Jo Jones

Jo Jones revolutionized drumming technique by relocating the primary timekeeping responsibility from the bass drum onto the hi-hat cymbal, an innovation that shaped every subsequent swing and bop percussionist. Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson counted among the players who absorbed lessons from his light yet forceful approach, which supplied the Count Basie Orchestra with exactly the accents and sonorities required to maintain its distinctive swing. After his Alabama upbringing, Jones toured as both drummer and tap dancer in carnival productions. He entered Walter Page's Blue Devils in Oklahoma City during the late 1920s. A stint with Lloyd Hunter's band in Nebraska preceded his 1933 arrival in Kansas City, where he joined Count Basie's ensemble the next year. Traveling with Basie to New York in 1936, Jones united with Basie, Freddie Green, and Walter Page to create one of the era's defining rhythm sections. Apart from military duty between 1944 and 1946, he stayed with the Basie band until 1948 and later joined numerous reunions of Basie alumni. Tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic followed, together with 1950s recording sessions alongside Illinois Jacquet, Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington, among additional artists. In 1957 he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival both with Basie and within the Coleman Hawkins-Roy Eldridge Sextet. His own leadership dates were issued on Vanguard in 1955 and 1959, on Everest from 1959 to 1960, on Jazz Odyssey in 1970 where spoken reminiscences accompanied drum solos, and on Pablo and Denon during the mid-1970s. In his later decades he was widely addressed as "Papa" Jo Jones and regarded as a perceptive though unflinchingly candid elder statesman of the music.