“Stockyard Blues,” “Dark Road,” “Overseas,” “Playhouse,” “Skinny Mama,” “On The Road Again,” “Schooldays On My Mind,” “Ain’t Times Hard,” “Floyd’s Blues,” and “Any Old Lonesome Day.”  On the merit of only these ten post-war modern blues classics, by any measurement, Floyd Jones should rightfully be considered a titan of Chicago blues.  Jones’ finely crafted, dark, introspective, and melancholy reflections on life are some of the most powerful and hard-hitting blues works on the philosophy of life ever crafted.  His sparse, dark-hued guitar capacities, world-weary vocalizations, and foresight to address real world issues facing his audience culminated in, certainly in this writer’s mind, abundantly top-tier post-war blues poetry that should have seen him scale his chosen life’s work to higher recognition.  Jones’ blues are without peer and stack up on the same planes as his renowned contemporaries.  Turning time and again to Jones’ blues consistently yields this writer immense respect for his collective body of blues artistry.

Hailing from Marianna, Arkansas, a town that is the county seat of Lee County, located in the central part of the state, Jones came into the world in mid-July, 1917.  Much of Jones’ early years are as mysterious as Jones somewhat continued to be throughout his life, but research shows that at some point his family settled into the Mississippi Delta region, a move that no doubt had a profound impact on his blues interests.  Often in the blues the “fact/fiction equation” plays heavily into many aspects of the music as a whole (think Robert Johnson’s crossroads story), but it has been often repeated that as a young man Jones’ interest in the blues, and the guitar in particular, grew when he was gifted his first guitar by none other than the legendary bluesman Howlin’ Wolf. 

As Jones continued to soak up Delta blues influences and teach himself the guitar, he started to make his way into the highly competitive and dangerous juke joint circuit playing his brand of blues, gaining valuable experience not only about the blues as a music, but also about the blues culture.  He continued to ply his blues trade in these environs in the 1930s until the middle of the 1940s in his home Delta region.

The year 1945 was a major one for Jones, as at the end of World War II he made the move northward to Chicago.  He soon learned the lesson that all southern blues artists realized when they came to the big city; the din of the rowdy, noisy taverns, clubs, and joints where the blues was played commanded the use of an electric guitar for an artist to be able to be heard over the venue’s clamor.  Another realization that Chicago blues artists came to know was that the famed Maxwell Street open-air market was the place to play to gain valuable musical recognition and contacts, and Jones definitely did so.  On Maxwell Street, Jones aligned himself and played with various blues musicians who would go on to achieve renowned status, including guitarist and vocalist jimmy Rogers, harmonica giant Little Walter (he was also playing guitar on Maxwell Street during this period), singer and harmonica great Snooky Pryor, mandolinist Johnny “Man” Young, Jones’ bass and guitar playing plus vocalist cousin Moody Jones, and drummer Leroy Foster. 

Research indicates that on Maxwell Street Jones played an original composition of his entitled “Stockyard Blues,” a song about striking workers at the city’s enormous south side meat processing operations, that caught the ear of famed Chicago bluesman Big Bill Broonzy when he stopped to listen to Jones and his band.  Broonzy was unrestrained in his message to Jones to quit playing the song in the public domain as he felt it a superior piece of work, and that Jones should record it before someone else likewise recognized its quality and stole it for their own.

In 1947, Jones received his first opportunity to record, for the Marvel imprint, and he laid-down “Stockyard Blues” b/w “Keep What You Got” with Snooky Pryor lending harmonica support, with Moody Jones as well on the release (a song billed as by “Snooky & Moody”.  The releases signaled a turning point in recorded urban blues, both for the basic ensemble setting, and for the song structure that foretold the beginning of the classic Chicago blues sound.

Jones continued to make inroads into the Chicago blues scene, and in 1949 he returned to the recording studio, this time for the Tempo-Tone label.  The blues produced were issued under the band name “Sunnyland Slim and His Boys” (Sunnyland Slim being the famed Chicago blues piano patriarch), and the releases also enjoyed the inclusion of a young Muddy Waters, the eventual titan of Chicago blues, playing his specialty, slide guitar.

Jones followed his continual path playing as the featured act and in support of other blues artists in the Chicago clubs and taverns, and in 1951 he recorded two sides for the J.O.B. label entitled “Big World” and “Hard Road.”  Throughout the 1950s, Jones continued to record, with the J.O.B., Vee-Jay, and Chess labels releasing his sterling post-war blues offerings.

It is especially interesting to again take stock of the fact that much of Jones’ output centered around socio-economic subject matters, and are not arranged around the usual blues themes of love won and lost.  And, one of Jones’ most accomplished songs, “On The Road Again,” had sizeable impact upon the late 1960s roots rock group Canned Heat as they recorded the song and saw it become one of their foremost hits, reaching “Top 10” chart status.

Jones continued to sustain himself playing the Chicago club circuit, and he was also in-demand as a valuable sideman on the recordings of others, but despite his stunning songwriting capacity, his broad instrumental competencies, and having authored blues songs that have now stood the test of time with great resiliency, his solo blues career was essentially over by the late 1950s/early 1960s.

However, Pete Welding, the noted blues researcher and owner of Testament Records, had the vision to combine Jones with Chicago blues guitar great Eddie Taylor on a tandem 1966 release entitled Masters Of Modern Blues.  Also in 1966, Jones was part of a project for distinguished blues researcher Sam Charter’s Chicago/The Blues/Today! sequence of releases as part of guitarist and vocalist Johnny Shines’ band with tandem blues harmonica phenoms Walter Horton and Charlie Musselwhite. 

As time moved forward, Jones was a contributor to Walter Horton’s 1970 King Of The Harmonica Players album, and the two furthered their efforts with a jointly-billed outing for the Magnolia imprint entitled Do Nothing ‘Till You Hear From Us.

Jones continued his slog in the Chicago clubs the rest of his life, with his last recording opportunity arising for the Earwig Music label on a collection that included Sunnyland Slim, Walter Horton, Honeyboy Edwards, and Kansas City Red entitled Old Friends Together For the First Time.  This collection was released in 1981.  Jones sang and provided lead guitar parts on two songs on the release.

In his later years, Jones turned his energies toward playing the electric bass.  This writer recalls seeing Jones hanging out with Walter Horton at John Brim’s blues club on Chicago’s far north side in the 1980s.  Jones looked weary, and given his imaginative and poignant songwriting, excellent vocals, and stirring guitar competencies, yet lack of lofty recognition, his resignation was understandable.  Jones was yet another of those highly gifted Chicago bluesmen who just never could get the breaks.

Jones passed away in Chicago in December, 1989.

There is a DVD entitled Chicago Blues, a 1971 release by Harley Cokliss.  There is a very insightful portion of the film where Floyd Jones is interviewed in his home (with some great musical interludes) and his sense of melancholy at his determined position within the Chicago blues pecking order already in 1971 seeming to have left him wistful and resigned.  It is a stark reminder than despite high talent levels, some blues artists never were able to make the leap to the next rank of success.  Certainly, such was the case with Floyd jones.