"For love I would suffer kisses from another if that was what turned you on ... "

Jill Jones
Minnetonka, Minnesota 1992
Photo: Copyright 1993 David Honl

Jill Jones

"Lady Cab Driver" Jill Jones, funky female singer of latin-american descent from Ohio, first became known to the purple community, when she started backing Prince (he was "Prince" then) with her strong, ecstatic vocals on the 1999 album in 1982. Music had been part of her family. Her father was a drummer, while her mother, being a singer herself, one day made the decisive move and casted Jill as a background singer for the band she managed, Teena Marie. This is how our man came across her. He asked Jill to move to Minneapolis, as he intended to work with her on various projects. In this respect one should mention her breath-taking appearance as a lascivious (dyed) blonde (together with Lisa) in the video clip for 'Automatic' (1982). However, after starring in the Purple Rain movie, in which she played a girl hopelessly in love with the man (a role she later partially ressumed in the Graffiti Bridge film), she moved to Los Angeles instead to study art and sculpting. Jill accompanied Prince & The Revolution on various tours, notably on the 1999, Purple Rain and Parade journeys. In the meantime she had also started to write a couple of songs by herself, and she had settled in a place in New York. Some of those songs were included, when in 1987 Prince finally decided to take Jill to his Paisley Park Studios, add some own material (which he had mainly written in the space between 1999 and Purple Rain), and produce a special record, which gave her sufficient space to show off her very own musical talents. The results of this collaboration condensed on the thrilling, soulful self-entitled album Jill Jones, which to date ranks amongst the very best ever to come from "The Park". Unfortunately, since then things became very quiet around her, she made some guest appearences e.g. on Ryuichi Sakamoto's single 'You Do Me' (1989), but so far there never occurred a follow up recording to the brilliant 1987 album. It is rumoured that the man had planned to release this long awaited sequel in 1993, but had to dismiss it in consequence of the turmoil at Paisley Park Records in those days. Nevertheless, some of the tracks that had already been recorded, later surfaced on a few bootleg collections. Today Jill apparently lives in the UK and is said to be working with Bomb The Bass mastermind Tim Simenon, who in the past has already produced a record with Cat.
Birthday: [?]
Please forward comments, further J. J. material or any suggestions for improvement to either
Henk van Elst or Derek F O Neill, who are maintaining these J. J. NPN pages. Special thanks to Roland Gimmler and Peter Berger.
This page was last modified on Sunday, 21-Jan-96 21:19:43 MET

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