When Johnny Cash was asked who his favorite country singer was, he would often reply, “You mean, besides George Jones?” Another renowned country artist, Merle Haggard, called Jones’s voice “one of the greatest instruments ever made,” comparing it to a Stradivarius violin. Jones became a living legend in his own lifetime. But as Tyler Mahan Coe highlights in Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Jones would become well known for the turbulent life that he lived off stage.

George Jones was a man blessed with rare talent. But he was also a man beset by demons. And those demons were shared by another country star, Tammy Wynette, his on-again, off-again paramour. Together, they captured the top of the charts and popular attention for much of the 1970s. Their relationship became a legend itself, with soaring highs and crushing lows. But as Coe makes clear, the low notes dominate. There is, he warns, “more pain and heartache” than “there is happiness.”