When his wife Nancy introduces him and puts him on the phone immediately following his previous interview, George Jones is quick to fire off the first question: a hearty "How you doing?"| As far as one can tell over a telephone line, Mr. Country Music is doing very well himself, thank you, and doesn't seem put off at all by a busy morning of press duties. "They're keeping me busy here...when you've got a little record going, you've gotta do everything they say, or they give you a hard time." Not that he's complaining. "Choices," the lead single from his new album, The Cold Hard Truth, is fast on its way to becoming his highest charting single of the Nineties, a decade in which he's made no bones about chastising country radio for turning its back on its legends. But mostly, Jones -- otherwise known as "Possum" -- is just happy to be alive following an auto accident in March that first landed him in the hopital and then in front of a grand jury to plead guilty on charges of driving while impaired and for violating an open container law. Considering that every chapter of his 1996 autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, reads like an entire season's worth of Behind the Music episodes, the whole affair might seem old hat for Jones. Guess again. "I look for this to be the final wake-up call," the sixty-seven-year-old singer announced after entering his plea. That's his story, and he's still sticking to it.

So how are you feeling?

Just fine, just fine. Getting a little stronger every day. We're back to working a few dates now. Going up to Wisconsin this weekend, then back to Chicago. We're going to do an in-store in Chicago at Target. And the record on Asylum seems to be doing great. We've got the best seller this week in Nashville.

Congratulations. After your accident, a lot of people pegged you as a goner. It's gotta feel sweet to not only survive, but come out of the whole thing with a hit.

Well, I'll tell you what, it's got me stunned. It's a miracle, and all of this has happened in such a short time. I was pretty much gone there. A lot of people think we picked the first song, "Choices," as a gimmick, but really and truly we had picked this first song for the single before the wreck. In fact, just before the wreck happened, I had my stepdaughter on the speakerphone, and I was leaning towards the middle where the radio was to try and get the tape player to rewind so she could hear "Choices."

After you recovered and admitted that you had been drinking again, you called the accident a "wake up call." Do you think the same thing could be said for radio -- that they went, "We almost lost this guy, let's not take him for granted anymore"?

I'm sure that helped. There was some nice things said by radio stations in some articles, and that was about the same time that they started playing us. I think it had a whole lot to do with it. But, like I say, the song definitely wasn't released as a gimmick. The truth really is that we chose the song before the accident.

Accident or no, it sounds like the definitive George Jones song. Almost like the writers (Billy Yates and Mike Curtis) wrote it while reading your book.

Yeah. But you know something? You stop and think, I don't think there's anybody on two feet that hasn't recalled some of the things they did and wished they could have done it different. We've all had choices at times, and we've chosen and done the wrong thing. I think that's the reason that it's a hit -- it just hits everybody. But it really fits me (laughs).

How conscious were you right after the accident happened?

I was very conscious, till everything went black. I had drank about just a little less than half of half of a pint of vodka, but I hadn't drank hard stuff in thirteen years, and course that would have been like having two or three drinks and you're higher than a kite. But still and all, I really don't believe that affected me as much as I was overjoyed with the tape [of the new album] that I had picked up. I was playing it and talking to my daughter on the speakerphone, and at the same time I was trying to rewind the tape, and I just took my eye off the road for a second or two, and you just can't do all those things when you're driving.

But since this accident, I even quit smoking, and I've smoked for over fifty years. It made a true believer out of me. And I know it's going to be hard for people to believe me with the past that I've got, but they can believe me, because there won't be no more foul-ups for George Jones, cuz my drinking days are over. And smoking, and I can't even drink coffee. I've lost my taste for coffee -- and I usually have to have two cups every morning.

So what do you do for kicks now? How do you get yourself going?

Well, what I do now is soon as I wake up, I have a small bowl of corn flakes, take a shower, put my clothes on and go out to the barn to check up on the guys that work here. And I fool around for thirty, forty minutes, then I come back here and we eat a regular breakfast. So the cereal took the place of my coffee, I guess.

What are you looking to achieve now?

Well, at my age, I'm so thrilled with what's happening, I can't deny that. But I would like to keep recording, and shorten my road tour. I've been doing close to 100 a year, and that's been pretty rough on me, especially at my age. So I would like to get it down to about fifty dates a year and try to enjoy life a little. It's been fast paced all my life, and you've got to live twenty-six hours a day in this business. It's just overbearing when you get my age to try and keep up with these young chickens.

Speaking of which, do a lot of the younger "new country" stars seek you out at awards shows just to get their picture taken with George Jones?

Oh yeah, we do that. The older you get, the less you can take it, you know. (Laughs). Used to, I thought it was a big thrill, but the older you get, the first thing that comes to your mind is, I wish I was out that door.

RICHARD SKANSE(June 28, 1999)