George Jones’ older sister continues to be his guiding light even though she is in a nursing home with dementia

He thanks his older sister for setting him on his career path in music, and also, even while in a nursing home with dementia, having rekindled another dormant passion in her younger brother.

George, who found fame on the showband scene through Clubsound and stood out as one of the top radio broadcasters for more than four decades, has more recently been exploring his gift for painting.

He explained how brush strokes helped to lift his boredom in lockdown: “My sister Lally has been my mentor all my life, sadly she is now in a nursing home with dementia.

“She’s 10 years older than me, she’s like a second mother to me.

“When I was about 14 I did this correspondence course, in other words you were taught through the post. I took up art, I did it for about a year and that was the end of that.

“Then about five years ago, my sister’s husband had died and we were clearing out the house. I found that she’d kept all of the sketches I’d done when I was 14 in an envelope.

“I started looked at them, messing around with them, I bought some paints and started colouring them in.

“The nights I wasn’t working I was painting. In two years I must have done about 250 paintings for people.

“It’s a blessing for me, it kept me sane, when you play every week and suddenly you stop, it hits you hard.

“It relieved the boredom, it gave me something to focus on, when a painting turned out successful you felt you’d achieved something.

“My biggest satisfaction is that I’ve painted memories for people that are now hanging in their house.

“It’s another sense of entertainment I suppose, another string to my bow. If my sister hadn’t kept those sketches I wouldn’t have all of this.”

George recalled his sister’s influence on his musical career: “The first two records my sister brought in that started me on music when I was about nine or 10 were Little Richard ‘Long Tall Sally’ and Elvis ‘All Shook Up’.

“In those days it wasn’t vinyl, it was 78 bakelite – it looked the same as vinyl but if you’d dropped it, it would have smashed.

“I listened to them non-stop and then she bought me my first guitar at 11.”

George said he formed skiffle groups with boys of his age in the Bloomfield area of east Belfast. One of them was Van Morrison, whom George went on to tour with as The Monarchs.

He said: “I go to lunch with Van Morrison quite a lot. The Monarchs were the first band to go to Germany. We had a hit record in 1963 when the Beatles were still hovering around Germany.

“Van has been trying to find the rights to it to repress it and put it out as a single on vinyl. I sung on it and he played saxophone – a bit of rock and roll.”

George, who has been part of the successful ‘Do You Come Here Often?’ and ‘Rock ‘n Roll Years and Dance Hall Days’ shows, started learning the guitar at 11.

He believes that might be the magic number: “I’ve interviewed so many people in my years on the radio who started the exact same way.

“I’m hesitant to ask when they started to play the guitar – it’s always 11. So many great guitarists I interviewed, the likes of Hank B Marvin, started at 11.”

Having found his first chords at 11 George is still going strong at 77.

He said: “For me it’s been an incredible life, just when you think it’s all over, Clubsound have found a new lease of life.

“We’ve found out that young people have started listening to the albums their parents have. I hesitate to use the term, but you become a cult.

“Young ones come up to me and say ‘Yeoooo, Shankill Airways, my mum plays that all the time’.”

George said the state modern music meant that people are yearning for songs from bygone days, especially the fifties and sixties: “It was real music, there was no electronics – it was guitars, live drums, you were getting the whole live vibe.

“In our day you just piled in, there was no such thing as tickets, you paid at the door and they squeezed in as many as they could.

That added to the experience.”

George plans to publish his memoirs as a book. In it he plans to recount his first meetings with Rory Gallagher and an incredibly green Gary Moore, of whom he told his father, ‘that wee lad will never be a guitar player’.

‘It took a long time but I’m now over shock exit from Radio Ulster’

George said that when he made his radio debut with Downtown his plan wasn’t to dilute his Clubsound persona too much.

He said: “I used to bring what I did on stage onto the radio. I used to bring these we characters like Sadie that I did the voices for – she got more mail that I did. Radio needs to entertain, if you’re on for two hours you’re not just sitting there spinning dics, you have to draw people in.”

It wasn’t long before George was snapped up by Radio Ulster where he delivered ‘Just Jones’ for an amazing 21 years. Then one fateful day he was told he was surplus to requirements despite his popularity.

George said: “People come up to me to this day, saying, ‘we miss you on the raido’ and ‘why did they do that to you’.

“It was a big change in my life, it brought me down to earth more than anything. I thought those days were over – about two more times before that we were down and out and started over again, especially after the Miami thing and in South Africa my son nearly died of typhoid.

“There were downs, but this was one I didn’t expect. I felt I was doing a good job.

“During my six month notice period the public lifted me to heights I never would believe. On the last week I was there I got nearly 2,000 emails from all over the world. I walked out of there about 11 feet tall. That was the bonus.”

He said: “My wife and family have helped me put it behind me. It took a long time because I was hurting.

“I took up U105 with good success. It was water under the bridge and I had to put it under the bridge. I finished up in Downtown where I’d started in the 1970s. Then I said to myself, radio is changing but it’s time for me to step aside.

“When I look back now at radio in general, it’s like looking back to the wonder years of music, it saddens me – why has it changed so much? The commercial radio stations are just advertising boards with bits of music.

“The word entertainment has disappeared from broadcasting. You couldn’t sit and listen to a radio show for two hours now, whereas before you’d have people would have been glad of that two hours of company.”

Asked who he listens to on the ‘wireless’ George said: “Ken Bruce is still one of the old school and he makes me laugh. He still plays the oldies. Steve Wright still plays oldies. Asides from that it’s Classic FM.

“It breaks my heart but I wouldn’t listen to any local radio stations.”

Where to see George and Clubsound in action

Clubsound’s current line-up of George Jones, David McKnight, Barry Woods, Alan McCartney and Jimmy Black will be on the road this spring including gigs at Theatre at The Mill in Newtownabbey on Saturday, March 16, Armagh’s Market Place Theatre on Saturday, April 9 and the Portico Arts and Heritage Centre in Portaferry on Monday, April 18.

There will also be a gig at the Millennium Forum in Londonderry on Thursday, November 11.

The same venue hosts ‘Rock ‘n Roll Years and Dance Hall Days’ on Saturday, February 5.

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