Paul Jones is an English singer, actor, harmonica player, and radio personality and television presenter.
Career
As P. P. Pond, Paul Jones performed duets with Elmo Lewis (aka future founder member of
the Rolling StonesThe Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
,
Brian JonesLewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....
) at the Ealing Club, home of
Alexis KornerAlexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
's Blues Incorporated, whose singers included
Long John BaldryJohn William "Long John" Baldry was an English and Canadian blues singer and a voice actor. He sang with many British musicians, with Rod Stewart and Elton John appearing in bands led by Baldry in the 1960s. He enjoyed pop success in the UK where Let the Heartaches Begin reached No...
and
Mick JaggerSir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
. He was asked by
Keith RichardsKeith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
and
Brian JonesLewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....
to be the lead singer of a group they were forming, but he turned them down. Jones then went on to be the vocalist and harmonica player of the successful 1960s group
Manfred MannManfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
. He had several Top Ten
hitsA hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...
with Manfred Mann before going solo in July 1966. He remained with His Master's Voice.
He was less successful without the band than they were with his replacement, but did have a few hits, notably with "High Time" (1966) and "I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy" and "Thinkin' Ain't For Me" (both 1967) before attempting to branch into acting. While his solo recording career was barely successful in the UK, it never got off the ground in the US. He did have enough hits in Sweden however to have a greatest hits album released there on EMI!
His performance opposite model
Jean ShrimptonJean Rosemary Shrimpton is an English model and actress. She was an icon of Swinging London and is considered to be one of the world's first supermodels....
in the 1967 film
PrivilegePrivilege is a British film directed by Peter Watkins. It was released in 1967 being produced by John Heyman. Story: Johnny Speight. Script: Norman Bogner...
, directed by
Peter WatkinsPeter Watkins is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His movies, pacifist and radical, strongly review the limit of classic documentary and...
, did not bring the hoped-for
stardomA celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
, although the film later became a cult classic.
Privilege, which unsurprisingly cast Jones as a pop singer, saw him sing a few songs, including "Set Me Free", which was
coveredIn popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
by
Patti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
in the mid 1970s.
From 1966 he also worked as an actor, first in films and television, and then on stage, including West End shows such as
Conduct UnbecomingConduct Unbecoming is a play by Barry England. The plot concerns a scandal in a British regiment stationed in India in the 1880s. The widow of a heroic officer is assaulted by an unrevealed comrade in arms and an investigation takes place to determine his identity.It was first staged in May 1969 at...
(also on Broadway), plus the musicals
CatsCats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
and
Pump Boys and DinettesPump Boys and Dinettes is a musical written by a performance group of the same name. The performance group, "Pump Boys and Dinettes" consists of John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann...
. He has worked with directors such as Sir
Richard EyreSir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...
,
Peter GillPeter Gill, theatre director, playwright and former actor, was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 7 September 1939, son of George John Gill and his wife Margaret Mary .He was educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.-Career:...
and Toby Robertson.
In 1972 Jones recorded
Crucifix in a Horseshoe with White Cloud, a New York based
sessionSession musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
group featuring Teddy Wender on keyboards and
Kenny KosekKenny Kosek, born in 1949 in The Bronx, New York, is an American fiddler who plays bluegrass, country, klezmer, folk music and roots music. In addition to his solo career, he has performed with many other well-known performers and contributed to film and television soundtrack music. He is also a...
on
fiddleThe term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
.
In 1975 he guest starred in a TV Episode episode of
The SweeneyThe Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...
(Chalk & Cheese) as a boxer turned
GangsterA gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
.
In 1976, he performed the role of
PeronJuan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
on the original concept album of
Tim RiceSir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...
and
Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
's musical
EvitaEvita is a concept album released in 1976 and produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.Having successfully launched their previous show, Jesus Christ Superstar, on record in 1970, Lloyd Webber and Rice returned to the format for Evita...
alongside
Julie CovingtonJulie Covington is an English singer and actress, best known for recording the original version of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina".-Career:...
as Eva,
Colm WilkinsonColm Wilkinson is an Irish tenor, best known for originating the role of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables and for playing the title role in The Phantom of the Opera .Due to his association with these musicals, he reprised the role of...
as Che and
Barbara DicksonBarbara Ruth Dickson, OBE is a Scottish singer whose hits include "I Know Him So Well" and "January February"...
as The Mistress. His
goldMusic recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
albums include one for
Evita.
It was not until the 1990s that Jones became a familiar face on television in the children's series,
Uncle JackUncle Jack was a children's TV show which aired on BBC1 in the early 1990s. The show's hero, Jack Green, and his family are on a mission to save the planet...
. In the meantime, he enjoyed a parallel career as presenter of radio programmes focusing mainly on
rhythm and bluesRhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
, notably a long-running weekly show on
BBC Radio 2BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
.
He is also a member of
The Blues BandThe Blues Band is a British blues band formed in 1979 by Paul Jones, former lead vocalist and harmonica player with Manfred Mann, and vocalist/slide guitarist Dave Kelly, who had previously played with the John Dummer Blues Band, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker...
and
The ManfredsManfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
, a group reuniting many original members of Manfred Mann, and has also played harmonica as a
session musicianSession musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
on
recordingsSound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
by artists including
Gerry RaffertyGerald "Gerry" Rafferty was a Scottish singer songwriter best known for his solo hits "Baker Street", "Right Down the Line", "Days Gone Down", "Night Owl", "Get It Right Next Time", and with the band Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle with You". Rafferty was born into a working-class family in...
,
Dave EdmundsDavid 'Dave' Edmunds is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is primarily associated with Pub rock and New Wave, and had numerous hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll.-Early bands:As a teenager Edmunds first...
,
Katie MeluaKetevan "Katie" Melua is a British-Georgian singer, songwriter and musician. She moved to Northern Ireland at the age of eight and then to England at fourteen. Melua is signed to the small Dramatico record label, under the management of composer Mike Batt, and made her musical debut in 2003...
, Andrew Lloyd Webber and
Marti WebbMarti Webb is a musical actress from England, who appeared on stage in Evita, before starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber's one woman show Tell Me on a Sunday in 1980...
.
In 2001
Showcase appeared on
Hallmark RecordsHallmark Records is a British record label. It was founded in the 1960s and recently revived. The revived company has since become a major publisher of budget CDs in the UK, issuing both public domain and copyrighted material. The company has also re-issued some of its albums from the 1960s and...
. His most recent solo album is 2009's
Starting All Over Again on Continental Record Services (aka CRS) in Europe and Collectors' Choice in the US. It was produced by Carla Olson, and featured
Eric ClaptonEric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
,
Jake AndrewsJake Andrews is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter from Austin, Texas.-Life and career:Andrews began playing guitar at age 5, taught by his father, John Andrews of the 1960s band, Mother Earth. At an early age, he began attending shows at the blues venue, Antone's, to see...
,
Ernie WattsErnest James "Ernie" Watts is an American jazz and rhythm and blues musician. He plays saxophone and flute. He might be best known for his work with Charlie Haden's Quartet West and his Grammy Awards as an instrumentalist...
,
Percy SledgePercy Sledge is an American R&B and soul performer who recorded the hit "When a Man Loves a Woman" in 1966.-Early career:...
, Alvino Bennett, Tony Marsico,
Mike ThompsonMichael Thompson is a British horn player.After studying at the Royal Academy of Music, Thompson was appointed Principal Horn with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra aged just 18 years...
, Tom Jr Morgan, Oren Waters and Luther Waters.
On 4 May 2009 Jones and his harmonica featured in a song during a concert by
Joe BonamassaJoe Bonamassa is an American blues rock guitarist and singer.-Early life:Bonamassa was born and raised in New Hartford, United States. His parents owned and ran a guitar shop. He is a fourth-generation musician...
in the
Royal Albert HallThe Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
, London. That same month saw the single release of "I'm Your Kingpin" by
Nick Vernier BandNick Vernier Band is an alias for productions by Dutch musician and record producer Eric Van Den Brink. Although a ‘one man band’ in essence, featured collaborators include Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Stephen John Kalinich, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Matt Malley, Emitt Rhodes, Duncan Maitland,...
with Paul Jones on harmonica. In 2010, Jones also featured on two versions of "You’re Wrong" from Nick Vernier Band's
SessionsNick Vernier Band’s Sessions is a collaborative album by an ensemble containing notable musicians, such as Probyn Gregory, Gerry Beckley , Matt Malley, Paul Jones, Iain Matthews, Emitt Rhodes, Pizza Delivery Boys, Janaki, The Monkees...
album.
Jones is currently the president of the
National Harmonica LeagueThe National Harmonica League is an organization for harmonica players and enthusiasts, based in Great Britain but with members world wide. The President of the organization is Paul Jones. It publishes a magazine, Harmonica World which is sent to members six times a year. It organises events and...
and has been awarded "harmonica player of the year" in the British blues awards of 2010.
Personal life
Jones attended Portsmouth Grammar School and
Jesus College, OxfordJesus College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street...
, although he did not graduate.
Jones was first married to novelist and reviewer Sheila MacLeod, and is currently married to the former actress, and latterly Christian speaker,
Fiona Hendley-JonesFiona Hendley is a British actress and latterly Christian speaker, married to the former Manfred Mann singer and actor Paul Jones.-Musical and Acting Career:...
. He converted to Christianity in the mid 1980s as the result of being invited by
Cliff RichardSir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
to a
Luis PalauLuis Palau, Jr. is an international Christian evangelist living in the Portland area in Oregon, United States. He was born in Argentina and moved to Portland in his mid-twenties to enroll in a graduate program in Biblical studies....
evangelistic event. Jones had appeared opposite Richard in the 1960s, on a television debate show where he had, at the time, opposed Richard's viewpoint.
Solo discography
- My Way (1966)
- Sings Privilege & Others (1967)
- Love Me, Love My Friends (1968)
- Come into My Music Box (1969)
- Crucifix in a Horseshoe (1972)
- Starting All Over Again (2009)
External links