George Jones’s New York

Bill Welch/The Tennessean, via Associated Press George Jones in a 1996 photograph.

Hardly anybody would have looked for an “I ♥ NY” bumper sticker on George Jones’s tour bus. “The story of him and New York was he just didn’t want to come here,” said Jack Grace, a singer and songwriter who books performers for the Rodeo Bar in Manhattan.

Mr. Jones, the country singer with the plaintive voice and the complicated life who died on Friday at 81, told people he did not like Manhattan. But maybe he needed a geography lesson. He did not seem to understand that Manhattan is in New York or that, to many New Yorkers, Manhattan just is New York.

The club promoter Steve I. Weitzman remembers booking Mr. Jones for an appearance at Tramps on West 21st Street in 1992.

“He had a fabulous time,” Mr. Weitzman said, adding that at one point, Mr. Jones told the crowd, “I’m in New York” â€" with, as Mr. Weitzman describes it, an almost-giddy sense of excitement that one would not expect from a big-name star.

A year and a half later, Mr. Weitzman booked him again. Same place, same stage, same hopes.

“The agent called me a week or two later and said, ‘George is going to cancel. George didn’t like Manhattan,’” Mr. Weitzman said. “George didn’t know that Manhattan was in New York. The agent told me George would appear if I could find another venue that’s not Manhattan, but what place was there that was not booked? I tried upstate New York, but I couldn’t find anything that was not booked.”

By then Mr. Jones was known as No-Show Jones for the performances he skipped, often because of drinking and drugs. Allan Pepper, an owner of the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, remembers no-show dates in the late 1970s. One was a two-night stand in September 1977 that coincided with a press party for Mr. Jones given by Epic Records.

“The only trouble was, Mr. Jones didn’t show up â€" at either the party or the performances,” The New York Times reported. “When last heard from, Mr. Jones’s Nashville office had no idea where he was.”

A story circulated about what had happened. “Somebody said he went out the bathroom window,” Mr. Pepper said.

Fans figured he had the jitters. “A lot of those people got freaky about New York,” Mort Cooperman, an owner of the Lone Star Café on Fifth Avenue, said, referring to famous performers. He said he had tried to sign Mr. Jones for the same dates but lost out to the Bottom Line. “Some of them loved it and turned into glowworms, like Johnny Paycheck. He was turned on by New York.”

But Mr. Jones stayed away. Mr. Pepper said the routine â€" agreeing on a date, signing a contract and canceling the gig â€" became all too familiar. “I would be upset,” he said, “but here’s the interesting thing: We would announce there was a cancellation and the fans would come up to the box office window and ask us, ‘What was it this time? He got sick? He got into an accident?’ They were prepared for this. They knew he was No-Show Jones. So I rebooked him, and again he canceled on me.”

Mr. Pepper booked him again, in 1980, and as if to prove the cliché about the third time being a charm, Mr. Jones not only appeared, but Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt â€" who had been in the audience â€" joined him onstage for several songs. Mr. Pepper said that Johnny Paycheck, who had been in Mr. Jones’s band, also appeared.

But back to the 1977 no-shows. Whose bathroom window Mr. Jones went out has been forgotten â€" if that detail was ever known.

“Not my bathroom window,” Mr. Pepper said. “He was long gone before the bus ever came to New York.”