How George Jones’ lost tapes ended up with drug dealers
Country music has always had a sordid history that has accompanied it, and it’s often just as much the lyrical content of the songs that are filled with despair as it is the lives of the people who were releasing the songs. While people often tend to write about what they know, sometimes the truth is hard to put into words that fully illustrate the severity of a situation, and this is how stories in country songs become more elaborate than they really are.
However, on some occasions, the truth is left buried and shrouded in mystery, and isn’t discussed much in the public eye. In the case of George Jones, one of the true greats of the genre who managed to cross over into mainstream popularity and earned his place in the Country Music Hall of Fame, his personal story wasn’t that unusual, but the tale behind his unreleased material that currently remains locked up in a bank vault, is certainly one of country music’s most gripping yarns.
When artists pass away, most people expect large amounts of their archival catalogue to surface for hardcore fans to digest, but there was no such celebration of Jones’ work when he passed away in 2013, because all of his unreleased tapes had been seized by the authorities as part of a drug bust in the 1980s, or at least that’s what we’re led to believe.
In 1984, eight boxes of tapes that were simply labelled as ‘George Jones Records’ were taken by the police during the arrest of David Snoddy and Donald Gilbreth, two music industry executives and partners in literal crime, who had been involved in the illegal drugs trade in the Southern US during the ‘80s. When bail was set at $1million, neither Snoddy nor Gilbreth were able to cough up the money, and as collateral, the reel-to-reel tapes found their way into the hands of the authorities, and now sit in a bank vault in Benton County, Tennessee.
However, how they had got their hands on the tapes in the first place is a question that many are still seeking answers to, and what actually features on them is another matter entirely. According to the claims of the two crooks, another associate of theirs, Jimmy Klein, had produced the tapes with Jones at Nugget Studios in 1966, and in 1982, he had signed an affidavit that meant he and Gilbreth became the official rights holders of the music.
This was during a period when Jones was repeatedly not showing up to concerts and recording sessions due to a drinking problem, and so presumably the reason for handing over the rights was for Jones to make some money during a troubled period of his life. According to Snoddy and Gilbreth, who were later convicted of their charges in 1986, the contents were 35 live recordings that singer had laid down during the ‘60s, but when they were taken by the authorities in Louisiana, where the arrests were made, and later passed to Tennessee; nobody bothered to check the validity of their claims.
There’s a distinct possibility that all of this is nothing more than a hoax, and that the two convicts handed over multiple boxes of blank tapes, or not even tapes, but there is also a distinct possibility that once authorities in Tennessee make a final decision on where those should legally be passed over, there could be an enormous treasure trove of unreleased material from Jones that the world is waiting to hear.
