Before, during and after Jones' marriage to Wynette, he had a reputation for being difficult and unreliable, particularly, of course, when he was drinking. He earned the nickname George "No Show" Jones by missing countless shows. His autobiography details all kinds of run-ins with the law, inebriated brawls and instances of going after assorted individuals with firearms (most of which Jones denounces, believably or not, as at least partial falsehoods).

In the '80s he compounded his drinking problem with his voracious consumption of cocaine. He credits his current wife, Nancy, whom he married in 1983, with helping to turn his life around. (His March accident, and the subsequent news that he was driving while impaired, shouldn't be taken as evidence that he's no longer a "changed man," but it does underscore the point that habits like Jones' aren't easily kicked.) Although his songs don't chart like they used to -- today's country radio is a different and much more malevolent creature than the one it was in the 1970s and early '80s -- he still continues to now and then release a record that can knock you for a loop. His latest, "Cold Hard Truth," has a clean, honest sound, and Jones' voice sounds beautifully weathered and mellowed, as if it were the voice he was intended to grow into, not simply the aged one he has to settle for.

Jones' career has had such a long arc that it's impossible for me to pick a favorite Jones era. It may be cheating, but the best I can do is to choose one song from each of Jones' two great producers, Pappy Daily and Billy Sherrill (who worked with Jones through the '70s and well into the '80s).

I'm always amazed at the way the Sherrill-produced "He Stopped Loving Her Today" (1980) gets me every time, given that its theme is so shameless: A man's love for the woman who left him years ago finally dies, but only because he's drawn his last breath. Sherrill's style of production is the kind I love to hate. I instinctively shrink from his overwrought, molasses-glop sound, his knack for making strings sound disingenuous. But I can't say any producer has shown Jones' voice off better.

On "He Stopped Loving Her Today," Jones' phrasing is restrained, easy, conversational. His unvarnished, third-person narration is one of the purest examples of country-music storytelling I can think of: "He kept some letters by his bed, dated 1962/He had underlined in red every single 'I love you.'" His voice swerves a little -- and almost cracks, but not quite -- on the word "love." It's as if he's righted himself at the last possible moment, knowing that giving in to the song's mawkishness would result in disaster. Instead, he works a miracle with it.

But few songs can take me apart with the precision of the Pappy Daily-produced "A Good Year for the Roses" (1970), recorded in the last years of the Jones-Daily collaboration (which would end badly in 1971, when Jones left the Musicor label for Epic). "Roses" addresses that recurring and universal subject, the devastation wrought by a partner's leaving. But "Roses" is so painfully resplendent precisely because of what Jones doesn't say -- and the way he sings it: "When you turn to walk away, as the door behind you closes/The only thing I know to say, It's been a good year for the roses." His reading of the last line has a crispness to it that's almost matter-of-fact, like a news report -- and it's achingly representative of the way so many men of his generation dealt with their feelings.

Yet the desperate evasiveness of "A Good Year for the Roses" is hardly a copout: Jones shows us all the contours of suffering simply by outlining its shadow. I'm always brought down by "A Good Year for the Roses"; but as with just about everything else George Jones has ever recorded, I find its truthfulness and its refusal to shrink from suffering immensely comforting. That's why I can listen to George Jones on both good days and bad ones: I'll take my pleasure straight up, even if it burns going down.

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