Curtis Jones (August 18, 1906 – September 11, 1971) was an American blues pianist.
Jones was born in Naples, Texas, United States, to sharecropping parents, and played guitar whilst young but switched to piano after a move to Dallas. He often played guitar on one or two songs on his albums and at live performances. In 1936 he relocated to Chicago, where he recorded between 1937 and 1941 on Vocalion, Bluebird, and OKeh. Among his best-known tunes from these recordings were the hit "Lonesome Bedroom Blues" and the song "Tin Pan Alley". His "Decoration Blues" though unissued at the time, was recorded by Sonny Boy Williamson I in 1938. World War II interrupted his recording career, which he did not resume until 1953, when a single of his, "Wrong Blues"/"Cool Playing Blues", was released on Parrot, featuring L. C. McKinley on guitar.
Jones's first full-length album appeared in 1960 on Bluesville, by which time he had become a noted performer on the Chicago folk music scene. A solo album was released in 1962, by which time Jones had moved to Europe. He lived there and in Morocco for the rest of his life. He made further albums in the UK, including one in 1968 that featured Alexis Korner on guitar.
One of Jones' songs, "Highway 51", was included on Bob Dylan's 1962 debut album, Bob Dylan.
Jones died of heart failure in Munich in 1971, at the age of 65.
This
is the third three-disc volume in Bear Family Records' ambitious
four-volume history of the electric blues, all compiled and annotated by
blues historian and musicologist Bill Dahl. The Gibson guitar company
introduced the first electric guitar in the 1930s, and the advent of
amplification meant the blues could preach louder and longer, which
allowed a country acoustic music to transform itself into its own kind
of powerfully rhythmic pop music. Taken as a whole, this ambitious Bear
Family series traces and surveys that transformation, beginning with
jazz-inspired jump blues tracks and following through to the juncture of
blues and rock, blues and funk, and beyond, on into the 21st century.
This particular volume covers 1960 to 1969, a time when blues and rock
& roll really started to join hands, and it features classic tracks
like Buddy Guy's "First Time I Met the Blues," Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss
Man," Albert King's "Crosscut Saw," and B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby," but
it also collects lesser-known gems like Frank Frost's "Jelly Roll King"
and Junior Parker's "Driving Wheel," then slides into blues and rock
hybrids like the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun," Canned Heat's Henry
Thomas-inspired "On the Road Again," and Janis Joplin's "Ball and
Chain," before closing things out with Stevie Wonder's blues-based "I
Ain't Superstitious" done by the Jeff Beck Group.
