George Jones

Johnny Cash famously took out an ad in Billboard magazine featuring a picture of himself flipping off the camera, sarcastically thanking Nashville and country radio for their support. It’s a shame, then, to see George Jones, no less the legendary hellraiser, almost begging for radio play with an album of hits he once passed on recording (along with an update of his standard “He Stopped Loving Her Today”).

It’s not that Hits I Missed is bad – just the opposite. Jones puts his own stamp on tunes like “Funny How Time Slips Away” and “Today I Started Loving You Again” by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, respectively. It’s no accident that those two songs, written and originally performed by the only of Jones’ peers still actively playing and performing, are the best on the album. They are country classics. And that’s what Jones does best. Likewise, Jones’s weathered baritone and sense of humor must have been the inspiration for Randy Travis’s “On the Other Hand,” and “If You’re Gonna Do Me Wrong” sounds tailor-made for him.

There are a couple of tunes Jones was right to have passed on the first time (should have trusted your instincts on the golf line in “Too Cold at Home,” George). And the arrangement of the first single, Hank Williams Sr’s “The Blues Man,” feels a bit contrived, but with Jones and Dolly Parton to sell it, it still works.

There’s little chance this album will capture the imagination of program directors who find innovation in Big &Rich and Cowboy Troy. But it does show Jones is in tune with his voice and sensibilities (sidenote: Will someone please keep Robb Thomas the hell away from Willie Nelson), and nothing beats hearing Jones sing a, old, familiar tune.