GEORGE JONES, the hard living, hard lovin’ country music great has died at 81.
Jones passed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
As The ENQUIRER reported previously Jones had been hospitalized with fever and irregular blood pressure, forcing him to postpone two shows.
Jones was born Sept. 12, 1931, in a log cabin house in Texas, the youngest of eight children. He first sang in church and at age 11 began performing for tips on the streets of Beaumont, Tex. But instead of using the money to feed his starving family spent it all at a penny arcade.
"That was my first time to earn money for singing and my first time to blow it afterward," he said in his tell-all memoir "I Lived to Tell it All" "It started what almost became a lifetime trend."