Musical Joneses
Perhaps it's a matter of sheer numbers, but quite an odd variety of talented musicians have shared the last name of Jones.
NORAH JONES was only 23 when her 2002 debut album Come Away With Me earned her eight Grammy nominations. Her hit single "Don't Know Why I Didn't Come" was typical of Jones's sultry, throaty vocal style -- somewhere at the intersection of jazz, country and pop. Jones has a surprising musical pedigree: her father is sitar legend Ravi Shankar.
Belting baritone TOM JONES stands, hands on hips, at the opposite end of the musical spectrum from Norah Jones. But like her, he made a splash with his very first single. The 1965 hit "It's Not Unusual" established him as a brash, bare-chested ladies' man, an image he managed to keep up for the rest of the century -- even after becoming a grandfather in 1983.
Country cut-up GRANDPA JONES spent five decades as a beloved figure at Nashville's Grand Old Opry, performing there until just a month before his 1998 death. He was born Louis Henry Jones but adopted the stage persona of "Grandpa" in the 1930s, donning wire-rimmed spectacles, suspenders, a banjo and a spunky attitude. By the 1970s he had aged into the part for real -- and he promptly won another generation of fans as a regular on the long-running TV show Hee Haw.
Jazzmeister QUINCY JONES had a terrific influence on the movies of the 1960s and 1970s. His groovy, jazz-tinged soundtracks were a staple of tough-minded Hollywood dramas of the era, from Oscar-winner In the Heat of the Night (1967) to cynical heist films like The Anderson Tapes (1971) and the Steve McQueen classic The Getaway (1972). Jones also had a fine career as a jazz trumpeter, but in the end he may still be best known as the producer of "We Are the World," the star-studded 1985 single which raised millions for African famine victims.
Singer SHIRLEY JONES had a one-in-a-million debut in the 1950s: a virtual unknown, she was cast to play Laurie, the lead in the movie version of Rogers and Hammerstein's hit play Oklahoma! She became one of musical theater's biggest stars, playing Marian the Librarian in the smash hit The Music Man (1962) among many other roles. In the 1970s she became a TV star as the plucky musical mother on The Partridge Family.
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