Jonah Jones
b. Robert Elliott Jones, 31 December 1909, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, d. 29 April 2000, New York City, New York, USA. As a youth Jones played trumpet with numerous local and territory bands before joining Horace Henderson in 1928. After drifting through various other minor bands, he joined Jimmie Lunceford and then in Buffalo, in 1932, began a highly profitable musical partnership with Stuff Smith. Although he found time for excursions with Lillian Armstrong and McKinney's Cotton Pickers, he was still with Smith when they took their little band into New York and a residency at the Onyx Club in early 1936. For the next four years the band captivated audiences with their hot music, eccentric appearance and crazy clowning. In 1940, Jones left to work with the big bands of Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson and then spent a decade with Cab Calloway, displacing Dizzy Gillespie. He next played with Earl Hines and Joe Bushkin but from the mid-50s led his own small band and recorded for Capitol Records, attaining great popularity with the fringe jazz audience and scoring a big hit with a version of "On The Street Where You Live".
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Top Tracks
- I Dig Chicks!
- Don't Mess With Bill
- For Better Or Worse
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