Paul "Wine" Jones

Paul "Wine" Jones (July 1, 1946 – October 9, 2005) was an American contemporary blues guitarist and singer.^[1]

One commentator noted that Jones, R. L. Burnside, Big Jack Johnson, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes and James "Super Chikan" Johnson were "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound."^[2]

Biography

Jones was born in Flora, Mississippi, and learned to play guitar by the age of four.^[1] In his teens he played at house parties, and later worked with James "Son" Thomas and harmonica player Little Willy Foster.^[3] However, Jones played music mainly as a pastime, while working on farms up to 1971, when he became a welder in Belzoni, Mississippi.^[1]

In 1995 and 1996, Jones performed outside of Mississippi, when he was a member of Fat Possum's "Mississippi Juke Joint Caravan".^[1][3] His 1995 debut album, Mule, was produced by the music critic Robert Palmer.^[1] On the album he was accompanied by drummer Sam Carr, and guitarist Big Jack Johnson.^[1] Fat Possum (an independent record label in Oxford, Mississippi), as well as managing the latter careers of Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, gave opportunity to a number of amateurs, mostly from rural Mississippi, who had seldom or never recorded before. Some, such as T-Model Ford and Asie Payton, moved on to higher billing, but others such as Jones, were left on the sidelines.^[3]

Jones died of cancer, at the age of 59, in Jackson, Mississippi, in October 2005.^[4]

Discography

• Mule (1995) - Fat Possum
• Pucker Up Buttercup (1999) - Fat Possum^[5]
• Stop Arguing Over Me (2006) - Fat Possum^[6]

References