George Jones heard the song Billy Sherrill was so sure about and wanted nothing to do with it.
In his autobiography, I Lived To Tell It All, he remembered exactly what he told his producer.
“I looked Billy square in the eye and said, ‘Nobody will buy that morbid son of a b—-.'”
Billboard has reported that Sherrill bet him $100 the song would be a hit, while Jones bet it would never reach No. 1. The song was “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, and the man who bet against it later credited it with reviving his career.
George Jones released it in April 1980 as the lead single from the album I Am What I Am. On July 5, 1980, it rose from No. 2 to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, his first No. 1 in six years and the eighth of his 13.
It is often cited as the greatest country song of all time, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 5 on its list.
That is a long way up the chart for a song he swore nobody would buy.
Billy Sherrill Brought George Jones a Song From the Writers of ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E,’ and Sherrill Said Finishing It Took 18 Months
The song came from familiar hands. Braddock and Putman’s first No. 1 together was “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” which Tammy Wynette recorded for Sherrill in 1968, seven years before she and Jones divorced in 1975. In 1978, Sherrill brought her ex-husband a song by those same writers about a man who loved a woman until the day he died.
Braddock never pretended that man was someone to copy. He said as much in an interview with Studio 360.
“He never found out anything about the art of letting go. The guy was a bad role model.”
The man asked to sing it was in hard shape himself. By 1980, Jones was at a low point personally and professionally. His weight had fallen to 97 pounds, alcohol and drugs had him missing so many shows that people called him No Show Jones, and he had been divorced from Tammy for five years.
Sherrill had a long history with him. He persuaded Jones to leave Musicor for Epic in 1971 and went on to produce him longer than any other artist, all the way through Friends in High Places in 1991.
In Bob Allen’s biography of Jones, The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Sherrill recalled that Jones found the song too long, too sad and too depressing for anyone to ever play, and that he hated the melody and would not learn it.
For You
Finishing it took pieces of several sessions. Jones reportedly recorded the single in Nashville on February 6, 1980, but he kept slipping into the melody of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” and he slurred the spoken recitation.
That recitation was Sherrill’s own addition, the part where the woman comes to see the man at his funeral, and Sherrill said it was recorded 18 months after the first verse.
The Song George Jones Bet Against Saved His Career and Outlived Him
Even the man who wrote it heard it differently once it was done. Braddock said after Jones died that he first thought it was an OK song but not a great one, and that he and Putman had written better songs.
“George just elevated it somewhere up there in the stratosphere, and Billy Sherrill’s production had a lot to do with it, too. When Billy played it for us, I knew it was something really special. I’d never heard anyone sing anything that good.”
The song sparked Jones’ comeback in the 1980s. It won Grammy, ACM and CMA awards, among them the Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance, and it was CMA Song of the Year in both 1980 and 1981. In his autobiography, Jones admitted how fast everything turned around for him.
He put it plainly, writing that “a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song.”
Jones went into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992, and Sherrill followed him in 2010. In 2008, the Library of Congress chose “He Stopped Loving Her Today” for the National Recording Registry.
George Jones died in Nashville on April 26, 2013. At his funeral at the Grand Ole Opry House on May 2, Alan Jackson sang the song Jones once bet against, and on the chart dated May 11, 2013, it came back onto Hot Country Songs at No. 21.
He bet his producer it would never reach No. 1, and it got there on July 5, 1980. Thirty-three years later, right after his funeral, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the morbid song he swore nobody would buy, was back on the country chart.
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