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Floyd Jones
His
sound characteristically dark and gloomy, guitarist Floyd Jones
contributed a handful of genuine classics to the Chicago blues idiom
during the late '40s and early '50s, notably the foreboding "Dark Road"
and "Hard Times."
Born in Arkansas, Jones grew up in the blues-fertile Mississippi Delta
(where he picked up the guitar in his teens). He came to Chicago in the
mid-'40s, working for tips on Maxwell Street with his cousin Moody
Jones and Baby Face Leroy Foster and playing local clubs on a regular
basis. Floyd was right there when the postwar "Chicago blues" movement
first took flight, recording with harpist Snooky Pryor for Marvel in
1947; pianist Sunnyland Slim for Tempo Tone the next year (where he cut
"Hard Times"), JOB and Chess in 1952-53, and Vee-Jay in 1955 (where he
weighed in with a typically downcast "Ain't Times Hard").
Jones remained active on the Chicago scene until shortly before his
1989 death, although electric bass had long since replaced the guitar
as his main axe. He participated in Earwig Records' Old Friends
sessions in 1979, sharing a studio with longtime cohorts Sunnyland
Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Big Walter Horton, and Kansas City Red.
-Written
by Bill Dahl
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