British jazz author, radio host, and journalist
Ronald Maxwell Jones (28 February 1917, London – 2 August 1993, Chichester) was a British jazz author, radio host and journalist.
Life and achievements
Together with his brother Cliff, Jones taught himself to play the saxophone, before the two of them founded a dance band in 1930. Named "Campus Club Dance Band" it was semi-professional and when it was dissolved in 1935, Jones tried to establish himself as a professional musician, becoming a member of a combo led by trumpeter Johnny Claes, with musicians who played in the style of Coleman Hawkins.
In 1942 and 1943, Jones worked for the BBC radio programme Radio Rhythm Club; and in 1942, together with authors Albert McCarthy and Charles Fox, he founded the magazine Jazz Music,[1] which became meritorious as it set out "to reassert the pioneering role of the African-American, to emphasise the music’s social dimensions, and to attack the glossy commercialism of big-band swing".[2]
Starting in 1944, Jones had a full-time job writing features for the British weekly music magazine Melody Maker in the column "Collectors’ Corner".[3]
In the years following he gained recognition as a proven expert on New Orleans Jazz, swing, and mainstream jazz.[1]
A collection of his articles on musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Billie Holiday, and Mary Lou Williams was published as a book entitled Talking Jazz in 1987.
In 1971 Jones published a Louis Armstrong biography, Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, together with John Chilton. Jones also wrote a number of liner notes, such as for the CD edition of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band[4] and the Spirits of Rhythm.[5]
Jones was the first jazz musician to become a professional journalist. Although he dealt exclusively with jazz in his publications,[1] he was a model and a mentor for a younger generation of rock music critics and authors.[6]
Jones was married to Betty Salberg and had one son.[1]
