“You know, I’ve won a lot of awards - I’m not bragging - a lot of awards over the period of years and each and every one of them was fantastic," he said. "They made you feel great. They kept you going and made you try harder and work harder, but this has got to be the greatest one in the world. Country music has been awful good to me throughout a whole bunch of years, and I’ll tell you what, I’d like to just thank all the fans in the whole, wide world.”

New pop-oriented trends have broadened Country music's boundaries in recent years, but never lessened the popularity of George Jones’ traditional sound. Several of his peers, including Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, Clint Black, Travis Tritt and Pam Tillis, fulfilled a life-long dream, when they collaborated with Jones on the Grammy Award-winning single, “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair.”

On many occasions, George Jones said that he played, sang and wrote Country songs out of his deep love for the music. Equally gratifying was his relationship with his fans.

Jones once revealed, “It’s not really that important to me, as far as glory, popularity and those things. I just feel like I’m making people happy. And they sure make me happy when I walk out on that stage. That’s all that’s really important to me.”

In the early 1990s, Country music fans and musicians named Jones’ recording of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” as the greatest song of all time. The single topped the chart in 1980 and earned Jones a Grammy and two Country Music Association awards. His other industry honors included induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992. Three years later, he teamed with his former wife Tammy Wynette to record the chart-topping album, “One.”