Randy Travis Swoons Over George Jones Singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today”

In 1991, George Jones sings his hit song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” for Randy Travis on an episode of HBO’s Influences.

Travis introduces the song saying:

“I tell you what, George. You been one of my influences for several years now. I grew up listening to you, singing your songs, and I imagine most of this audience and most of the people who are in this business right now would agree that you’ve influenced more people in this business than anybody else.”

Jones responded, “Well thank you, Randy. Thank you.”

Randy continued, “This is one of my favorite songs that you ever recorded, and we should go ahead and sing it. ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today.’”

Jones proceeded to deliver a flawless performance of the song with Randy Travis right next to him soaking up every second of the emotional ballad.

Following its release in 1980, The song was Jones’ first solo No. 1 single in six years.

Billy Sherrill, a producer, first showed Jones the song in 1978, but Jones initially hated the song saying, “it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it. He hated the melody and wouldn’t learn it.”

In Bob Allen’s Biography of George Jones, Billy Sherrill shares many memories he has of recording the song.

Sherrill shared that he was frustrated with Jones while they were trying to record the song claiming that Jones would sing the song to the melody of “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” Kris Kristofferson’s hit song.
Jones claimed that melody was better than the original, and Sherrill said “It might be—Kristofferson would think so too, it’s his melody!”

Sherrill revealed that the last words Jones said about “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was “Nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a b*tch”.

To Jones’ surprise, the song shot to the top of the country charts in July, 1980, just 3 months after it was released.

Jones ended up having a love-hate relationship with “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”
Jones blatantly bashed the song when it was first pitched to him, but the singer ended up crediting the same song for reviving his struggling music career saying, “a four-decade career had been salvaged by a three-minute song.”

The song re-entered the Hot Country Songs chart in 2013 following Jones’ death.

Watch George Jones sing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” for Randy Travis in the video below.