Teddy Thompson has never been shy about his love of classic country; heck, in 2023 he released a full album of country covers titled simply My Love of Country, but before that, back in 2007, his third full length release was Upfront & Down Low, another covers album filled with his take on tracks recorded and popularised by artists like Dolly Parton, The Everly Brothers and Ernest Tubb. The standout on that album, however, was Thompson’s version of She Thinks I Still Care, written by Dickey Lee and Steve Duffy and released by George Jones in 1962.
Now, Jones himself has said that he always knew that the song had hit written all over it, saying in his 1994 video retrospective Golden Hits: “It knocked me out. I couldn’t wait to get into the studio”, but according to some sources, this is a revision of history that he made after the song was a success. His biographer, Bob Allen, claims that Jones didn’t want to record it as it had “too many damn ‘just becauses’ in it”, while the brother of Luther Nalley, a session musician who had worked on the recording, claimed that he had heard Jones needed to be bribed with the prospect of being allowed to buy a tape recorder he was fond of in the studio before he would agree to lay down the track.
In 2013, as part of the excellent Transatlantic Sessions, Thompson recorded a live version of She Thinks I Still Care. None other than Mary Chaplin Carpenter is one of the singers providing some beautiful harmonies, which is one of the reasons why I think this version shines even brighter than Thompson’s previous studio recording. “Just because I ask a friend about her / Just because I spoke her name somewhere / Just because I rang her number by mistake today / She thinks I still care”, Thompson croons with the kind of conviction that only a true lover of vintage country can have; the kind that makes you believe he is every inch the heartbroken man just as much as Jones was half a century before him.
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