It's said that Bob Dylan once said of George Jones that he had the best singing voice in America, and Frank Sinatra once called George Jones the second greatest singer in America.
I'll go with Dylan's assessment.
I started buying, and listening more closely to, George Jones records because of that random reading of Dylan's quote years ago, from early live Louisiana Hayride recordings, full of him cracking jokes at the expense of his band mates, to the more mainstream record company recordings. The guy could wrangle emotion from a song, to be sure.
I met an old guy in southern Ohio one time that was an ardent fan of Jones and told me some stories of live shows, waiting for "No Show Jones" and just all kinds of interesting history.
RIP
edit: Here's a great article from the LA Times about George:
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75666015/
