The Bio of Paul Jones
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Paul Jones, of Belzoni, Mississippi, is a professional welder. He lives with his wife Bessie Mae in a house he purchased with the sweat of his brow. Before becoming a welder, Jones worked in a cotton gin; before that, like many of his Delta neighbors, he worked on a farm. And throughout his adult life, Paul Jones has been known and admired by a number of his fellow Delta musicians but seldom ventures far from home. Rock-solid bass-string drones, expansively sonic guitar textures, a seasoning of wah-wah riffs, and a voice that can sound vinegary, molasses-like, or simply, urgently passionate, as the song demands--these are some of the qualities that make Paul Jones a unique and formidable talent.

Paul is old enough to have heard some of the Delta’s most celebrated blues stylists as a youth, young enough to be a post-B.B. King “modernist” if he’d chosen to go that way. Instead he developed a style that is unabashedly “country” and “in the tradition” but with modernist shadings--that wah-wah pedal--and a dexterous manner of subsuming rhythm and lead functions into a guitar style with the momentum and unpredictability of a runaway steamroller. “When I first started playing around the house,” says Paul, “I’d listen to my father play at frolics, and I tried to play like he played. Then when I was twelve or so I started listening to the way some other people played. There was a guy they called “Cleanhead” who played with Little Milton when he was first starting out, and they’d let me sit in. When I was eighteen, I played with Son Thomas. Later I used to play with Willie Foster around Belzoni, and with James Givens in Greenwood. I was the youngest guy in that crowd, and they’d just come and get me when they needed me to help ‘em pull off the show. I lived too far away from those guys to play with ‘em regularly. For awhile I played around the house, did a little home recording. Now all the kids are grown up and gone, and it’s just my wife and me, and I’m ready to go again.”

Like the mule that is its namesake, Paul Jones’ Fat Possum debut takes unexpected detours and pulls surreal surprises along the way; this beast is not exactly tame. But hang on for the ride, and it’ll take you where you want to go: into the heart of today’s Delta blues.

--Robert Palmer