Jill Jones

Born to an African-American mother and an Italian father in a modest Ohio community, Jill Jones departed at seventeen to chase a career as a professional singer and songwriter. Her initial professional engagement came as a backing vocalist for her idol Teena Marie, whose management was handled by Jones’s own mother. When Marie served as opener for Prince during the 1980 Dirty Mind tour, Jones encountered the Minneapolis artist for the first time; impressed by her talent, Prince maintained communication afterward. In 1982 he summoned her to sessions at Sunset Sound, where she contributed vocals to multiple tracks on the 1999 album, most prominently “Lady Cab Driver.” The following year, at his urging, she relocated to Minneapolis and initiated work on her own project.

Her self-titled debut appeared on Paisley Park Records on May 26, 1987, nearly four years after recording had begun. Although Prince received co-writing credit alongside Jones on four songs—“Mia Bocca,” “G-Spot,” “All Day, All Night,” and “For Love”—he had in fact composed every track himself. European audiences responded enthusiastically, yet the album never reached Billboard’s pop or black Top 100 lists, and none of its three singles charted domestically.

Jones traveled to England in autumn 1988 to develop material for a second Paisley Park release that ultimately remained unfinished, largely because she and Prince had drifted apart artistically; reports indicate they have not communicated since. During the early 1990s she lent her voice to projects by Japanese avant-garde musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, Indigo Girls, and the Listening Pool, among additional collaborators. After a period of relative inactivity through the late 1990s, she teamed with guitarist Chris Bruce on an acoustic album; the completed record, titled Two, surfaced in 2001. Her singularly expressive voice has been underutilized across subsequent decades. She resurfaced in 2009 when the single “Living for the Weekend” appeared on the Billboard charts.