Walls Can Fall

Recording

Walls Can Fall was produced by Emory Gordy, Jr.. Gordy had previously produced albums by Steve Earle and Bill Monroe, among others, and Jones was backed by the usual top players and songwriters in Nashville. The biggest hit on the album, "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair," includes in the final chorus in chronological order: Alan Jackson, T. Graham Brown, Pam Tillis and Patty Loveless, Mark Chesnutt, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Joe Diffie, Clint Black, and Garth Brooks. In addition, the music video for the song features George Foreman, but as Bob Allen notes in his book George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, "...all the guest stars, and MCA's formidable promotional muscle notwithstanding, the song barely made it into the top thirty - which, even at that, was considerably better than any other single from Walls Can Fall, a generally excellent album, did." "I have a theory as to why," Jones would write in his 1996 autobiography I Lived To Tell It All. "It's because George Jones, the lead singer, is a senior citizen." That same year, Jones was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; during his acceptance speech, the singer chided country radio for not playing material by older artists. "I'm sure my remarks, broadcast coast-to-coast and overseas, annoyed a few radio programmers and hurt my own airplay," Jones later wrote in his memoir. "It went down shortly afterward." Other notable cuts on the album include "Finally Friday", which got a modest amount of airplay, and a cover of the Merle Haggard honky tonk classic "The Bottle Let Me Down".

Personnel