Carter Tom - I Lived to Tell It All

HIGH PRAISE FOR GEORGE JONES
AND HIS
NO-HOLDS-BARRED ACCOUNT*

I Lived to Tell It All

AN ULTRA-CANDID VIEW OF A MAN WIDELY REGARDED AS HIS FIELDS GREATEST VOCALIST
This is about as far as you can get from a sanitized show business autobiography; rather, it is a man purging the depths of his soul [Jones] has become positively loquacious about his past.
Chicago Tribune

[AN] ANECDOTE-RICH MEMOIR. People

POIGNANT, MOVING Its a book as unforgettable as the man and his music George Jones opens up and writes candidly and intimately I Lived to Tell It All is George Jonesthe good news, the bad news, and the just plain fun.
Oxford Review (Atlanta, Ga.)*

HES THE GREATEST VOICE IN COUNTRY MUSIC HELL ALWAYS BE MY FAVORITE SINGER.
Tammy Wynette

I Lived to Tell It All is a testament [Jones] has survived he has triumphed.
Book Page

A CANDID, NO-HOLDS-BARRED MEMOIR THAT FINALLY SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT FANS WILL WANT TO ADD THIS ONE TO THEIR LIBRARIES.
On Sat

EVERYBODY KNOWS HE IS A GREAT SINGER, BUT WHAT I LIKE MOST ABOUT GEORGE IS THAT WHEN YOU MEET HIM, HE IS JUST LIKE SOME OLE GUY THAT WORKS DOWN AT THE GAS STATION EVEN THOUGH HES A LEGEND! PROUD TO BE A FRIEND AND FAN.
Alan Jackson

Most peoples voices are a gift from God. With George Jones, I think it started out as a gift from God and then they built a body around it because anybody who has ever wanted to sing country music wants to sound like George Jones.
Garth Brooks

Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

ACUFF-ROSE MUSIC AND WARNER BROS PUBLICATIONS, INC . Excerpt from I Cant Help It (If Im Still in Love with You) written by Hank Williams, Sr Copyright 1951 and renewed 1979 by Hiriam Music (BMI) and Acuff-Rose Music, Inc (BMI) International rights secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Acuff-Rose Music, Nashville, TN, and Warner Bros. Publications U S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014 MCA MUSIC PUBLISHING Excerpt from These Days I Barely Get By, words and music by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Copyright 1975 by MCA Music Publishing, a division of MCA, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured Used by permission.

POLYGRAM MUSIC PUBLISHING Excerpt from I Was Country When Country Wasnt Cool written by Rhonda Kye Fleming and Dennis W. Morgan. Copyright 1980 by Songs of PolyGram International, Inc All rights reserved Used by permission SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING Excerpts from He Stopped Loving Her Today by Claude Putnam, Jr., and Bobby Braddock. Copyright 1978 Sony/ATV Songs, LLC d/b/a Tree Publishing Co. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved Used by permission. STARRITE PUBLISHING Excerpt from Life to Go by George Jones. Copyright 1959 and renewed 1987 by Starrite Publishing Co., a subsidiary of Glad Music Co., 14340 Torrey Chase, Suite 380, Houston, Texas 77014. All rights reserved including international rights and the rights to public performance for profit Used by permission.

WARNER BROS, PUBLICATIONS Excerpt from A Picture of Me (Without You) by Cole Porter Copyright 1935 (renewed) by Warner Bros. Inc All rights reserved Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S Inc, Miami, FL 33014

Copyright 1996 by George Jones

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address:
Random House, Inc, New York, New York.

The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

ISBN: 0-440-22373-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-8086-3

Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, Inc

Published simultaneously in Canada

v3.1

The shoppers stirred impatiently on the Florida grass, looking closely for bargains at the yard sale. I imagine they picked up and laid down used dishes, glasses, pictures, linens, and the other stuff, one mans trash intended to become anothers treasure.

One guy lifted up two trophies that looked like they belonged on someones mantel.

George Jones: Country Music Associations Male Vocalist of the Year, read one inscription.

Is this really a trophy given by the Country Music Association to George Jones? asked the buyer. Is this an official Country Music Association award? How in the world did it get in a garage sale?

No one seemed to know.

Had the seller or buyer been able to find me, and had they asked, I couldnt have answered either.

I had likely been drunk and given the prestigious awards to someone who gave them to someone else who somehow directed them to the discount table at someones suburban sale. Or maybe I just got high and left them someplace after an awards show. The priceless awards were bought for coins that day. The buyer returned them to me later in Nashville. They were the real thing and today sit inside a trophy case in my house.

The awards had left me during the troubled journey that was my life, a journey across a sea of whiskey and a mountain of cocaine in a vehicle of self-destruction. I was once dying of terminal restlessness. My secondary poisons were drugs and alcohol.

Friends, family, doctors, therapists, and ministers had tried to save me. All of that concern from all of those people was to no avail. Finally, the power of one love from one woman made the difference.

It may sound corny. But its definitely true. Im proofliving proof.

I dont know why anyone would want to hear about my sordid past, but Im told a lot of folks do. People have been telling me I should write my life story for decades.

It was all I could do to live through the life, I told them. Why would I want to write about it?

And so I never began the task, not until 1992, when someone satisfactorily answered my question.

You hold a lot of influence over a lot of people, he told me. Your story could prevent people from sinking into drug or alcohol abuse.

I decided to write. My story, to my way of thinking, will be an overwhelming success if it prevents just one person from taking the crooked path I took. I took a lot of whiskey when I was young.

Then the whiskey took me for thirty-five years.

And it took me straight to the bottom. I surfaced time and time again, but always sank once more until I abandoned the millstone of alcohol and, similarly, cocaine.

I have enjoyed a decorated musical career. But Ill swear that as many, if not more, folks are interested in my highly publicized personal life as are interested in my music.

Someone said that headlines dealing with my criminal behavior and civil negligence have represented forty years worth of advance publicity for my story. I guess thats true. My cowriter, Tom Carter, came to my house to pick up the legal files that have dotted my life. He loaded the entire trunk of a luxury car and piled papers on the back floor and seat to the ceiling. He couldnt see out of his rearview mirror.