Garth Brooks and his musical hero and recent
duet partner, George Jones, were included on the list of Grammy
nominees Friday (January 4). The two were included in the
category of best country collaboration with vocals for "Beer
Run."
"Hats off to NARAS (National Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences) for recognizing George Jones,
who, for me, is the king of country music and at 70 sounds
as good as he ever has," Brooks responded to news of
the nomination.
The song "Beer Run" had been around
for a while, but it wasn't until the superstar was searching
for the perfect duet to record with Jones that he really took
notice, Brooks tells LAUNCH. "I'm real, real happy what
we got out of it for two-and-a-half minutes," he says.
"I mean, it's over like that for me, but what I love
about it is the story it tells, and it's fun. I had heard
the song before--heard the 'B Double E Double Are You In?'--and
then took (songwriters) Kent (Blazy) and Kim (Williams) and
kind of got 'em off and kind of did a total rewrite on it
to make it fit a little more of a Jones-y kind of thing."
Working with Jones proved to be one of the
highlights of Brooks's illustrious career. The singer adds
that despite Jones's age, his money is always on the "Possum,"
he explains. "They tell you never to work with your heroes
cause they won't be your heroes anymore...he's 10 times the
guy he was before I worked with him," he says. "He's
a sweet man that's real hard on himself. He's very competitive,
and he doesn't have a lot of confidence in himself to you,
but make no mistake--George Jones knows in his mind he's the
best singer there is in country music, and he's the kind of
soul in country music. No man sings like that without having
that confidence, and he sang his butt off and I was very proud
of him. Seventy years old, 90 years old, or 20 years old,
I'll put that vocal up against anybody's vocal, is the one
George Jones sang on 'Beer Run.'"
"Beer Run" appears on both Jones's
The Rock album and Brooks's final project, Scarecrow. Brooks
will receive the award of merit at the American Music Awards
Wednesday (January 9) night.
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