Jones survived long battles with alcoholism

Jones died on Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalised with fever and irregular blood pressure, according to his publicist Kirt Webster.

With one of the most golden voices of any genre, a clenched, precise, profoundly expressive baritone, Jones had No. 1 songs in five separate decades, 1950s to 1990s. He was idolised not just by fellow country artists, but by Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, James Taylor and countless others.

"If we all could sound like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones," Waylon Jennings once sang.

In a career that lasted more than 50 years, Jones, affectionately known as "Possum", evolved from young honky-tonker to elder statesman as he recorded more than 150 albums and became the champion and symbol of traditional country music, a well-lined link to his hero, Hank Williams.

Jones survived long battles with alcoholism and drug addiction, brawls, accidents and close encounters with death, including bypass surgery and a tour bus crash that he only avoided by deciding at the last moment to take a plane.

His failure to appear for concerts left him with the nickname No Show Jones, and he later recorded a song by that name and often opened his shows by singing it. His wild life was revealed in song and in his handsome, troubled face, with its dark, deep-set eyes and dimpled chin.

In song, he was rowdy and regretful, tender and tragic. His hits included the sentimental Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes, the foot-tapping The Race is On, the foot-stomping I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair, the melancholy She Thinks I Still Care, the rockin' White Lightning, and the barfly lament Still Doing Time.

Jones also recorded several duets with Tammy Wynette, his wife for six years, including Golden Ring, Near You, Southern California and We're Gonna Hold On. He also sang with such peers as Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard and with Costello and other rock performers.

But his signature song was He Stopped Loving Her Today, a weeper among weepers about a man who carries his love for a woman to his grave. The 1980 ballad, which Jones was sure would never be a hit, often appears on surveys as the most popular country song of all time.

Jones won Grammy awards in 1981 for He Stopped Loving Her Today and in 1999 for Choices. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 2008 was among the artists honoured in Washington at the Kennedy Center.

He continued to make appearances and put out records, though his hit records declined.

"I don't want to completely quit because I don't know what to do with myself," he said in 2005.

Jones was a purist who lamented the transformation of country music from the family feelling of the 1950s to the hit factory of the early 21st century.

Asked about what he thought about Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and other young stars, Jones said they were good but they weren't making traditional country music.

"What they need to do really, I think, is find their own title," he said.

Jones was born on September 12, 1931, in a log house near the east Texas town of Saratoga, the youngest of eight children. He sang in church and at age 11 began performing for tips on the streets of Beaumont, Texas.

Jones was married four times. He had four children from his first three marriages. His daughter with country singer Tammy Wynette, Georgette Jones, became a country singer and even played her mother in the 2008 TV series Sordid Lives.