Born: October 2nd, 1927, Manchester (United Kingdom)
Died: April 25th, 1988, France or Switzerland
Nationality: British
In due course, the short impression below will be replaced with a more extensive career overview
BIOGRAPHY
Often working with producer Norrie Paramor, Kenneth Evan "Ken" Jones was a studio arranger for artists such as The Zombies, Jim Dale, and Jonathan King. In the early 1960s, he also recorded instrumental pieces with his Ken Jones Orchestra. He was best known for being the musical director of Michael Parkinson’s BBC talk show. Jones occasionally worked on other TV projects as well, including a show with Shirley Bassey. He arranged and conducted the song ‘There’s Never Been A Girl’ in the 1962 UK heats for the Eurovision Song Contest (performed by Kenny Lynch). Jones also was a prolific jazz pianist.
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
Ken Jones conducted the Eurovision orchestra on one occasion, in 1979 in Jerusalem, when the United Kingdom was represented by Black Lace and their song ‘Mary-Ann’ (composed and produced by Peter Morris). It was essentially a rock tune, to which some strings were added for the performance in Jerusalem. The song finished seventh in a field of nineteen contestants.
Remarkably, Jones was not been the musical director of the UK preselection that year – it was Alyn Ainsworth who had performed that task. It is unclear why Ainsworth was replaced by Jones for the international final - possibly because Jones had written the orchestration to 'Mary-Ann', but this cannot be proved.
EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR
Country – United Kingdom
Song title – "Mary-Ann"
Rendition – Black Lace (Alan Barton / Terry Dobson /
Colin Routh / Steve Scholey)
Lyrics – Peter Morris
Composition – Peter Morris
Studio arrangement – Peter Morris
Live orchestration – unknown
Conductor – Ken Jones
Score – 7th place (73 votes)
No comments:
Post a Comment