One of the most recorded bassists in rock and jazz. Miles Davis at twenty-one. Bassist for the Rolling Stones since 1993. In 2014 he started building the instruments he wanted to play.
Born on the South Side of Chicago in 1961, Darryl taught himself bass after watching a neighbor play at a school talent show. He was nine. He studied under that same neighbor and never stopped.
At twenty-one, Miles Davis’s nephew recommended him for the band. He got the gig, recorded Decoy and You’re Under Arrest, then spent the 1980s on the most demanding rosters in music.
“Playing with Miles Davis was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. He encouraged me to be a creative person.” Darryl Jones
For years Darryl’s ideas ran through a signature model with another company. It was good. It was also someone else’s decision at every turn.
In 2014 he founded Jones Musical Instruments to take full creative and manufacturing control. Not to license a name, but to build the instrument that becomes, in his words, an extension of the person playing it.
The naming is personal. The Chatham is his home neighborhood, West Chatham. The Gresham is the community next door. Every model carries a piece of the South Side of Chicago.
“Charlie and I together are like a locomotive. But like a locomotive with irreverent swagger.” Darryl Jones on playing with Charlie Watts
“I can’t imagine anything that was more valuable to me being successful as a musician than the public school music system.” Darryl Jones, Forbes
JMI supports programs that bring music into public schools. Darryl came up through that system. He credits it, more than anything, for the career that followed.
Directed by Eric Hamburg. A film about music, race, and a South Side upbringing, told through a career most players only dream about. It won the documentary award at the Oxford International Film Festival.
