Bessie jones biography

Mary Elizabeth Jones was an American gospel and folk singer credited with helping to bring folk songs, games and stories to wider audiences in the 20th century.
Mary Elizabeth "Bessie" Jones was born February 8, 1902, in Smithville, Georgia.
Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones (Feb 8, 1902– July 17, 1984) was born in Smithville, Georgia.

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Bessie Jones (Welsh singer)

Welsh opera singer

Bessie Jones (1887 – November 1974) was a Welsh singer featured on some of the earliest recordings of songs from London musicals. Jones began a professional opera career soon after training at the Royal College of Music. From 1913 to 1926, she was a contract singer for HMV studios, recording numerous popular songs, Welsh folksongs and musical theatre songs, and appearing on recordings of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and several other works. She also had an oratorio and concert career and sang in BBC radio broadcasts.

Early life and career

Jones was raised in Tonypandy the daughter of John Jones, a fruiterer.^[1] Jones studied at the Royal College of Music, where she won the operatic class prize in 1910 and the Henry Leslie prize for singers in 1912.^[2] In the college's 1911 production of Cherubini's opera The Water Carrier, Jones starred alongside George Baker under the direction of Richard Temple and Sir Charles Stanford.^[3] She sang at the Proms in 1913 under Sir Henry Wood,^[

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The Struggles and Triumphs of Bessie Jones, Big Mama Thornton, and Ethel Waters

Bessie Jones - Part 1: 1900s to 1930s

Photo of Jones featured in "The Conservatory without Walls" Ellington Fellowship Brochure (1972)

The Early Years

Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones (February 8, 1902 – July 17, 1984) was born in Smithville, Georgia and raised in Dawson, Georgia. The gospel and folk singer grew up living in poverty and began working as a child doing agricultural work to support her family. Music had always been a part of her life as she recalled community members singing in church as well as students singing hymns and school songs as a child. In addition, her grandfather, a former slave, had taught her music and African lore.

At the age of 10, Jones left school and continued to work. According to John Stewart, “Bessie Jones had been a sharecropping farmhand in south central Georgia, a domestic servant in various white homes in Georgia and Florida, and a migrant worker traveling with crops between Florida and Connecticut.”

In 1933, Jon

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Bessie Jones (American singer)

American gospel and folk singer

Musical artist

Mary Elizabeth Jones (February 8, 1902 – July 17, 1984)^[1] was an American gospel and folk singer credited with helping to bring folk songs, games and stories to wider audiences in the 20th century. Alan Lomax, who first encountered Jones on a field recording trip in 1959, said, "She was on fire to teach America. In my heart, I call her the Mother Courage of American Black traditions."^[2]

Life

Jones grew up in an impoverished but musical family in the small black farming community of Dawson, Georgia. Her grandfather, a former slave born in Africa, taught her many songs he would sing in the fields.^[3] Jones only attended school until age 10, and she had her first child and marriage at just 12 years old. Her first husband, Cassius, died a few years later. In 1924, Jones left her 10-year-old daughter with relatives and traveled to Florida, where she worked odd jobs, played cards and sold moonshine. She eventually settled down with her second husband on St. Simo