Richard M. Jones
Musician · 1892–1945 · New Orleans, Louisiana
Best known for
Songwriter
Richard M. Jones was a Donaldsonville, Louisiana-born jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and record producer who, after moving to Chicago in 1919, became a central organizer of the city’s 1920s race-record industry — producing Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five sessions for OKeh and writing the much-recorded standard “Trouble in Mind.”
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- Born Richard Marigny Jones on June 13, 1892, in New Orleans.
- Played alto horn and cornet with the Eureka Brass Band as early as 1902 before settling into piano on the city’s music scene by 1908.
- Moved to Chicago in 1919; took a position at Clarence Williams’s music publishing company and began producing recordings.
- Served as manager of OKeh Records’ race-records division, where he organized Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five sessions and supplied original material to a long roster of women blues singers he was accompanying on piano.
- Cut his own records as a piano soloist and with his bands the Jazz Wizards and the Chicago Cosmopolitans for Gennett, OKeh, Victor, and Paramount over the 1920s.
- Wrote both words and music to “Trouble in Mind,” a vaudeville blues that became one of the most-recorded standards in jazz and blues; later carried into the bluegrass canon by Sam Bush, Mac Wiseman, and others.
- Worked the 1930s in a similar A&R role at Decca, then at Mercury Records until his death.
- Died December 8, 1945, in Chicago.
