"If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" | ||||
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Single by George Jones | ||||
from the album I Am What I Am | ||||
B-side | "Brother to the Blues" | |||
Released | January 1981 | |||
Genre | Country | |||
Length | 3:13 | |||
Label | Epic | |||
Songwriter(s) | Harlan Sanders Rick Beresford | |||
Producer(s) | Billy Sherrill | |||
George Jones singles chronology | ||||
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"If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" is a song written by Harlan Sanders and Rick Beresford, and recorded by American country music artist George Jones. It was released in January 1981 as the third single from his album I Am What I Am . The song peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. [1]
By 1981, Jones’ career continued to thrive after the remarkable success of his #1 hit single "He Stopped Loving Her Today." After experiencing a lull in his career in the late 1970s, the song reignited the singer's career on the charts; in 1980, he scored a #2 hit with "Two Story House," a duet with his ex-wife Tammy Wynette, and reached #2 again with his rendition of the Tom T. Hall composition "I'm Not Ready Yet." However, the upswing in his professional life brought little peace to his personal one; dogged by a years-old cocaine addiction and a nearly thirty-year drinking problem, he continued to miss shows, engage the police in high-speed chases, and arrive at award shows obviously inebriated to accept honors for "He Stopped Loving Her Today." The despairingly hopeless "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" verged on topicality as Jones sang about falling out of cars at four in the morning and drinking "twenty bottles." As he often had, Jones played up to his demolished reputation with a mixture of sheepish bravado and showbiz practicality, writing in his 1995 memoir I Lived to Tell It All, "Knowing what people thought about Tammy and me, I often changed the words of 'If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me' when I sang it publicly, particularly on national television: If drinkin' don't kill me, Tammy's memory will...If folks bought my records because they thought I was breaking down, which I happened to be, so be it."
Chart (1981) | Peak position |
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US Hot Country Songs ( Billboard ) [2] | 8 |
Canadian RPM Country Tracks | 25 |
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." Waylon Jennings expressed a similar opinion in his song "It's Alright": "If we all could sound like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones." The shape of his nose and facial features earned Jones the nickname "The Possum".
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"He Stopped Loving Her Today" is a song recorded by American country music artist George Jones. It has been named in several surveys as the greatest country song of all time. It was released in April 1980 as the lead single from the album I Am What I Am. The song was Jones's first solo No. 1 single in six years. The melancholy song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman. The week after Jones' death, the song re-entered the Hot Country Songs chart at No. 21. As of November 13, 2013, the single has sold 521,000 copies in the United States. Since 2008 it has been preserved by the Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry. The song was No. 275 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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"Somebody Wants Me Out of the Way" is a song written by Dennis Knutson and A.L. "Doodle" Owens and recorded by American country music artist George Jones. It was released in April 1986 as the third single from his album Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes. The song peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. The song is very much in the tradition of George's previous hits "Still Doin' Time" and "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me " in that it is a hard "drinking song," but it's also a "cheatin'" song, with the narrator suspicious that "Somebody keeps paying my bar tab but the bartender won't tell me who." Jones delivers a soulful, bluesy vocal over a stone country arrangement with a prominent, shimmering acoustic guitar. The singer, who had been a notorious drinker, was sober by this time thanks to his wife Nancy, who had gotten his career back on track after years of mismanagement and missed concert dates.
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