Alcohol Top Ten: White Lightning (#4)

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Hooray, it’s pulmonologist day! It’s also time for another song with a type of booze in the title. Don’t argue about this! Here’s today’s selection, easily the most potent booze on the list! #4: White Lightning - George Jones Oh, George. According to the stories (and there are enough stories about George Jones to be a multi-year TV series without embellishment!), George decided he’d better be drunk before he did a song about moonshine. So he showed up 18 or 19 sheets to the wind. As a result, they couldn’t get the song down. Buddy Killen, then a bass player and songwriter (later the head of Sony Tree Publishing in Nashville), said he was going to quit the session because his hands were hurting so badly from repeatedly playing the song (this was all live back then, not “record the bass today and next week lay the vocals down” stuff that we have today), AND that he was going to take his stand-up bass and wrap it around Jones’ throat as he left. Eventually, after over 80 attempts, they used the first version they’d recorded. Oy. The good news of this becoming George Jones’ first #1 song in 1959 was overshadowed by the fact that Jones’ friend and writer of the song, J.P. Richardson, didn’t get to see the success. He was killed in the plane crash with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. White Lightning Written by J.P. Richardson Recorded by George Jones Released as a single, 1959 I heard him a-moanin’ as he hit the ground: