Wizz Jones: White and Grew up in Croydon

interview: WIZZ JONES What made Jones different of course, is that he wasn’t black and born in Mississippi – he was wizz Jones: white and grew up in Croydon. But it was from his early exposure to the American black blues players – most notably Big Bill Broonzy – that Jones developed the Legendary Me his hallmark right hand. He has an uncanny feel for the guitar, and for country blues especially. Eric Clapton and Keith Richards cite him as an important early His playing teeters on the brink of a consummate virtuosity influence. Bert Jansch describes him as the ‘most underrated while still managing to sound raw and authentic. It’s this guitarist ever’. He has a cult following on the Internet, and his balance that makes his playing so distinctive and virtually unique early vinyl fetches daft money on eBay. So why on earth haven’t among British guitarists. Jones more people heard of Wizz Jones? is dismissive, and puts much of it down to his busking days. ‘Yeah, there’s an authority there. e’re sitting in an fine guitarist and songwriter, out as a committed left fielder. It comes from being out there in upstairs room he’s also one of contemporary Jones’s take is typically self- the snow, playing cinema queues of a pub in folk music’s trailblazers. Go effacing, even on his formative and street corners, and wearing the suburbs of back to the late 50s and do a years as a musician. ‘You like to fingerpicks to make it louder. I did Birmingham. There’s a small bar little homework, and it’s Jones’s think you’re a pioneer,’ he says, it for quite a while, and it gives Wat one end, and an even smaller footprints, and not too many ‘but there’s always somebody you a certain power in getting the stage at the other. The or om others, you’ll find ta the end of before you. There was a guy in sound across.’ smells slightly stale and yeasty, the track. ‘We all used to follow London playing 12-string guitar Doubtless, busking played its and in the afternoon light the him around,’ says John Renbourn. called Nicky Thatcher, another part, but Jones’s explanation fails walls look long overdue for a lick ‘Him and Davey Graham. He’s the guy in Paris called Geno Foreman, to account for his enviable – albeit of paint. It’s typical, probably, of great granddaddy, an excellent and Chris Barber, the jazz player, qualified – reputation among the countless bread-and-butter guitarist.’ he had a lot to do with it. He the generation of guitarists that gigs that have hosted Wizz Jones Now 70, Jones’s unruly white brought the black blues players followed him. ‘He’s an excellent for the 50-odd years he’s been in hair and genial smile put him over and put them on as interval player, he’s so underrated,’ claims the business, and which for some somewhere between Doc Brown spots in the jazz clubs. There was Bert Jansch. ‘His songwriting, inexplicable reason he’s rarely and an affable, older Beethoven Lonnie Johnson, Joe Williams, his guitar playing…he should be risen above. Inexplicable, because – the sort of guy you might see the piano player Memphis Slim… a superstar…but he isn’t.’ And not only is Jones a staggeringly sitting in a pub and instantly mark there were loads of guys.’ while it’s true Jones never rose 38 Interview - Wiz Jones.indd 1 05/02/2010 16:00 interview: WIZZ JONES to those ranks, he does hold enough to become an alcoholic,’ the distinction of having given he says sardonically. ‘It would a leg-up to several who did. A have happened, but I never had young Eric Clapton used to watch the money.’ him playing to packed pubs It seems improbable that a and coffee bars in Soho, before mere lack of money could keep hurrying home to practise what alcoholism at bay for Jones or he’d seen. Rod Stewart’s in there anyone else if they were set on it, somewhere as a busking and but self-deprecation is one of his travelling companion. And Keith traits, and much of the time he’d Richards – as if to go one better – rather talk about other musicians insists that he bunked off lessons than himself. The names trip off to learn blues guitar from Jones his tongue like he’s plucked them in the toilets of Ravensbourne art at random from Soho coffee shop college. billings from the 60s: ‘Long John It’s a perverse kind of Baldry had such a fantastic blues recognition (like the silly money voice … Alexis Korner – not a his early vinyl fetches on eBay) great player, but a great passion that has brought neither wealth for the music … Davey Graham nor wider fame, yet it’s difficult was a true innovator, hugely to avoid a suspicion that Jones influential … Always admired might secretly relish his role John Martyn because he had as the William Blake of British so much front … Steve Tilston folk. After all, he’s the man who should have had an award years was there at the beginning, ago – Ziggurat is a superb album who has lasted the longest, who … Bert Jansch? Now he is a never got destroyed by drugs genius…’ or alcohol, and whose work, in It’s almost irksome at times, proportion to its merits, is the trying to get Jones to talk about least recognised in the history himself, something he readily of the folk movement. It’s also a admits. ‘The usicm is what role that, ironically, Jones credits always inspired me – what for his remarkable endurance. excites me most is turning ‘Luckily, I was never famous people on to another musician’s work. I probably missed my many of the early black blues true vocation. I should have players, Jones has never enjoyed been a radio DJ or made music commercial success. And for documentaries.’ much the same reason he has So we should be grateful that played the same guitar for most of Jones missed his ‘true vocation’. his career: a workhorse Epiphone Had he not, British music, and Texan that he bought second- not just folk music, would be all hand in 1967 from Selmer’s, the poorer for it. He might be Charing Cross Rd, for £75. It best known for his blues playing looks tired and disreputable these (‘I’m not a real blues player, it’s days, yet Jones can still coax a just what really got to me’), but remarkably punchy sound out his repertoire is vast and wide of it – something he attributes ranging. If it can reasonably to his AER amp. That, and a be described as folk, roots combination of an old Ashworth or acoustic (and a few other bug and a Pure Western K&K. genres besides), the chances And if that wasn’t enough, he are that Jones has it covered. mikes it as well. ‘It might be He has a gift for making a song purely psychological,’ he says, accessible, of knowing, perhaps ‘but I like to think I’m getting instinctively, how to project it. dynamics by moving closer to the His edgy, intricate take on Robin mike.’ Williamson’s valedictory ‘First So how is it to play? ‘Put it this Girl I Loved’ can stand no end way, it’s not as good as it was,’ he of listening (catch it on YouTube says, adding (somewhat heroically, and see if you don’t agree), one suspects), ‘but it’s still pretty and though he’s never been a good. I could probably play a prolific songwriter (‘I had the guitar with a wider neck better. shadow of Alan Tunbridge with In a way it inhibits my style, but me, this inexhaustible supply of at the same time, it gave birth great songs’), he’s crafted some to my style. It’s grown around exceptional work – melodic, that neck.’ Asked how he keeps deeply personal narratives that it going, Jones professes it to be tug at the emotions without ever something of a miracle. It has had, spilling into mawkishness. like its owner, a colourful, but not Yet in common with so an easy life. ‘When I first otg it,’ 39 Interview - Wiz Jones.indd 2 05/02/2010 16:00 interview: WIZZ JONES fieLd rEpOrt Jones says, ‘I had a row with my I suppose, but it’s not what we wife and slammed the boot of the were doing. We were inspired car down on it, and a hinge went by the music. We didn’t think through the back. Tony Zemaitis about performing, we just loved In The Shadows repaired it, but then I made the music. We tramped across the mistake of shaving off het the country carrying old tape sunburst finish ot make the table recorders to learn it. Any little New Soundhole Tuner a bit thinner. Very fashionable at bit of knowledge on the guitar hadow Electronics boldly successfully, Shadow Electronics the time, but a daft thing to do. was really something. You’d meet claim that their latest advise leaving the tuner in for 24 And I have this habit of whacking someone and you’d say, “You product is the world’s very hours to allow the Velcro adhesive the guitar. The whole table creaks know that bit on such and such, first soundhole tuner, and to bond with the wood. now and that’s started to come how do you do that?” And they’d atS first I was a bit curious as to why In use, the tuner – an automatic through on the PA.

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