Critical praise flowed for his elegant cover version of Stevie Wonder’s “Knocks Me off My Feet,” and indeed Jones’s work has showed the influence of several vocalists from the classic era of romantic soul. That debut album, My Heart, was released in June of 1996. That raised Jones’s profile in the industry, and plans were laid for him to release a solo album of his own. The superstar Madonna featured some of the 21-year-old Jones’s vocal arrangements on her 1994 CD, Bedtime Stories. It was as a songwriter that he first proved his worth to LaFace executives, penning songs for labelmate and fellow romantic vocalist Usher, 702, Silk, Brownstone, and other acts. Jones was ready, willing, and able to step into the void. The group actually recorded one song, entitled “I Can Make You Feel Good,” for a Motown compilation, but it was at that point that the group broke up. That label was dominated by the multiplatinum-selling vocalist Babyface, another influence on Jones’s style. To New York a month later and offered them a contract on the LaFace label. Booking- ICM, 8942 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211. 1973 in Detroit, MI raised in Chicago, IL.īegan writing songs at age 12 sang with vocal group the Porches as a teenager signed to LaFace label wrote songs for Usher, 702, and other acts wrote vocal arrangements for Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album, 1994 released debut album, My Heart,1996 released Where I Wanna Be,1999 released Life Goes On,2002.Īwards: American Music Award, Best Soul/R&B New Entertainer, 2001.Īddresses: Record company-LaFace Records, 6 W. He flew the Porches For the Record…īorn c. Heavy D and the Boyz producer Edward “Eddie F” Ferrell, an influential producer and artists-and-repertoire executive, agreed to listen to the group and was immediately impressed. The determined group walked around the exhibit hall, asking anyone who seemed interested to listen to their demo tape. They rented space for a showcase concert, but no one showed up to hear the unknown act. The Porches headed for a black radio conference in Washington, D.C., hoping to impress the music-industry figures assembled there. Though the group soon dissolved under the pressure of personality conflicts and left Jones a solo artist, it proved that even in this day and age, the old-fashioned technique of buttonholing a music bigwig at the right time and place can work wonders for a talented but unknown entertainment act. The music that set him on a new road took the form of a vocal group called the Porches. “But then I got into music and it kept me inside, focused and out of trouble.” Jones seemed reluctant to speak at length about his gang activities, but it was evident that he could easily have ended up a victim of the violence of the streets. It was rough a lot of gang violence… My music got me away.” “You see guys with nice things, and you want them too,” he added in an interview with New York’s Amsterdam News. “When I was home,” Jones was quoted as saying on the iMusic website, “I was influenced by a lot of peer pressure and being with the wrong people. At age 12, Jones began to write songs of his own, and later on, Jones believed, music may well have literally saved his life. Over the years, he has remained a strongly religious person.
Jones’s father, a major influence in his son’s life, was a gospel singer, and Jones’s musical activities began with attempts to imitate his father. Jones was born around 1973 in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up on Chicago’s tough South Side. The only question at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s was whether the growing success of Jones might one day allow him to match or even eclipse the near-legendary status of his Chicago predecessor. And both have updated the romantic sounds of R&B with modern production techniques that suited it to a more technologically oriented musical environment. Both are multitalented young musicians who early on impressed the music industry with their abilities as singers, songwriters, producers, and arrangers. Both were raised in Chicago and are products of that city’s urban music scene, which in comparison with other large cities tends more toward R&B than toward hip-hop. Donell Jones has sometimes been compared to R&B star R.
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