This weekend, country singer Marty Brown posted a video tribute to George Jones with Brown appropriately singing Jones’s classic song, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes.” Regular readers of Chimesfreedom know that we are big Marty Brown fans, so we cannot pass up posting Brown’s touching tribute here.
“Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” was written by Troy Seals (who co-wrote “Seven Spanish Angels“) and Max D. Barnes. George Jones released the song as the title track on a 1985 album of the same name. “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” mentions a number of country music legends including Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Patsy Cline, and Willie Nelson. Apparently because Jones recorded the song it does not mention him, but as Marty Brown notes in his introduction, Jones left some pretty big empty shoes.
What is your favorite tribute to George Jones? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas on April 29, 1933. In 2012 a statute of Willie was unveiled in Austin, but instead of choosing his birthday, organizers chose the appropriate date of April 20 at 4:20 p.m. for the man who released an album that features a song with Snoop Dogg called, “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.” Anyway, today we celebrate with one of his great collaborations, this one with Ray Charles singing “Seven Spanish Angels.”
The song was released as a single in November 1984 and originally appeared on Nelson’s album, Half Nelson (1985) and on Charles’s album, Friendship (1984). Although Charles had several successful country recordings, this one was his most successful. I was surprised to hear that this song was so successful for Charles, as it is not the first country recording I think of when I think of Charles. But it is an excellent one. In the video below, Nelson explains that Charles brought the song to him and that “it is going to be a phonograph record pretty soon.”
Like Willie Nelson’s great recording of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty” with Merle Haggard, “Seven Spanish Angels,” written by Troy Seals and Eddie Setser, recounts the story of an outlaw in Mexico. Instead of being about two men, though “Seven Spanish Angels” tells the story of an outlaw and his girlfriend. After the outlaw is killed in a gunfight with a posse, the woman exclaims, “Father, please forgive me; I can’t make it without my man.” Then she picked up his rifle, knowing it is empty, and points it at the men who then shoot and kill her. The Seven Spanish Angels in the song “pray for the lovers in the valley of the guns.” When the smoke cleared, “seven Spanish angels took another angel home.” The line about “another angel” always made me wonder, does that mean they left the woman’s boyfriend behind? What do you think happened at the end of “Seven Spanish Angels”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
This weekend, country singer Marty Brown posted a video tribute to George Jones with Brown appropriately singing Jones’s classic song, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes.” Regular readers of Chimesfreedom know that we are big Marty Brown fans, so we cannot pass up posting Brown’s touching tribute here.
