Everyone knows that George Jones was famously nicknamed “The Possum” and “No Show Jones.” But does anyone know if the country music legend was actually okay with being named after an ugly marsupial, and not being able to escape some of his no-shows in the early parts of his career?
No one could sing a country music hit like George Jones during his illustrious life. I mean, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?” They’re some of the best country songs ever, and they both came from the great voice of the man known as… “The Possum.”
He was also known as “No Show Jones,” and that stemmed from a bit of a stigma that surrounded him early on his career. Jones struggled with drugs throughout his life, especially early on, which caused him to miss some of his own concerts.
In a 2009 interview, he explained that he wasn’t necessarily on board with the “No Show Jones” nickname, but he did his best to lean into it:
“I think about the dates that I missed, and I’ll see those mamas and daddies and some grandkids walking down the old country dirt road … walking to town maybe a mile, and they’ve been saving their money for a couple months just to get there and to be let down.
I guess that hurts me worse than anything else. ‘No Show Jones’ – I never did like that, but I played around with it with a song (and) made peace with it.”
Smart by Jones to spin that negative nickname into a positive, hit song. Now when you search “No Show Jones,” the first thing that comes up is the song. That’s a big-brained move made before the internet was really even a thing.
Now onto his other, not-so-nice nickname (the world wasn’t particularly kind to George Jones with either nickname, eh?). Most people know that the legendary country singer was nicknamed “The Possum,” but not everyone knows why. Are you ready for the backstory? Because I’m about to reveal the origin of the nickname.
Well, he sort of looked like a possum…
Yeah, as the story goes, a couple of radio DJs made the observation that the country singer looked like the strange looking animal that you can sometimes find digging around in your garbage. Because this nickname came from a more playful place (albeit still a non-flattering nickname), Jones was able to accept it easier than “No Show Jones.”
As he explained:
“When you’re called ‘The Possum’ … it stays with me. There’s no way I can ever live it down. T. Tommy Cutrer was a disc jockey. Everybody loved him. He was one of the old-timers on the all-night shows along with Ralph Emery, and those two got started calling me ‘The Possum.’
I had an album out with a side view of me with a crew cut. I was very young, and my nose looked more turned up, and I’ve got little beady eyes so I guess I did look like a possum! So they both laid into me and called me ‘Possum,’ and it got everywhere. There was no way I could stop that, so I’ll just have to live with that.”
And that he did.
Poor George Jones should’ve pitched some other, more complimentary (or just not mean) nicknames to try and get something else to stick. “Georgie” wouldn’t have stuck? “G.J.” or some play on “G.I. Jones?” Any of those would have been better than “No Show Jones” or “The Possum,” but I suppose the country music legend made do with the cards he was dealt.
“No Show Jones”
