A Picture of Me (Without You) | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | November 1972 | |||
Genre | Country | |||
Label | Epic | |||
Producer | Billy Sherrill | |||
George Jones chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | [1] |
A Picture of Me (Without You) is an album by American country music singer George Jones. It was released in 1972 on the Epic Records label.
Jones's second solo recording on Epic is one of five albums released by the singer in 1972 (three of his own and two duet albums with his wife Tammy Wynette) as producer Billy Sherrill wasted no time in flooding the market with new recordings by "the Possum". Jones's first album, George Jones (We Can Make It) , made it to number 10 on the country albums charts but his second effort did better, rising to number three and featuring songs with a wider range of themes than those found on his Epic debut, which celebrated the happiness of new love. The album's title track was the only single release from it, peaking at #5 on the Billboard country singles charts.
In addition to love ballads, A Picture of Me (Without You) also includes songs more in line with Jones's reputation as country music's greatest interpreter of heartache, like the bitter "On The Back Row" and the Ernest Tubb classic "Tomorrow Never Comes" (which Elvis Presley had recorded the year before). The collection also contains Tom T. Hall's "Second Handed Flowers", the kind of "story song" that had always been a part of Jones's repertoire. After a shaky start, Jones and Sherrill sound more comfortable with each other's formidable reputation as they get to know each other musically. Their creative partnership would often be a compromise between the producer's sonic experimentation and the singer's hardcore country instincts. Biographer Bob Allen quotes the singer in his book George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend: "I've got too much respect for country music to abuse it. I don't want a thousand violins and twenty trumpets on my records."
Lorrie Morgan covered "A Picture of Me (Without You)" on her 1991 album Something in Red and had a #8 country hit with it that same year.
Mark Beming of AllMusic writes of the album: "...while Sherrill's fondness for glossy surfaces wouldn't immediately seem compatible with Jones' hard honky tonk soul, he managed to give these sessions a low-key, late-night feel that was a fine match for the bluesy tone of Jones' voice...If you want to know why Gram Parsons called Jones 'the king of broken hearts,' one spin of this album will tell you all you need to know."
George Glenn Jones was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", as well as his distinctive voice and phrasing. For the last two decades of his life, Jones was frequently referred to as the greatest living country singer. Country music scholar Bill Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved." The shape of his nose and facial features earned Jones the nickname "The Possum".
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