Friends in High Places (George Jones album)

Recording

Jones's last proper studio album had been 1990's You Oughta Be Here With Me, although Friends In High Places would be his last actual release on Epic after 19 years. The title was inspired by the hit single by Garth Brooks from the period, "Friends In Low Places". The album contains duets that were mostly taken from the vaults (for example, the duet with Emmylou Harris, "All Fall Down", was recorded in 1984). The most significant track in the collection is "A Few Ole Country Boys", a duet single with Randy Travis that made it to number 8 - largely because Travis was one of the biggest-selling artists at the time - and made Jones the only country artist in history to have a Top Ten song in each of the previous five decades. The album also includes a duet with fellow country icon Buck Owens on the Owens classic "Love's Gonna Live Here". The album was released with no promotion and peaked at number 72. Nearly all the songs would be included on the 2000 reissue of Jones's 1979 duet album My Very Special Guests.

The album also marked the last time new recordings would appear by Jones produced by Billy Sherrill. Jones and Sherrill had worked together for 19 years and had produced some of the singer's biggest hits, such as "The Grand Tour" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today". In 2006 Jones would tell Billboard: "I give the credit mostly to Billy, who at that time had that little bit of something different as a producer that most of the producers in Nashville didn't have."