Jones was a 12-pound breech baby. During the delivery, the doctor dropped him and broke his arm.

As a teenager, Jones got a job playing guitar on a local radio show in Beaumont, Texas. Hank Williams stopped by one day and advised the starstruck youngster not to try to imitate anyone, but to develop his own distinctive style as a performer.

"I had an album out with a side view of me with a crew cut," Jones once explained. "I was very young, and my nose looked more turned up, and I've got little beady eyes, so I guess I did look like a possum."

"He Stopped Loving Her Today" tells the story of a man who keeps old letters from an ex lover in the hopes that she'll come back. The song reaches its peak in the chorus, revealing that the woman does return finally--for his funeral.

When his wife hid the keys to all their vehicles to keep him from buying liquor, she forgot one thing--the lawnmower. "I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour," Jones would later recall. "It might have taken me an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did."

During the Korean War in the 1950s, the legendary George Jones was a U.S. Marine stationed in California. Although "The Possum" was never actually deployed during the war, he served there for three years.

With Elvis Presley's explosion in popularity in 1956, pressure was put on Jones to cut a few rockabilly sides and he reluctantly agreed. "When you're hungry," he would later explain, "a poor man with a house full of kids, you're gonna do some things you ordinarily wouldn't do ... so I told them to put Thumper Jones on it and if it did something, good, if it didn't, hell, I didn't want to be shamed with it."

"A Good Year for the Roses" describes the thoughts of a man as his wife is preparing to leave him, and is a good example of Jones' ability to deliver an intensely moving vocal, in this case one that conveys both the sadness and profound bitterness that comes with a broken marriage.

The Big Bopper (a.k.a. J.P. Richardson) was one of the most popular artists of his time, but his life was cut short when he died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens on what later became known as "The Day the Music Died."

George Jones Rhythm Ranch failed after Jones gave an initial live performance and then disappeared for a month on an alcoholic bender.