Does outlaw country actually exist? The association has become mixed over the years. For a while, it was the ilk of Marty Robbins and the different kinds of western, gunfighter ballads. Then, it was the righteous demeanor of the Highwaymen. Oftentimes, they would criticize and rebel the governmental injustices, outlaws to the order of things. It was fiery and they had real fight in their hearts to see things get better. Then, there's the modern twist, where they're more conservative in nature, which isn't really being an outlaw against anything. So what's the difference? George Jones thought there wasn't one.
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In a 1976 interview, he addressed the state of country music. The interviewer talks about the industry trying to define outlaw country in the vein of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. As an artist that really embodies the genre and the western landscape, the idea of 'progressive country' seemed redundant. It also acts as if people were thumbing their nose at the genre. Let George Jones call it, country is what it is. The people will always be able to tell who is faking the funk and who isn't.
George Jones Doesn't Believe Outlaw Country is a Real Genre
I think that's just people talkin' when they call it the Outlaw Movement or Progressive Country. I just think that's people that love to dream up things and talk. Country music is country music. You can identify it anywhere. People listening to your show right now, you might play a record right after we sign off this interview. It might even be country or not really the true country that we're talking about. But you can't fool the people, they're gonna know," George Jones says.
"Your biggest listener in country music is the hard-working type of group which to me are the greatest people in the world. And they're more understandable, they might call us simple folks, but they're the people that started and are a very big symbol of what we call country music." Jones adds.
So who was George into? Ultimately, it's the artists that preserve country to its truest sense.Once outside forces who don't get it finagle their way in, the art loses something. "Oh yes, I love Merle Haggard, he's about my favourite, and I love Ronnie Milsap, Mel Street, people like that. I stick basically to good country music. You know it's hard to stick to as true country as you would love to, as what you was raised around is what I would prefer over all the rest," George explains.
"But it's hard to speak directly to it because your producers and your record labels have a little something to say about it. And they decide to overdub violins or something else, some other type of non-country instrument on your record, there's nothin' you can do about it. You just have to grin and bear it and say well, one of these days," George Jones shrugs.
