Uriel Jones was born in Detroit in 1934, the same year as Jack Ashford. He spent some time in Detroit’s Moore School for Boys, with the aim of improving his discipline and behaviour. It was there that he had his first opportunity to play drums. His natural ability was clear and, importantly, this gave Jones a chance to make a career in music. His first interest was Jazz. He loved bebop and the music of Art Blakey, but he also played with guitarist Dave Hamilton, who led Stevie Wonder’s touring band in the early days. At a session at the Chit Chat Club in Detroit, he met Earl Van Dyke, who was the leader of the Motown session musicians, and played along side him.
He later became a member of Marvin Gaye’s touring band in 1964, and was subsequently offered a job at Motown as a session drummer, sitting in for Benny Benjamin or Richard “Pistol” Allen. The following year, he played on Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar”. Jones’ input increased as Benjamin’s health grew worse, due to drug and alcohol addictions. When Benjamin died in 1969, it was Jones who took his place. Jones has since explained how he learned from Benjamin: “We got all this stuff from Benny. Once I heard Benny play in the studio, I tried to clone myself after him. I think that’s why they used me on most of the tunes after Benny left”.
In 1965, Jones was a member of the Motortown Revue, featuring Earl Van Dyke, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Little Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and the Miracles. He appreciated the reception that they all received: “British fans are different from the ones at home because they got more interest in the musicians. Man, we couldn’t believe it!”
Uriel Jones (Blogpost)
Norman Whitfield’s often chose to use Jones in the studio, especially when he began writing songs that led the Temptations into Psychedelic Soul. Uriel Jones can be heard on “Cloud Nine” and “I Can’t Get Next to You”. He has described Whitfield’s approach, building such songs up from the rhythm set by the drummer: “‘Cloud Nine’ began as a beat on the cymbal. Norman would have you sit and play that two or three minutes by itself, and he’d tell you to add a certain beat on the foot. Then he turned the whole band down on this tune. He had in mind what he wanted but the tune really materialised once we started playing it. We’d have as many as 12 or 13 guys in there just grooving on the rhythm. We could play and not even look at one another.”
Paul Riser again makes an astute assessment of his colleague: “Uriel’s drum sound was the most open and laid-back, and he was the funkiest of the three guys we had. He had a mixed feel and did a lot of different things well.” (The Guardian obituary, 2009)
That mixed feel meant that Jones was equally comfortable with the ballads of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell and the Psychedelic Soul of the Temptations. He could also drive a powerful Rock beat more strongly than his two colleagues, Benny Benjamin and Richard Allen. Jones’ first Motown sessions were in 1964 and his last in 1972. He did not move to Motown West, when the company relocated to Los Angeles. Jones died in 2009 at the age of seventy-four. He was able to make a major contribution to Al Slutsky’s documentary Standing In The Shadows of Motown in 2002 and was one of the Funk Brothers who was able to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
