George Jones played his final show on April 6, 2013, at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum in Knoxville, Tenn., closing with his signature song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

While fans in attendance didn’t know they were witnessing history, Jones did. The final performance of Jones’ legendary career is available on YouTube.

The Tennessean shares how Jones told his wife, Nancy, “I just did my last show. And I gave ’em hell,” after leaving the stage that night. The next morning he’d enter the hospital, and he never came home. Visitors would come and go, but few aside from Alan Jackson spent more than a handful of minutes.

The 81-year-old Jones’ voice is raspy in the clip of his final concert performance, and his breathing labored. At one point, he sits down and almost misses his cue to come back in, but there wasn’t a single fan who cared. Listen to the screams and hollers, as well as how the coliseum full of fans picked him up, leading him to the finish. As the final drum crash and guitar chords faded away, so, too, it seems, did the end of an era.

Jones died on April 26, 2013, from hypoxic respiratory failure, a condition that occurs when there is too little oxygen present for the body to carry out its basic functions. He was laid to rest in an elaborate ceremony that took place at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville on May 2 that was open to the public.