Death of A
Exploration of Mars
'Matijevic Hill' Panorama for Rover's Ninth
Anniversary (False Color)
As NASA's Mars
Exploration Rover Opportunity neared the ninth anniversary of its landing on
Mars, the rover was working in the 'Matijevic Hill' area seen in this view from Opportunity's
panoramic camera (Pancam). Opportunity landed
Jan. 24, 2004, PST (Jan. 25 UTC). The landing site was about 12 miles (19
kilometers), straight-line distance, or about 22 miles (35.5 kilometers)
driving-route distance, from this location on the western rim of Endeavour
Crater. (NASA Photo)
* Special thanks to "Google Images", wikipedia.com, NASA, "The New York Times,
and "Rolling Stone".
Now that NASA is on Mars with “Rovers” and sending pictures
back to Earth, some of the best Science Fiction has come to an end or at least
it has become Science Reality. All of
those movies that scared me to death as a child about Martians have now had
their scripts flipped and it is now the Earthlings who have become the invaders
from space on the Martian planet!
Our planet has had Mars in their sights for some time now – first with the Russians and now with the United States and it’s anybody’s guess what the Chinese will do in the future. As I’m reading the future projected plans being made for round trips to and from Mars, it would be realistic to predict Earth colonies might be settling on Mars within the next twenty years.
Below is data from "wikipedia.com" illustrating the history of Earth exploration on Mars beginning in the 1960's:
and "Rolling Stone".
by Felicity Blaze Noodleman
Our planet has had Mars in their sights for some time now – first with the Russians and now with the United States and it’s anybody’s guess what the Chinese will do in the future. As I’m reading the future projected plans being made for round trips to and from Mars, it would be realistic to predict Earth colonies might be settling on Mars within the next twenty years.
So just exactly what is NASA doing at this point on Mars and
what have they learned about the fourth planet from the Sun? With its Rover now on the Martian surface
NASA is getting a firsthand look at the red planet taking soil samples and
trying to estimate is this planet has any life forms. They want to learn the history of Mars as
they examine the data returned from the Rover and possibly determine if the
planet would be capable of supporting life in the future.
Below is data from "wikipedia.com" illustrating the history of Earth exploration on Mars beginning in the 1960's:
Mars missions by year. Wikipedia.com |
wikipedia.com
Historical Timeline
Historical Timeline
wikipedia.com
Image Map of Mars Landings
The following imagemap of the planet Mars has embedded links to
geographical features in addition to the noted Rover and Lander
locations. Click on the features and you will be taken to the
corresponding article pages. North is at the top; Elevations: red
(higher), yellow (zero), blue (lower). (wikipedia.com)
The
first
bedrock samples were just recently taken reported in February, 2013 and
will verify reports issued by the European Space Agency’s “Mars Express”
which provided
subsurface measurements with the first radar instrument ever flown to
Mars which
discovered underground water-ice deposits. The "Mars Express" sent back mineralogical
evidence
for the presence of liquid water throughout the Martian history and studied
the
density of the Martian crust in detail. The orbiters unique orbit also
has
allowed it make up-closed studies of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two
moons.
NASA
NASA Curiosity Rover
Collects First Martian Bedrock Sample
At
the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock
called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample
drilling on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover has, for the
first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a
flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the
first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.
The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) wide and
2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary
bedrock, can be seen in images and other data Curiosity beamed to Earth
Saturday. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet
environments. In pursuit of that evidence, the rover will use its laboratory
instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill.
"The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now
a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," said John Grunsfeld,
NASA associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
"This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since
the sky-crane landing last August, another proud day for America."
For the next several days, ground controllers will command
the rover's arm to carry out a series of steps to process the sample,
ultimately delivering portions to the instruments inside.
"We commanded the first full-depth drilling, and we
believe we have collected sufficient material from the rock to meet our
objectives of hardware cleaning and sample drop-off," said Avi Okon, drill
cognizant engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Rock powder generated during drilling travels up flutes on
the bit. The bit assembly has chambers to hold the powder until it can be
transferred to the sample-handling mechanisms of the rover's Collection and
Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device.
Before the rock powder is analyzed, some will be used to
scour traces of material that may have been deposited onto the hardware while
the rover was still on Earth, despite thorough cleaning before launch.
"We'll take the powder we acquired and swish it around
to scrub the internal surfaces of the drill bit assembly," said JPL's
Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer. "Then we'll use the arm to
transfer the powder out of the drill into the scoop, which will be our first
chance to see the acquired sample."
"Building a tool to interact forcefully with
unpredictable rocks on Mars required an ambitious development and testing
program," said JPL's Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample
system. "To get to the point of making this hole in a rock on Mars, we
made eight drills and bored more than 1,200 holes in 20 types of rock on
Earth."
Inside the sample-handling device, the powder will be
vibrated once or twice over a sieve that screens out any particles larger than
six-thousandths of an inch (150 microns) across. Small portions of the sieved
sample will fall through ports on the rover deck into the Chemistry and
Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
instrument. These instruments then will begin the much-anticipated detailed
analysis.
The rock Curiosity drilled is called "John Klein"
in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011.
Drilling for a sample is the last new activity for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
Project, which is using the car-size Curiosity rover to investigate whether an
area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for
life.
JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington.
For images and more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity
and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity
.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
NASA
NASA
Mars Rover Curiosity's 7 Biggest Discoveries
(So Far)
by Mike Wall,
SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 27 March
2013 Time: 12:22 PM ET
Roving on Mars
NASA's Mars rover
Curiosity has been exploring the Red Planet just since last August, but the
robot has already racked up quite a string of accomplishments.
For example, the 1-ton rover has already checked off its primary mission goal, determining that its Gale Crater landing site could have supported microbial life in the ancient past.
Here's a brief rundown of Curiosity's biggest achievements, a list that will surely grow as the car-size robot gets deeper into its planned two-year surface mission on the Red Planet.
For example, the 1-ton rover has already checked off its primary mission goal, determining that its Gale Crater landing site could have supported microbial life in the ancient past.
Here's a brief rundown of Curiosity's biggest achievements, a list that will surely grow as the car-size robot gets deeper into its planned two-year surface mission on the Red Planet.
Sticking the Landing
Curiosity's
touchdown on the night of Aug. 5 was a big deal, both for the rover's mission
and the future of Mars exploration.
In a maneuver that had never been tried before on another planet, a rocket-powered sky crane lowered Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables, then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away. NASA officials say this technique should help land other big payloads in the future, helping pave the way for human outposts on the Red Planet.
Curiosity also landed with unprecedented precision, thanks to a new guided entry system that will aid future missions as well. The rover touched down within a target ellipse that measured just 12 miles long by 4 miles wide (20 by 7 kilometers) — a huge improvement from the 2004 landing of NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, whose ellipses spanned 93 miles by 12 miles (150 by 20 km).
In a maneuver that had never been tried before on another planet, a rocket-powered sky crane lowered Curiosity to the Martian surface on cables, then flew off and crash-landed intentionally a safe distance away. NASA officials say this technique should help land other big payloads in the future, helping pave the way for human outposts on the Red Planet.
Curiosity also landed with unprecedented precision, thanks to a new guided entry system that will aid future missions as well. The rover touched down within a target ellipse that measured just 12 miles long by 4 miles wide (20 by 7 kilometers) — a huge improvement from the 2004 landing of NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, whose ellipses spanned 93 miles by 12 miles (150 by 20 km).
Measuring Red Planet
Radiation
Curiosity has
been assessing the Martian radiation environment, helping scientists better
understand the hazards radiation may pose both to potential indigenous microbes
and human visitors to the Red Planet.
The news so far is encouraging, at least on the colonization front. Curiosity's measurements — the first of their kind ever taken on the surface of another planet — suggest that Martian radiation levels are comparable to those experienced by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Curiosity observed substantially higher radiation levels during its eight-month cruise through deep space. But overall, rover scientists say, the early numbers suggest that astronauts could endure a long-term, roundtrip Mars mission without accumulating a worryingly high dose (though a few big Mars-directed solar eruptions could complicate things considerably).
The news so far is encouraging, at least on the colonization front. Curiosity's measurements — the first of their kind ever taken on the surface of another planet — suggest that Martian radiation levels are comparable to those experienced by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Curiosity observed substantially higher radiation levels during its eight-month cruise through deep space. But overall, rover scientists say, the early numbers suggest that astronauts could endure a long-term, roundtrip Mars mission without accumulating a worryingly high dose (though a few big Mars-directed solar eruptions could complicate things considerably).
Finding an Ancient Streambed
Just seven weeks
after Curiosity touched down, mission scientists announced that the rover had
found an ancient streambed where water once flowed roughly knee-deep for
thousands of years at a time.
The discovery suggests that at least some parts of Mars may have been habitable billions of years ago, since life here on Earth thrives pretty much anywhere liquid water is found.
The discovery suggests that at least some parts of Mars may have been habitable billions of years ago, since life here on Earth thrives pretty much anywhere liquid water is found.
Drilling into a Martian Rock
In February,
Curiosity used its hammering drill to bore 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) into a
Red Planet outcrop called "John Klein," marking the first time any
rover had ever drilled into a rock to collect samples on another world.
Going so deep beneath the Martian surface allowed Curiosity to study the Martian environment as it existed billions of years ago, leading to perhaps the rover's biggest scientific discovery to date (see next item).
Going so deep beneath the Martian surface allowed Curiosity to study the Martian environment as it existed billions of years ago, leading to perhaps the rover's biggest scientific discovery to date (see next item).
A Habitable Environment
Curiosity spotted
some of the key chemical ingredients for life in the gray powder it drilled out
of the John Klein rock, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen,
phosphorus and carbon. The fine-grained rock also contains clay minerals,
suggesting a long-ago aqueous environment — perhaps a lake — that was neutral
in pH and not too salty, researchers said.
With this evidence in hand, the Curiosity team announced in early March that the rover's landing site could have supported microbial life billions of years ago.
"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably — if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, said at the time.
With this evidence in hand, the Curiosity team announced in early March that the rover's landing site could have supported microbial life billions of years ago.
"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably — if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, said at the time.
Engaging the Public
Curiosity has
helped bring planetary science to the masses, inspiring a tremendous level of
interest in Mars exploration.
Some of the intrigue was doubtless generated by Curiosity's daring landing strategy, which seemed to be pulled from the pages of a sci-fi novel. Indeed, crowds gathered in places such as New York's Times Square on the night of Aug. 5 to see if Curiosity would survive its harrowing "seven minutes of terror" plunge through the Martian atmosphere.
But the interest has remained strong in the months after the rover's touchdown, thanks in part to Curiosity's strong social media and Internet presence.
As of late March, the robot's official Twitter feed has more than 1.3 million followers, and Curiosity has posted more than 1,900 tweets. The rover has also returned to Earth more than 49,000 images, which are viewable by the public at Curiosity's mission page.
Some of the intrigue was doubtless generated by Curiosity's daring landing strategy, which seemed to be pulled from the pages of a sci-fi novel. Indeed, crowds gathered in places such as New York's Times Square on the night of Aug. 5 to see if Curiosity would survive its harrowing "seven minutes of terror" plunge through the Martian atmosphere.
But the interest has remained strong in the months after the rover's touchdown, thanks in part to Curiosity's strong social media and Internet presence.
As of late March, the robot's official Twitter feed has more than 1.3 million followers, and Curiosity has posted more than 1,900 tweets. The rover has also returned to Earth more than 49,000 images, which are viewable by the public at Curiosity's mission page.
Helping Save NASA Planetary
Science?
But NASA officials and many researchers have expressed hope that Curiosity's mission could help swing the pendulum back the other way, giving planetary science a boost in tough fiscal times.
"What a tremendous opportunity it is for us," NASA planetary science chief Jim Green said last March, while the rover was en route to the Red Planet. "I believe [Curiosity] will open up that new era of discovery that will compel this nation to invest more in planetary science."
The White House has yet to officially restore any lost planetary science funding, but Curiosity's success has already had an impact on the future of NASA's Mars program. This past December, the agency announced that it plans to launch another big rover to Mars in 2020 — one that will be based on Curiosity's chassis and landing system.
NASA
So why are we spending so much to explore the red planet? Simple - because it's there! It's what humanity has always done. Dating from 1550 BC up through Christopher Columbus to Lewis and Clark. Once we've figured out how sustain a colony in the Martian world discoveries will no doubt made in other areas until we will have learned to live there permanently.
Martian land grants will be issued, subdivided and sold building a new society on Mars. Once humanity has concurred the hostile Martian world, we will in fact be the Martians! I'm sure that learning to live on Mars will lead to the same kinds of accomplishments on the other planets in our solar system. So, you see it's all about real estate after all! I'm Felicity for the Noodleman Group. Next week we will be looking at a photographic history of the US Navy.
www.cagle.com
In the 1950’s Country Music was known as “Hillbilly Music” and George was about as Hillbilly as they came. If you didn’t like Country Music then you would have hated George Jones – he was just that Country.
In his last years, Mr. Jones found himself upholding a traditional sound that had largely disappeared from commercial country radio. “They just shut us off all together at one time,” he said in a 2012 conversation with the photographer Alan Mercer. “It’s not the right way to do these things. You just don’t take something as big as what we had and throw it away without regrets.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 1, 2013
Because of an editing error, an obituary on Saturday about the singer George Jones misspelled his wife’s surname at the time she married him. She was Nancy Sepulvado, not Sepulvedo.
"The New York Times"
George Jones Dies at 81
by Felicity Blaze
Noodleman
George Jones |
Country music's greatest entertainer has passed away. When he started recording way back in 1954 he
wanted to sound like Hank Williams. Back
in the mid 1950’s they all wanted to sound like Hank. After recording his first demo and singing
it as Hank Williams might have done, the
recording producer asked George to sing it like George Jones. From that time forward George began to discover
his own voice and craft his style.
In the 1950’s Country Music was known as “Hillbilly Music” and George was about as Hillbilly as they came. If you didn’t like Country Music then you would have hated George Jones – he was just that Country.
He loved
country music and his fans loved him. He
performed venues both large and small and was close with all those who wanted a
hug, hand shake or photo with him.
That’s how I remember him. I first met him back in 1975 at a West
Texas Honky Tonk and he did not disappoint.
George didn’t restrict himself to any one style of Country
and was versatile in his music selections singing songs that could make you break
down and cry like “He Stopped Loving Her Today” or “If Drinking Don’t Kill Me”. He also sang songs that could make you feel good. There were also quite a few songs which could have you you cracking a smile and just laugh out loud - funny songs like “White Lightning” or “I’m A
People”. He was also one of the few artist
who could release a greatest hits album with a title which declared “50 Years
of Hits”.
George has been around so long, recording at the top of his
profession, that I can’t remember when he wasn’t a star – I was only two years old when he
started recording! A friend asked me who
George was and I remember telling him that George was a number one selling
country star when Willie Nelson was still an unknown song writer in Nashville.
All of my favorite country stars have all passed
on now – Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, Marty Robins and Kitty Wells just to name
only a very few. It was ironic that
George recorded a song entitled “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes”. Well George, it’s going to be a long time
before any one fill your boots. A lot of fans are going to miss you!
Felicity
"The New York Times"
George Jones | 1931-2013
His Life Was a Country Song
George Jones at Tramps in Manhattan in 1992. He was also part of the first country concert
at Madison Square Garden, in 1964.
By JON PARELES Published: April 26, 2013
George Jones, the definitive country singer of the last half-century, whose songs about heartbreak and hard drinking echoed his own turbulent life, died on Friday in Nashville. He was 81.
His publicists, Webster & Associates, said he died at a hospital after being admitted there on April 18 with fever and irregular blood pressure.
Mr. Jones’s singing was universally respected and just as widely imitated. With a baritone voice that was as elastic as a steel-guitar string, he found vulnerability and doubt behind the cheerful drive of honky-tonk and brought suspense to every syllable, merging bluesy slides with the tight, quivering ornaments of Appalachian singing.
In his most memorable songs, all the pleasures of a down-home Saturday night couldn’t free him from private pain. His up-tempo songs had undercurrents of solitude, and the ballads that became his specialty were suffused with stoic desolation. “When you’re onstage or recording, you put yourself in those stories,” he once said.
Fans heard in those songs the strains of a life in which success and excess battled for decades. Mr. Jones — nicknamed Possum for his close-set eyes and pointed nose and later No-Show Jones for the concerts he missed during drinking and drug binges — bought, sold and traded dozens of houses and hundreds of cars; he earned millions of dollars and lost much of it to drug use, mismanagement and divorce settlements. Through it all, he kept touring and recording, singing mournful songs that continued to ring true.
Mr. Jones was a presence on the country charts from the 1950s into the 21st century, and as early as the 1960s he was praised by listeners and fellow musicians as the greatest living country singer. He was never a crossover act; while country fans revered him, pop and rock radio stations ignored him. But by the 1980s, Mr. Jones had come to stand for country tradition. Country singers through the decades, from Garth Brooksand Randy Travis to Toby Keith and Tim McGraw, learned licks from Mr. Jones, who never bothered to wear a cowboy hat.
“Not everybody needs to sound like a George Jones record,” Alan Jackson, the country singer and songwriter, once told an interviewer. “But that’s what I’ve always done, and I’m going to keep it that way — or try to.”
George Glenn Jones was born with a broken arm in Saratoga, Tex., an oil-field town, on Sept. 12, 1931, to Clare and George Washington Jones. His father, a truck driver and pipe fitter, bought George his first guitar when he was 9, and with help from a Sunday school teacher he taught himself to play melodies and chords. As a teenager he sang on the streets, in Pentecostal revival services and in the honky-tonks in the Gulf Coast port of Beaumont. Bus drivers let him ride free if he sang. Soon he was appearing on radio shows, forging a style modeled on Lefty Frizzell, Roy Acuff and Hank Williams.
First Single
Mr. Jones married Dorothy Bonvillion when he was 17, but divorced her before the birth of their daughter. He served in the Marines from 1950 to 1953, then signed to Starday Records, whose co-owner Pappy Daily became Mr. Jones’s producer and manager. Mr. Jones’s first single, “No Money in This Deal,” was released in 1954, the year he married his second wife, Shirley Corley. They had two sons before they divorced in 1968.
“Why Baby Why,” released in 1955, became Mr. Jones’s first hit. During the 1950s he wrote or collaborated on many of his songs, including hits like"Just One More,""What Am I Worth” and “Color of the Blues,” though he later gave up songwriting. In the mid-'50s he had a brief fling with rockabilly, recording as Thumper Jones and as Hank Smith. But under his own name he was a country hit maker. He began singing at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956.
He had already become a drinker."White Lightning,"a No. 1 country hit in 1959, required 83 takes because Mr. Jones was drinking through the session. On the road, playing one-night stands, he tore up hotel rooms and got into brawls. He also began missing shows because he was too drunk to perform.
But onstage and on recordings, his career was advancing. In 1962 he recorded one of his signature songs, “She Thinks I Still Care,” which was nominated for a Grammy Award. Another of his most lasting hits, “The Race Is On,” appeared in 1964. He was part of the first country concert at Madison Square Garden, a four-show, 10-act package in 1964 that also included Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe and Buck Owens. Each act was allotted two songs per show, but on the opening night Mr. Jones played five before he was carried offstage.
In 1966, Mr. Jones tried to start a country theme park in Vidor, the East Texas suburb where he lived. Called the George Jones Rhythm Ranch, it was the first of many shaky business ventures. Mr. Jones gave only one performance. After singing, he disappeared for a month, rambling across Texas. His drinking had gotten worse. At one point his wife hid the keys to all his cars, so he drove his lawn mower into Beaumont to a liquor store — an incident he would later commemorate in a song and in music videos. They were divorced not long afterward.
Mr. Jones had his next No. 1 country single in 1967 with “Walk Through This World With Me.” He moved to Nashville and opened a nightclub there, Possum Holler, which lasted a few months.
He had met a rising country singer, Tammy Wynette, in 1966, and they fell in love while on tour. She was married at the time to Don Chapel, a songwriter whose material had appeared on both of their albums. One night in 1968, Mr. Jones recalled, Ms. Wynette and Mr. Chapel were arguing in their dining room when Mr. Jones arrived; he upended the dining room table and told Ms. Wynette he loved her. She took her three children and left with Mr. Jones.
They were married in 1969 and settled in Lakeland, Fla. There, on the land around his plantation-style mansion, Mr. Jones built another country-themed park, the Old Plantation Music Park.
Mr. Jones severed his connection with Mr. Daily and later maintained that he had not received proper royalties. In 1971 he signed a contract with Epic Records, which was also Ms. Wynette’s label, and the couple began recording duets produced by Billy Sherrill, whose elaborate arrangements helped reshape the sound of Nashville. Three of those duets — “We’re Gonna Hold On,” “Golden Ring” and “Near You” — were No. 1 country hits, an accomplishment made more poignant by the singers’ widely reported marital friction.
“Mr. and Mrs. Country Music” was painted on their tour bus. But the marriage was falling apart, unable to withstand bitter quarrels and Mr. Jones’s drinking and amphetamine use. After one fight, he was put in a straitjacket and hospitalized for 10 days. The Lakeland music park was shut down.
The couple divorced in 1975; the next year Mr. Jones released two albums, titled"The Battle"and “Alone Again.” But duets by Mr. Jones and Ms. Wynette continued to be released until 1980, the year they rejoined to make a new album,"Together Again,"which included the hit “Two Story House.” They would reunite to tour and record again in the mid-1990s. Mr. Jones grew increasingly erratic after the divorce, drinking heavily and losing weight. His singles slipped lower on the charts. His management bounced his band members’ paychecks. At times he would sing in a Donald Duck voice onstage. And he began using cocaine and brandishing a gun. In 1977 he fired at a friend’s car and was charged with attempted murder, but the charges were dropped.
His nickname No-Show Jones gained national circulation as he missed more engagements than he kept. When he was scheduled to play a 1977 showcase at the Bottom Line in New York, he disappeared for three weeks instead. In 1979, he missed 54 concert dates. (Later, the license plates on his cars ran from “NOSHOW1” to “NOSHOW7.”)
But as his troubles increased, so did his fame and his album sales. “I was country music’s national drunk and drug addict,” Mr. Jones wrote in his autobiography, “I Lived to Tell It All,” published in 1996.
He had music industry fans outside country circles.James Taylorwrote “Bartender’s Blues” for him, and sang it with him as a duet. In 1979, on the album “My Very Special Guests,” Mr. Jones sang duets with Willie Nelson,Linda Ronstadt, Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris. But he missed many of the recording sessions, and had to add his vocal tracks later.
Running From Debts
By then Mr. Jones had moved to Florence, Ala., in part to get away from arrest warrants for nonpayment of child support to Ms. Wynette and other debts in Tennessee. In Florence, he had a girlfriend, Linda Welborn, from 1975 to 1981. When they broke up, she sued and won a divorce settlement under Alabama’s common-law marriage statutes.
In 1979 Mr. Jones declared bankruptcy. His manager was arrested and charged with selling cocaine. That December, Mr. Jones was committed for 30 days to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. After his release, he went back to cocaine and whiskey.
Yet he still had hits. “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” a song about a man whose love ends only when his life does, was released in April 1980 and reached No. 1 on the country charts, beginning Mr. Jones’s resurgence. The Country Music Association named it the song of the year, the award going to its songwriters, Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, and the recording won the Grammy for best male country performance.
With a renewed contract from Epic Records, Mr. Jones became a hit maker again, with No. 1 songs including “Still Doin’ Time” in 1981 and “I Always Get Lucky With You” in 1983. He made an album with Johnny Paycheck, a former member of his band, in 1980 and one with Merle Haggard in 1982; he recorded a single, “We Didn’t See a Thing,” with Ray Charles in 1983. And in 1984 he released “Ladies’ Choice,” an album of duets with Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Emmylou Harris and other female singers.
In 1983 he married Nancy Sepulvado, who straightened out his business affairs and then Mr. Jones himself. He gave up cocaine and whiskey. The couple moved to East Texas, near Mr. Jones’s birthplace, and opened the Jones Country Music Park, which they operated for six years. In 1988 he changed labels again, to MCA, and soon moved to Franklin, Tenn.
By then, younger, more telegenic singers had come along with vocal styles learned largely from Mr. Jones and Merle Haggard. Now treated as an elder statesman, Mr. Jones sang duets with some of his musical heirs, including Randy Travis and Alan Jackson. Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Travis Tritt, Clint Black, Patty Loveless and other country stars joined Mr. Jones on the single “I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair” in 1992. That same year he was named to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
A Return With Wynette
His 1992 album, “Walls Can Fall,” sold a half-million copies. He made a duet album, “The Bradley Barn Sessions,” with country singers like Trisha Yearwood and rock musicians likeMark Knopflerand Keith Richards. In 1994, he had triple bypass surgery.
Mr. Jones rejoined Ms. Wynette to record an album, “One,"and to tour in 1994 and 1995, and in 1996 he released an album to coincide with the publication of his autobiography, giving it the same title, “I Lived to Tell It All.” He changed labels again, to Asylum Records, in 1998, the year Ms. Wynette died in her sleep at age 55.
By this time, Mr. Jones was performing more than 150 nights a year. Then, on March 6, 1999, he was critically injured when his car hit the side of a bridge while he was changing a cassette tape. A half-empty bottle of vodka was found in the car; Mr. Jones was sentenced to undergo treatment.
“Choices,"a song he released in 1999, won him a Grammy for best male country vocal. In it, he sang, “By an early age I found I liked drinkin'/Oh, and I never turned it down.”
Mr. Jones, who lived in Franklin, Tenn., continued to tour and record into the 21st century. He was a guest vocalist on Top 30 country hits by Garth Brooks and Shooter Jennings, and he released both country and gospel albums in the early 2000s. In 2006 he and Mr. Haggard joined forces again for “Kicking Out the Footlights Again: Jones Sings Haggard, Haggard Sings Jones.” In 2008 he was honored by the Kennedy Center, and in 2012 he received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award.
In addition to his wife, survivors include his sister, Helen Scroggins, and his children and grandchildren.
In his last years, Mr. Jones found himself upholding a traditional sound that had largely disappeared from commercial country radio. “They just shut us off all together at one time,” he said in a 2012 conversation with the photographer Alan Mercer. “It’s not the right way to do these things. You just don’t take something as big as what we had and throw it away without regrets.
“They don’t care about you as a person,” he added. “They don’t even know who I am in downtown Nashville.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 1, 2013
Because of an editing error, an obituary on Saturday about the singer George Jones misspelled his wife’s surname at the time she married him. She was Nancy Sepulvado, not Sepulvedo.
"The New York Times"
George
Jones – 43 of 100 Greatest Singers
“Rolling Stone”
Born September 12th, 1931
Key Tracks "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "She Thinks I Still Care," "(We're Not) The Jet Set"
Influenced Garth Brooks, Elvis Costello, Alan Jackson
Key Tracks "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "She Thinks I Still Care," "(We're Not) The Jet Set"
Influenced Garth Brooks, Elvis Costello, Alan Jackson
George Jones doesn't sound like he was Influenced by any other singer: He
sounds like a steel guitar. It's the way he blends notes, the way he comes up
to them and comes off them, the way he crescendos and decrescendos. The dynamic
of it is very tight and really controlled — it's like carving with the voice.
He has had a huge effect on all of country music — you can
hear a direct line from him to Buck Owens to Randy Travis to George Strait. The
Beatles listened to Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, and I think through them,
George Jones' sound informed McCartney's style — McCartney had that George
Jones swoop, as I call it.
The first time I heard George was on a copy of his greatest
hits. I was already familiar with Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner, but not
George and his West Texas thing. I was amazed at what he was doing with his
voice. Since then, I've covered a couple of my favorites — "Why Baby
Why" and "She Thinks I Still Care" — and I wrote a song called
"Bartender's Blues," where I tried to sound as much like George as I
could. And then he recorded it himself! It was one of those things where it all comes
around.
“Rolling Stone”
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