Career
In 1942 and 1943, Jones worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation radio programme “Radio Rhythm Club”. And in 1942, together with authors Albert Mc Carthy and Charles Fox, he founded the magazine Jazz Music, which became meritorious as it set out "to reassert the pioneering role of the African-American, to emphasise the music’s social dimensions, and to attack the glossy commercialism of big-band swing". Since 1944, Jones had had a full-time job writing features for the Melody Maker in the column “Collectors’ Corner”.
In the following years he gained more and more high recognition as a proven expert of New Orleans Jazz, swing, and mainstream jazz.
A collection of his articles on musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Billie Holiday, and Mary Lou Williams was published as a book entitled Talking Jazz in 1987. In Jones published a Louis Armstrong biography, Louis Armstrong Story, together with John Chilton.
Jones also wrote a number of liner notes, e.g. for the Civil Defense edition of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band and the Spirits of Rhythm. Jones was the first jazz musician to become a professional journalist and exclusively dealt with jazz in his publications.
He was a model and a mentor for a younger generation of rock music critics and authors. Jones was married to Betty Salberg and had one son.