"Philly" Joe Jones

American jazz drummer, born 15 July 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and died 30 August 1985 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Best known for his work as a member of the Miles Davis bands of 1955-1958, Jones also did a significant amount of session work in the late 1950s and early 1960s for Riverside Records and Blue Note. On Riverside, he recorded with Benny Golson, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Kenny Drew, Johnny Griffin, and others. For Blue Note, he appeared on John Coltrane's "Blue Train", Sonny Clark's "Cool Struttin'", and several albums each by Hank Mobley and Freddie Hubbard. He struggled with opiate addiction for much of his career, and recorded only sporadically after 1963. Jones lived in Europe from 1968 to 1972, primarily in London and Paris.

Jones had strong musical partnerships and friendships with Tadd Dameron, with whom he once shared an apartment in New York (one of Jones' last major projects was the "Dameronia" big band, which he co-founded and helped lead from 1981 until his death in 1985), Bill Evans, who hired Jones to play in his working trio on two different occasions (in 1967 and 1978), and hired him for studio recording sessions on several occasions between 1958 and 1977, and pianist Elmo Hope, who hired Jones for many of his recording sessions, including Hope's final session in 1966, a time when Jones was doing very little recording. Jones' career picked up again in the late seventies, and he worked regularly until his death of a heart attack in 1985, when he was 62. His wife was Eloise and he had a son named Chris. He also had a sister (Geraldine) and a brother (Ellis).

Not to be confused with Jo Jones.