Just because an artist considers a certain song their best doesn’t necessarily mean it will top the charts, which is a lesson George Jones faced head-on in 1960. That year, the iconic country music singer released “The Window Up Above”, which he later regarded as one of his all-time best compositions. And while that didn’t translate to a No. 1 spot on the charts, it did serve as a milestone in his career.
Over the previous six years, Jones earned a reputation for his affinity for honky-tonk music, like “White Lightning” and “Who Shot Sam”. But “The Window Up Above” showed a more introspective side to Jones, which he carried over into his vocal delivery. The 1960 single would inform later, more sentimental works, deepening his artistic expression and defining his musical legacy.
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Jones held “The Window Up Above” in such high regard, in fact, that he ordered a custom Nudie suit with cowboys looking out of rhinestone-clad windows as an homage to the No. 2 hit.
George Jones Was Incredibly Proud of “The Window Up Above”
Speaking to Texas Monthly in 1994, George Jones recalled the brief half-hour it took to write “The Window Up Above”. “I just came in off the road, about eight in the morning. While breakfast was being fixed, I just sat down in the den and picked up the guitar. It was as simple as that. Sometimes, it’s hard to even figure where the ideas come from.” Even three decades later, the single that Jones wrote in around twenty minutes was among the favorites of his career.
Aside from “Why Baby Why”, Jones credited “The Window Up Above” as being one of the first songs that “got me any attention at all” during a 2006 interview with Billboard. “When I went to Mercury, I got my first halfway decent sounds. ‘Window’ and ‘Color Of The Blues’ didn’t sell that big. But they got me a lot of radio play.”
Ultimately, that radio play proved just as valuable (if not more so) than the actual record sales. The song further solidified Jones’ status as one of country music’s best artists and marked a sonic highlight of his early 1960s sound. All things considered, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart is nothing to sneeze at.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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