Best birthday wishes to George Jones, the most searing country music heart singer ever. Jones was a product of the Big Thicket in southeast Texas, a rough landscape that harbored even wilder inhabitants. George's father would regularly come home drunk and violent late at night and wake the entire family up, demanding that the kids sing to him, so George had a problematic relationship with music from the beginning. He wrestled multiple personal demons throughout his life, but he never lost his impossibly elastic, multi-octave voice, which year after year produced some of the most nakedly emotional performances in recorded music.