Jake Brennan

Before he could say anything though, D-Doodle the duck squawked out, in Billy's direction.

The old man just rolled his eyes from where he sat on the couch.

George stared at D-Doodle till he sat down quietly on the couch next to the old man.

And with everything quiet, George nodded toward Billy, rubbed his temples, and walked up to the mic.

It was February.

1980.

George was only a month out of rehab, but he was already sliding back into familiar patterns.

There was one nice thing about drying out for 40 days, though.

It punctured a hole in his cocaine-induced haze.

D-Doodle and the old man were still hovering over his shoulder, but at least their voices weren't quite as loud.

George had spent the last four hours passed out on a couch in the corner of the main tracking room at Columbia's Studio B on Nashville's Music Row, which meant he hadn't taken a drink in four hours, which meant he was probably the most sober Billy Shirell had seen him in months.

If they were ever going to finish this downer of a song, this was probably their best chance.

As Billy rewound the tape in the control room, George looked around the galvanized steel hut that made up Columbia's Studio B. Most artists these days like tracking in Columbia's more modern Studio A, but George and Billy still liked the old Quonset hut on the back of the property.

The room had history.

When producer Owen Bradley opened the studio in the 1950s, it was the first music business on the street.

By the time he sold it a decade later, they were calling the block Music Row.

The room had personal history for Billy and for George, too.

Here, Billy had charted the ups and downs of George and Tammy's love affair from the rosy early days with ballads like Take Me to the hints of Stormy Weather and We're Gonna Hold On and on through the fading love of Golden Ring.

Now, Billy was trying to get George to finish the song that he was convinced would be the perfect finale for the George and Tammy saga.

Even if no one else, not even George Jones, believed it.