Jonah Jones

Career

Jonah Jones began his career playing on a riverboat named Island Queen, which traveled between Kentucky and Ohio. He started in the 1920s on Mississippi riverboats, then in 1928 joined Horace Henderson. Later he worked with Jimmie Lunceford and had an early collaboration with Stuff Smith in 1932. That successful collaboration lasted from 1932 to 1936.

In the 1940s, he worked in big bands like Benny Carter's and Fletcher Henderson's, then spent most of a decade with Cab Calloway's band, which later became a combo. Starting in the 1950s, Jones led his own quartet and concentrated on a formula that gained him wider appeal for a decade. The quartet featured George "River Rider" Rhodes on piano, John "Broken Down" Browne on bass, and Harold "Hard Nuts" Austin on drums. Their most-mentioned accomplishment was their version of "On The Street Where You Live," a strong-swinging treatment of the Broadway tune with a boogie-woogie jump blues feeling.

This effort succeeded, and Jones became known to a wider audience. His quartet performed on An Evening With Fred Astaire in 1958, and at the Grammy Awards of 1960, he won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. In 1972, he returned to more "core" jazz work with Earl Hines on the Chiaroscuro album Back On The Street. Jones enjoyed especial popularity in France, being featured in a jazz festival at the Salle Pleyel.

A 1996 videotaped interview by Dan Del Fiorentino was donated to the NAMM Oral History Program Collection in 2010. Jones also performed in the orchestra pit under Alexander Smallens and briefly in an onstage musical sequence of Porgy and Bess, starring Cab Calloway. He was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999.

Did You Know?

• Jones started on alto saxophone at age 12 before quickly switching to trumpet.
• His nickname 'Jonah' came from an early music instructor who stuttered when saying his surname.
• He married trumpeter, clarinetist, and hornist Elizabeth Bowles, sister of Russell Bowles.