Burning Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets (CD - 2008)

Audio Mixer: John Kelton.

Arranger: D. Bergen White.

While duet recordings are a dime a dozen in the world of country music, nobody does duets like George Jones, whose recordings with Tammy Wynette and Melba Montgomery virtually defined the form. BURN YOUR PLAYHOUSE DOWN collects the honky-tonk hero's previously unreleased duet performances from the 1993 BRADLEY BARN SESSIONS and 1988's FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES, as well as a lost '70s track with Wynette and a 21st-century tune by Jones and his daughter Georgette.

While the cuts with artists like Wynette and Dolly Parton--both old hands at the duet game--are as great as you might expect, one of the surprise highlights is a version of the title track with Keith Richards, who turns in one of the finest vocal performances of his career. And revisiting his classic "The Window Up Above" with the help of Leon Russell, Jones proves that he still hasn't exhausted all the interpretive possibilities of even his best-known material. minimize