The arc of this gospel belter’s career resembles that of many southern female singers who came of age during the middle years of the 20th century. Jones grew up singing in church, where her preternaturally powerful voice won her a following, and then a record deal, and then fleeting fame before she abruptly retired from performing because of some combination of patriarchy, personality and chance. Her evanescence — as well as the scarcity of her recordings (two LPs and a couple of 78s that went out of print almost as soon as they came out) — also prompted the usual apocryphal assertions of greatness and what might have been, including comparisons to the Olympian likes of Elvis and Patsy Cline.
There’s no denying the visceral force of Jones’ strapping, loamy alto, or her choice of material (she cherry-picks from the songbooks of Alex Bradford, Thomas Dorsey, Albert Brumley and Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Or, for these sessions for Dot in 1958, the unassailability of her studio band, which was built around Nashville A-Teamers Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer and Buddy Harman. Yet there’s also a certain pedestrian quality to Jones’ phrasing, a lack of imagination in keeping with the Biblical literalism she espouses in “I Do Believe”. Consider, for example, the woodenness with which she “bends” her notes at the close of that track. Or the way she demurs from leaning into the words “every day” in “Strange Things Happening Every Day”, thus forfeiting the chance to drive the chorus with them the way Tharpe does in her original. (It is a treat, though, to hear Garland pay tribute to Tharpe’s nonpareil guitar playing with his juking solo on the break.)
None of which is to suggest that this reissue of fifteen sides Jones cut for Dot isn’t welcome or worthy, or that Jones, who strikes me as more of a second-tier Martha Carson, shouldn’t be remembered. It’s just a reminder not to believe all of the hype.
