JazzCorner remembers Papa Jo Jones on his birthday. Born Jonathan David Samuel Jones in Chicago, Illinois, he moved to Alabama where he learned to play several instruments, including saxophone, piano, and drums. He worked as a drummer and tap-dancer at carnival shows until joining Walter Pages band, the Blue Devils in Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. He recorded with trumpeter Lloyd Hunters Serenaders in 1931, and later joined pianist Count Basies band in 1934. Jones, Basie, guitarist Freddie Green and bassist Walter Page were sometimes billed as an All-American Rhythm section, an ideal team. Jones took a brief break for two years when he was in the military, but he remained with Basie until 1948. He participated in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series. He was one of the first drummers to promote the use of brushes on drums and shifting the role of timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal. Jones had a major influence on later drummers such as Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, and Louie Bellson. He also starred in several films, most notably the musical short Jammin the Blues (1944). In contrast to drummer Gene Krupas loud, insistent pounding of the bass drum on each beat, Jones often omitted bass drum playing altogether. Jones also continued a ride rhythm on hi-hat while it was continuously opening and closing instead of the common practice of striking it while it was closed. Joness style influenced the modern jazz drummers tendency to play timekeeping rhythms on a suspended cymbal that is now known as the ride cymbal. In 1979, Jones was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame for his contribution to the Birmingham, Alabama musical heritage. Jones was the 1985 recipient of an American Jazz Masters fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. His autobiography (as told to Albert Murray), entitled Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones and based on conversations between Jones and novelist Murray from 1977 to before Jones death in 1985, was posthumously published in 2011 by the University of Minnesota Press.
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 20:41:07 +0000
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