The song was “White Lightning,” a rowdy little ode to moonshine written by J.P. Richardson, the man most of America knew as the Big Bopper. It became George Jones’s first No. 1 country hit in the spring of 1959. Getting it onto tape was another matter.
A session that would not end
George Jones cut “White Lightning” at Bradley Studios in Nashville for Mercury, with Pappy Daily producing. In his 1997 autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, Jones did not dress up what happened that day.
“I was drinking heavily throughout the session, and Killen later said we did 83 takes before we got one we could use.”
Killen was Buddy Killen, the session’s upright bass player, and the song opens with his part. Every time a take fell apart, he had to play that kickoff again. According to Jones’s memoir, Killen said he wore the skin off his fingers and had to wear Band-Aids over the raw blisters. Years later, he said he could still remember the pain of playing those stiff wire strings over and over.
Killen’s patience did not last. Accounts of the session say he threatened to walk out, and to do Jones some physical harm while he was at it. Hargus “Pig” Robbins, who would become one of Nashville’s most celebrated session pianists, was also in the room for the ordeal.
Back to the first take
After all that work, the version that reached radio was, by most accounts, the very first one. Don Pierce, the former Starday Records president, told George Jones biographer Bob Allen that they tried the song again and again, but it never matched the first time. So they released it as it was.
Not every telling agrees. At least one later article says the third take was used, and the exact count of takes shifts slightly from source to source. What nobody disputes is that the session ran into the dozens.
The finished record still carries the evidence. George Jones wrote that he slurred the word “slug” because he was drunk, and that anyone listening closely to the original could hear him stumble over it. For years afterward, he would mimic that same flub when he sang the song on stage.
Six days too late
J.P. Richardson had cut his own version of “White Lightning” in 1958. He and George Jones were friends, and both had worked with Texas producer Pappy Daily. On February 3, 1959, Richardson died in the plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, that also killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and pilot Roger Peterson. He was 28.
Six days later, on February 9, Mercury released George Jones’s single. (Jones himself remembered a March release, but most records give the February date.)
On the Billboard country chart dated April 13, 1959, “White Lightning” reached No. 1, the first chart-topper of George Jones’s career. It also crossed over to the Hot 100, peaking at No. 73, which would remain his best showing on the pop chart.
“I have been sorry ever since that [Richardson] didn’t live to see his song go No. 1.” George Jones, I Lived to Tell It All
George Jones went on to have many more No. 1 records and became, for a lot of people, the greatest voice country music ever produced. But the first one came from a friend who never heard it on top, cut in a session so rough that the band ended up right back where it started.