Vince Gill has sung “Go Rest High on That Mountain” hundreds of times, often at the most solemn occasions country music has. On May 2, 2013, standing on the Grand Ole Opry stage at the funeral of George Jones, he could not make it through. The voice that finished the song for him belonged to Patty Loveless, the same singer who had stood behind him on the original recording nearly twenty years earlier.
George Jones had died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on April 26, 2013. He was 81. Six days later, thousands of fans, some of whom had lined up before sunrise, filled the Opry House for a public service that ran close to three hours. His flower-covered casket rested just below the front of the stage. Nancy Jones sat in the front row with former First Lady Laura Bush, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood nearby. The service went out live on CMT, GAC, RFD-TV, FamilyNet, all four Nashville television stations and WSM radio.
“Sweet Pea” and the cases of ravioli
Before he played a note, Vince Gill talked about his friend. He told the crowd that George Jones had once decided, wrongly, that Gill loved ravioli, and kept cases of it on hand when they toured together. He talked about the nickname Jones gave him, “Sweet Pea,” which Gill admitted he wasn’t sure about at first and had come to treasure.
“The great thing is every time someone calls me Sweet Pea, I’ll get to think about him.” — Vince Gill, May 2, 2013
He also said what so many singers in that room believed: “Brother George taught us all how to sing with a broken heart, better than anyone who ever lived.” His words drew the first of several standing ovations that morning. Patty Loveless, wiping her eyes, shared her own memories of Jones before the band began.
Why Patty Loveless was the one beside him
The pairing was no accident of the program. Gill and Loveless first met at Fan Fair in 1985, and their voices had been tied together ever since. Gill sang harmony on her first top ten single, “If My Heart Had Windows,” a song George Jones had recorded first. When Gill cut “Go Rest High on That Mountain” in 1994 for his album When Love Finds You, Loveless and Ricky Skaggs sang the background vocals. Both were Kentuckians, like the man who first inspired the song.
So when she stood next to him at the microphone that morning, she was singing a part she had known by heart since the day it was recorded.
Inside the performance
Gill played acoustic guitar and sang the first verse himself. Loveless came in on the chorus. Partway through, Garth Brooks rose from the front row, and the rest of the room followed. More than 4,000 people stood for the remainder of the song.
By the second chorus, Gill was crying too hard to finish his phrases. Loveless took the lead with her strong, steady voice and kept the song moving. When Gill’s voice still would not come back, he dropped a verse and played a guitar solo in its place, picking it up right after the fiddle. Loveless stepped over to comfort him. In the video the Opry later shared, you can see him wipe away a tear and keep playing without missing a note.
It is a hard thing to watch. A man who has won 22 Grammy Awards, known for one of the cleanest tenors in country music, could not get through his own song, and a friend sang it for him until he could.
A song that was always about goodbyes
Gill began writing “Go Rest High on That Mountain” after Keith Whitley died in 1989 at age 34. He set it aside and finished it four years later, after his older brother, Bob, died of a heart attack at 48. Gill has said that every time he sings it, he gets to honor his brother and offer some comfort to people who have lost someone.
On May 2, 2013, the person who needed that comfort was Vince Gill himself.
What came after
Alan Jackson closed the service with “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and pallbearers carried George Jones out of the Opry House for the last time while the crowd stood. Years later, Gill put it plainly: “I sang at George’s memorial, and I fell apart singing ‘Go Rest High on That Mountain’ with Patty Loveless.”
That November, at a Nashville concert celebrating Jones’s music, Gill wore a shirt with two words printed on it: Sweet Pea. “He always called me sweet pea,” he said.
If you have watched that funeral performance, what stays with you most: Vince’s voice breaking, or Patty refusing to let the song fall?