I don’t want to write this review of Sunday night’s George Jones show at the Paramount. I was so excited about it and it turned out to be somewhat disappointing.

While it was amazing and gratifying to finally see George Jones live—whom, as we all know, I love!—his voice was just shot. That’s not really a surprise: He’s 76 years old and he’s been living hard and performing for 50 years. His voice was raspy and a little deeper, he couldn’t hit most of his high notes (he had no trouble with the lower end), and sometimes it seemed like he was out of breath. His voice just wasn’t very clear; it was still recognizable as belonging to George Jones, but it wasn’t the same.

He also didn’t play many of my favorites. But he’s got 50 years’ worth of material to pick from, so that shouldn’t have come as a surprise either. What was a surprise was that he played my most favorite of his songs, “She Thinks I Still Care,” in a medley, and only sang one verse of it. Not cool.

I guess the highlight of the night was “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” his tale of a man who could only get over his ex-lover by dying of old age (“This time, he’s over her for good”). That was great. And he did a few of his Tammy Wynette duets with some broad (“Golden Ring” was particularly good), yet there were no Melba Montgomery duets. He played some Merle Haggard covers, which was cool. He played “White Lightning,” “The Race Is On,” “The One I Loved Back Then” (“She was hotter than a two-dollar pistol”). He was feisty and funny—a great entertainer—and he was pissed toward the beginning because the sound wasn’t quite right. But the voice; without it, it’s just not the whole George Jones experience.

So, to make me feel better, here’s “She Thinks I Still Care” in its entirety, from 1962.