George Jones, who died Friday, worked magic with the hyper-melodramatic lyric of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the self-negating story line in “The Grand Tour,” and the romantic hopelessness in “The Race Is On.”

But there’s another George Jones track, one that originally wound up on the cutting-room floor, that I’ve gone back to time after time after time since it surfaced a decade ago. This recording represents to this longtime country fan the alpha and omega of male country singing.

It’s his duet with Johnny Cash on Cash’s early hit “I Still Miss Someone,” a song whose straight line to the heart has regularly attracted singers since Cash and his nephew, Roy Cash Jr., wrote it in the 1950s. Cash died in 2003.

George Jones: Career in Photos

Jones died in Nashville on Friday at 81. Cash passed away in 2003.

"I Still Miss Someone" was recorded in 1979 when Cash was working on his album “Silver,” the title a nod to it coming on his 25th anniversary in the music business. Why it wasn’t included on “Silver” when it was first released isn’t mentioned in the 2002 reissue of the album, which features the song as a bonus track.