Peanutt & Charlene Montgomery – George was a very special friend

SHEFFIELD – Well, here it is… Somebody’s finally gotten around to exploring two legends of Country Music, George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Their seemingly supernatural ability to write and perform music, love, fight, form enduring friendships; to reach the heights of stardom, and particularly for George, fight with demons. The six-part miniseries begins tonight on Showtime.

Now, for the folks who don’t live in the Muscle Shoals area, and even for locals who don’t follow too closely our music history, they might be surprised to learn that George Jones lived in Muscle Shoals for a number of years. He lived two blocks down from his best friends and songwriters, Peanutt and Charlene Montgomery. And that was a mixed bag of good times and, well… Not-so-good times.

“This movie brings back so many memories of the time of George and Tammy being together. And we, of course, with them the whole time they were married and traveled with them. And even when we came in off the road, we spent time with them looking at houses, so many things that we did together and watched their kids grow up,” explained Charlene Montgomery, “And my daughter went to school with her kids and we were just always together writing songs out on the houseboat and George would demand that we’d be at their house every morning at 8:00, even when we were off of the road and at home. And we just had so many good times together and so much fun. Wrote lots and lots of songs…”

Charlene Montgomery

Charlene and Peanutt were there through all of the tumultuous times… The exceptional highs and the devastating lows. “I’ve seen some of that happen. And it was very much the way it was, you know. And so, yeah, the movie is pretty much right into the way it really was. With that, with George and Tammy, they were one day in a good mood, in love with each other, and the next day they would have a fight,” Charlene remarked. Asked if she and Peanutt ever got involved in any of the donnybrooks between George and Tammy, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were right in there. Yeah. Sometimes George would even blame us, you know. But whatever it took to get along, I thought we were all one, you know? And we never got offended. Sometimes Tammy would think George was at our house drinking or at a party in which we didn’t drink at home like it was rumored to be. But of course, I don’t blame her. You know, your husband’s off somewhere. Drunk. And then they figure they’re partying and all that. Well, she would think that was what went on in our house. But we tried to take care of George. We knew, his habits. We would go find him. One night he was out on the lake with a bunch of men gambling. And he was drunk and he was losing money. We found him, I picked his keys up off the table and threw them in the lake. And I said, You’re not going to drive home because your keys are in the lake. You better come go with us. And he did because he couldn’t go home without his keys!” We loved George and tried our best to look after him in his darkest moments.”

Peanutt Montgomery

It was Peanutt’s turn to talk about George Jones… There was a lot more about him than all of the craziness. “Well, I think he had religion down deep in his heart. And sometimes we’d be listening to old songs and hits. He’d cry and he’d say, I remember, oh, my mother sang that. Or, you know, he would think about his childhood and he’d cry and he’d talk about the Lord. After I got in the church and I quit trying to do everything, he’d come try to get me to drink with him and I wouldn’t do it. So he’d kind of get offended. But drinking wasn’t the core of who he was was. No, no… And a lot of things were told about him. It really didn’t happen that way. Even about the lawnmower that he had when he lived in Nevada, Texas at that time with his wife Shirley. You see, George had his driver’s license revoked and he would that drive Sears & Roebuck red and white tractor around town, it was not a John Deere!” But the burning question was, did Jones indeed drive the Sears lawnmower down to get some beer? “He did. Yeah.”

Peanutt explained how he got in with Jones, “The way I got in with George was Melba (Montgomery). My sister recorded with him, did duets with George, and I would go, you know, pitch songs to her and to him. And then I signed out with Pappy Daily Loud Music so, that was my outlet to George. He cut almost 80 songs that I wrote, either by myself or with others.”

But writing songs for a recording artist doesn’t necessarily mean that you become friends.

“It started out just writing for him and playing guitar and bass with Melba on the road. I’d play bass and just play with anybody who needed a bass player and so I did sessions playing bass, and then they started using me as rhythm guitar.”

So the longer you were associated with the band and doing all that, you and George struck up a friendship?

“I was in the band as a Jones boy and I’d travel on the bus with them. And we struck up a friendship”, said Charlene. “From 1960, or “62, that friendship lasted until he died, actually.”

Charlene interjected, “ But we knew George long before Tammy came along. We were there when he met Tammy and we were with them. The whole time that they were married. When he divorced Tammy he moved in with us at that time, he, you know, he met my sister Linda and he stayed here eight years with her. And right at eight years… It was almost eight years. And then, of course, they lived here in Muscle Shoals and then George met the woman he was with when he died, Nancy. And they moved to Texas and Louisiana and here, there and everywhere, then back to Franklin, Tennessee, where he died.”

George Jones tried to shoot Peanutt Montgomery…

“Yeah that happened,” Peanutt said, a wry smile on his face…

“Oh me let me tell the way the truth is. The movie tells the story a little bit differently. It may be their take. It is not the actual truth. And Charlene was not around me when that happened. So I know only the truth. The truth is to live it. He wanted me to meet him at the river. We’d go down and fish sometimes at Cypress Creek in Florence. I would normally meet him at Shoprite (Supermarket)”, and we’d go from there down to our fishing spot on Highway 20. You go out toward Savannah Highway and there’s a bridge down there at Cypress Creek, and we’d go down and pull off and fish, you know, from the bank. This would have been in 1976.”

Montgomery detailed the incident. Jones was in a pretty bad state at this time in his life.

“But anyway, there two issues that had been eating away at George for some time. Well, he asked me to meet him down there and, and, and what it was… He was jealous of me being saved and he was jealous of Jesus because I talked about Jesus around him a lot. And two, I had quit drinking with him and I had quit going to clubs and stuff with him.

And he’d want to go to Las Vegas strip before he shot at me and I wouldn’t go. But he went out there and did three or four nights of shows.. It I think it was Western Club. And I wouldn’t go with him and that kind of turned him off and and he wanted to discuss all that and, and so I met him over at Cypress Creek at the bridge there.

Yeah, I met him down there and he was backed-in and I pulled in on it so he sitting next to me in his car and I’m hanging my arms out and I said, George, why do you persecute me like you do? Why are you picking me all the time for it, you know? And he just he just just pulled out that pistol. Then he said, ‘I’m gonna see if your God can save you now you S.O.B.!’ And he shot at me and well, it hit right over my hand, right in that thick piece of chrome on the door… And he had been drinking.

So I… I had a a new 77 Trans-Am and I kept my pistol between the seats. I put my hand on my gun. He knew I had one too. He shot at me. Yeah. I put my hand on my gun. And he told me not to not to do that. But legally, I had a right to defend myself, you know.

But he pulled that hammer back on that thing. I heard it go click, click, click like that on that 38 and it just was shocking that it was empty after only one shot. And he said, well, hold on? And then he threw it in front seat of the car. No, he didn’t throw it in the water. He threw it down thein the front of his car, and he just looked at me real funny, like nothing had ever happened.

So he left and went back to Georgetown Apartments, where he lived. And I went to the police. But they wouldn’t go and arrest him. And I was friends of the District Attorney! They sort of laughed about it, you know. But he (the DA) finally went out there and arrested him. Yeah. And, and he (George) signed his own bond I think.

So we went to court and he came in. So we’re sitting there and the judge, Dressler was the judge, and George came in, threw his hands out and he said, okay, I did it. I’m guilty. I apologized. I’m sorry I did that. What can I say?

And he was sorry. Oh, yeah, he was sorry. Yeah, he’s sorry he did that. I ended up dropping charges. I didn’t want to see George go to jail.

We reconciled after that.”

After that incident, things were the never again same between Jones and Montgomery. They still visited one another time-to-time, but George got married again after he left Linda, new people in the equation complicated things the way they often times do. George Jones eventually left The Shoals”

In reflection, Peanutt Montgomery, a religious man, summed it up. I think that God was in all of it. I think God was always with us and I think George probably accepted Christ into his heart. But he had problems because everybody thinks you’ve got to be a perfect man to be a Christian, you know, and there’s no perfect people. And so I think that overall, I think God was in all of it and I think he protected us. He protected George in his travels.

Yeah, I would hung out with him if he had a been a mechanic, you know. I knew who he was. I knew who he was. Sure. You know…

Charlene summed it up… “We were just friends. And a lot of people said, Oh, yeah, we got some pictures. But they were just maybe little old Polaroid cameras. We didn’t make a big deal out of it. And George liked that. He liked being out and had Airstreams to go fishing, go hunting, cooking out, going down to the river and camping out. And we did a lot of things, just family. He was like a brother to us and it was just family. My whole family loves George. I mean, all of them. He knew them all.

The impact he had on me… I saw a goodness in George that most people didn’t see. I could tell that he had a heart of gold. He was good to people. And, you know, to be who he was, there were times when he didn’t want to be bothered. He could be ugly. But then there were times that I’ve seen him reach out to old men and women and do good things for people… Many, many good things.