones is often considered the greatest country music singer ever, with an elegant but twangy vocal style and a gift for subtly conveying devastating emotions.
Jones emerged as a honky-tonker in mid-’50s, earning his first country #1 in 1959 with “White Lightning,” written by J.P. Richardson (aka, the Big Bopper). In the ’60s, he developed his trademark hardcore country style, rooted in the raw tradition of Hank Williams, but with a more refined, fluid vocal delivery.
Despite his status as a critical and commercial favorite, however, Jones only earned nine solo country number-ones in his career, spread out over the span of a quarter-century. (In comparison, his future wife Tammy Wynette racked up 20 number-ones within a decade.)
Even in the back half of the ’60s, Jones only topped the country charts once. It wasn’t that he had fallen out of popularity, as nearly all of his singles in this era were Top 5 hits. Nor had he slowed down his release schedule: he would routinely release three to five singles a year and nearly as many albums. If anything, Jones was flooding the market with material, possibly cannibalizing his own sales. In fact, his lone late-’60s #1, “Walk Through This World With Me,” would pop up on two consecutive LPs.
The force behind this prolificacy was producer H.W. “Pappy” Daily who, as a song publisher and owner of the Musicor label, had an extra financial incentive to keep Jones pumping out records. Daily had guided Jones’s career since his first single in 1954, ensuring he stayed on top of the trends in country music.
Daily exerted a firm influence: when Jones balked at recording “Walk Through This World With Me,” which he perceived as too sappy, Daily insisted against Jones’ better judgment.
While Jones had made his name with ballads, they tended to be tear-jerkers about broken hearts rather than straightforward love songs. Many, like his then-most-recent chart-topper, 1962’s “She Thinks I Still Care,” featured clever lyrics or an unusual thematic conceit.
“Walk Through This World With Me,” on the other hand, was built from just a few simple, earnest lines. Penned by little-known songwriters Sandy Seamons and Kaye Savage, the song isn’t terrible, but it is rather bland compared to many of Jones’s other hits. (Fittingly, the subject of last week’s column, Engelbert Humperdinck, released his own version of this song the same year.)
Nevertheless, Daily was the boss, and Jones recorded the track, apparently through gritted teeth. Impressively, Jones manages to elevate the humdrum material with a nuanced vocal and thoughtful, genuinely emotive phrasing. It helps, too, that the arrangement is not as overripe as the Nashville sound of this period. There are no strings or orchestras, just ordinary country instruments like honky-tonk piano, steel guitar, and upright bass. Even the male choir is relatively subdued, mainly confined to soft wordless backing vocals or echoing the occasional line without ever overwhelming the lead.
Despite his reluctance to record it, “Walk Through This World With Me” gave Jones his first #1 in five years. It would be another seven before his next solo chart-topper, 1974’s “The Grand Tour.” (In 1973, Jones would also reach #1 with then-wife Wynette on the duet “We’re Gonna Hold On.”) But although the country superstar topped the charts relatively infrequently, he maintained an impressive degree of career longevity, racking up hits into the 2000s.
In fact, he would earn his biggest hit and signature song a quarter of a century into his career. As with “Walk Through This World With Me,” Jones hated “He Stopped Loving Her Today” at first and had to be persuaded to record it. Likewise, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” became a massive success, topping the country charts for an astonishing 18 weeks and frequently being cited as the greatest country song of all time.
“He Stopped Loving Her Today” would be a heartbreaking song regardless of who recorded it, but Jones’s performance is a master class in evoking pathos without ever ringing false. But as “Walk Through This World With Me” shows, no matter how trite the lyrics or banal the melody, Jones could always make a song’s emotions feel real.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
