Moody Jones (April 8, 1908 – March 23, 1988) was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

ist,

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

player, and singer who contributed to the development of the

postwar In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period c ...

Chicago blues Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth cent ...

sound in the late 1940s.

Early life

Jones was born in

Earle, Arkansas Earle is a city in Crittenden County, Arkansas, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 1,831. Geography Earle is located in western Crittenden County at (35.270405, -90.464841). U.S. Route 64 passes through the northern part of ...

, on April 8, 1908. Raised in the church, he developed an interest in music at an early age and learned to play the guitar after his brother bought an old broken one for $3. When he was proficient enough, he started playing for country dances.

Playing in Chicago

By 1939 he had arrived in Chicago, where he was one of a number of musicians, performing on

Maxwell Street Maxwell Street is an east-west street in Chicago, Illinois that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. It runs at 1330 South in the numbering system running from 500 West to 1126 West.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee (1988). '' ...

and in nonunion venues, who played an important role in the development of the postwar Chicago blues sound. He often performed with his first cousin, the singer and guitar player

Floyd Jones Floyd Jones (July 21, 1917 – December 19, 1989) was an African-American blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. He was one of the first of the new generation of electric blues artists to record in Chicago after World War II, and a number of h ...

.Rowe 1973, p. 57. By the late 1940s he was capable of playing any kind of music requested and had learned to play the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

and bass (including a homemade bass fashioned from a washtub, a broom handle and a clothesline), in addition to the guitar. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the best guitar player on the Chicago scene; the noted

slide guitar Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos tha ...

player

Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago b ...

warned Jones not to "fool with that slide" when he sat in with Waters's band one night.

Recordings

Jones is most significant and best known for the singles he recorded in 1948 with his cousin Floyd Jones and the

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

player

Snooky Pryor James Edward "Snooky" Pryor (September 15, 1919 or 1921 – October 18, 2006) was an American Chicago blues harmonica player. He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his ...

, which were among the first recorded examples of the new style. The track "Snooky and Moody's Boogie" is said to have been the inspiration for

Little Walter Marion Walter Jacobs (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968), known as Little Walter, was an American blues musician, singer, and songwriter, whose revolutionary approach to the harmonica had a strong impact on succeeding generations, earning him ...

's 1952 hit " Juke". Jones made further recordings for

JOB Records J.O.B. Records was an American, Chicago based independent record label, founded by businessman Joe Brown (record label owner), Joe Brown and bluesman St. Louis Jimmy Oden in 1949. It specialized in Southern blues and city based Rhythm and blues, ...

in the early 1950s, backing musicians such as Snooky Pryor and

Johnny Shines John Ned Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Biography Shines was born in the community of Frayser, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of h ...

. He sang three numbers on a 1952 session, but these were not released at the time (because, according to Jones, the label's owner, Joe Brown, thought his voice was "too rough"). One of the songs, "Rough Treatment", was recorded by the singer and guitarist Little Hudson (Hudson Showers) and released on the same label the following year.

Later life

After 1953 Jones stopped playing blues and joined a

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

group. By 1955 he had become a pastor of a Sanctified church.Rowe 1973, p. 194. Jones died in Chicago, on March 23, 1988.

References

Sources

*Rowe, M. (1974). ''Chicago Breakdown''. London: Eddison Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Moody 1908 births 1988 deaths Chicago blues musicians American blues singers American blues guitarists American male guitarists People from Crittenden County, Arkansas Blues musicians from Arkansas 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American singers Singers from Arkansas Guitarists from Arkansas Guitarists from Illinois 20th-century American male musicians