The song is “White Lightning,” George Jones’s first No. 1 country hit. It was written by J.P. Richardson, the Big Bopper, who died in a plane crash before the record ever reached the top. And the session that produced it may be the messiest in Jones’s long career.
The Big Bopper’s Moonshine Song
Before most people knew him as the Big Bopper, J.P. Richardson was a disc jockey and songwriter from Texas. He wrote “White Lightning,” a fast, funny song about backwoods moonshine, and recorded his own version of it in 1958.
According to American Songwriter, producer Pappy Daily first offered the song to another singer, Sonny Burns, who passed on it. It went to George Jones instead.
83 Takes at Bradley Studios
Jones and his band cut the song at Bradley Studios in Nashville. By Jones’s own account, he arrived after drinking heavily. In his 1997 memoir, I Lived to Tell It All, he wrote that Buddy Killen told him they did 83 takes before getting one they could use.
Killen was playing upright bass, and the song opens with a bass line he had to repeat every time Jones started over. He later said he wore the skin off his fingers and finished the session with bandages over the blisters. By some accounts, Killen got angry enough to threaten to quit.
The Take They Actually Used
Here is the twist. After all that, producer Pappy Daily reportedly picked the first take. Mercury’s Don Pierce later said they kept trying, but nothing matched the energy of that first pass.
The first take was not perfect. Jones stumbles on the word “slug.” Instead of hiding the mistake, he made it part of the song, repeating the flub in live shows for years afterward.
Accounts of the session do not all agree. Some say the released version came from a later take, and sources differ on whether the recording was made in late 1958 or shortly after Richardson’s death. The 83 takes and Killen’s raw fingers come from Jones’s and Killen’s own recollections.
February 1959
On February 3, 1959, J.P. Richardson died near Clear Lake, Iowa, in the plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. He was 28.
Mercury released Jones’s “White Lightning” a few days later. Most sources give the date as February 9, 1959, six days after the crash, though Jones’s memoir places it in March.
George Jones’s First No. 1
On April 13, 1959, “White Lightning” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. It stayed on top for several weeks and even crossed over to No. 73 on the Hot 100, the best pop showing of Jones’s career.
Jones had already reached the Top 10 several times, but this was his first trip to the top. In his memoir, Jones said he was sorry that Richardson did not live to see his song go to No. 1.
The song that took 83 tries to get right most likely went out to the world from the very first try. And for years afterward, when Jones reached that one stumbled word on stage, he stumbled on purpose.