He Had More #1 Hits than the Beatles!

Posted March 25, 2009, 12:04 pm


You probably never heard of him or his group, but you absolutely love his music. Uriel Jones was the drummer for the Funk Brothers, and the heartbeat behind some of Motown's biggest hits. He passed away on March 24th, 2009 at the age of 74. But what an impact he had on the music industry!

Jones' style was to create a straight ahead, hard-driving funky groove that gave songs a unique depth and feel. But also, the guy could rock! His sound was a vital ingredient to many of Motown's biggest hits. It's him you hear on "Ain't Too Proud To Beg", "Cloud Nine" and "I Can't Get Next to You" by the Temptations.

He found his way to Motown in 1964, and quickly became one of three mainstay drummers. He clicked with Marvin Gaye, laying tracks for "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." He also recorded "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" by Jimmy Ruffin and "Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Uriel and the other session musicians became known as the Funk Brothers and were referred to as "Motown's Forgotten Players" until 2003, when a movie was released called, "Standing In The Shadows of Motown." Not only was the film a critical success, it shined the spotlight on some of the most talented musicians who had gone virtually unrecognized. The group recorded more number one hits than the Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined. Jones was the last surviving original Motown session drummer, referred to as the Motown Three.

Jones often laughed at himself when asked if he realized how many hits he was helping to crank out. He said whenever he and the other musicians would listen to the radio, it was always the jazz stations, and that he had no idea how many of his songs were in heavy rotation on the pop and soul stations.

Jones also took his relative anonymity in style. He said he took pride in that even though the general public was not aware of him, he had the respect of many great drummers.

One is Liberty Devitto. For over 25 years he played drums for Billy Joel. Devitto was pleased to be able to share his thoughts about Jones exclusively with Growing Bolder:

"I met Uriel Jones on April 26th in Sydney, Canada. We were both part of the three-day Cape Breton International Drum Festival along with other greats, Michael Shrieve (Santana), Danny Seraphine (Chicago), Alan White (Yes), Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge), and Dom Famularo (International drum ambassador). I can remember, this man walked up to me and asked me for my autograph. I said, are you crazy? You're Uriel Jones! I looked at the little booklet he had and saw that he filled it with all the drummers' signatures. I had already know of the man as "The Great Motown Drummer." Those records he played on were my books. That's where I learned "feel" for the music. I learned how to develop a drum part for a song and make the song better. That's what Uriel did. I was more impressed by how humble a man he was. He held on to his wife as if she was his very heart. He was in awe of everything that was going on around him. He cried when the festival gave him their Lifetime Achievement Award. The drumming community has not only lost a great drummer, the world has lost a great humanitarian. God Bless you, Uriel Jones."

Jones suffered a heart attack in February. Family members said he appeared to be improving up until his death from complications from the cardiac arrest.




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