Soon after Jill Jones' mother started managing Teena Marie, one of Jones' cousins, Teena moved into their house. She and Jill would sometimes write songs together, and thus Teena Marie influenced Jill's own willingness to pursue in the musical direction.
Jill practiced on the piano, and writing her own material, up to the point when Teena Marie asked her to sing backing vocals for her. Shortly after, at age 15, she decided to leave school and start a professional career as backing singer. She met Prince in 1980 at age 18, when Teena Marie was the opening act during his Dirty Mind Tour.
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Prince encouraged Jones to sing, and stayed in touch with her. After she finished high school, she made contact with him and asked for a job. Prince invited her to the Sunset Sound recording studios in 1982, to sing backing vocals for several tracks on his forthcoming 1999 album. She also got a part in the music videos for the songs Video: 1999 and Video: Automatic, and then joined 1999 Tour to sing backing vocals with Vanity 6 and with Prince's band. During the Vanity 6 performance she would be kept behind a curtain (with the accompanying band The Time) and would only appear on stage for two songs.
Always In His Hair
After the tour, she moved to Minneapolis and became Prince's on-and-off again girlfriend as well as a regular on studio sessions, singing on many different projects. Between 1983 and 1987 recorded backing vocals for the albums released by [[Album: The Glamorous Life|Sheila E.], The Time, Apollonia 6, Mazarati. She also provided vocals (albeit often uncredited) to Baby I'm A Star, We Can Fuck, Manic Monday, The Dance Electric, Hello, the extended version of Kiss, It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night, Good Love. She also sang on tracks that remains unreleased including many that were intended for her album (Rough, If I Could Get Your Attention, Killin' At The Soda Shop, Married Man, Living Doll, My Baby Knows and My Sex).
In 1984, she had a small part in Purple Rain as the waitress at the First Avenue club and played in the short unreleased film Hard Life in 1987. In 1990 she appeared in Graffiti Bridge, where she had a small role as The Kid's girlfriend.
Debut album
Her solo debut on Prince’s newly established Paisley Park Records materialized in 1987, with the release of her eponymous album Jill Jones. The album included many withdrawn songs from former projects, such as G-Spot, previously intended for a second Vanity 6 album that ultimately was never made and became a first [Apollonia 6]] album instead. It also featured an unreleased rock effort by Prince, All Day, All Night, and a cover of With You (recorded from scratch without any input from Prince). On top of this, Prince wrote original material specially tailored for Jill Jones. Some of the tracks were recorded in Minneapolis and the rest at Electric Lady Studios in New York with the help of David Rivkin.
Apart from With You, Prince was credited as a co-writer with Jill Jones on four tracks leaving the other three songs credits to her, but in fact, as for his previous protégées records, he wrote all the songs himself, registering them at the library of congress under the pseudonym of Joey Coco. Upon its release, the album received positive reviews from critics, but was not a commercial success in the USA, failing to enter the Billboards Pop and Black Top 100 charts. The three singles issued from it, Single: Mia Bocca, Single: G-Spot and Single: For Love did not make any impact on the US charts either despite a short tour as a support act for Jody Watley.
In the contrast, with the help of WEA International Inc., the album did well in Europe and Jill spent considerable time over there doing interviews and making TV appearances. With the help of a sepia video shot in Mexico by French director and photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and regularly broadcast by MTV, Mia Bocca became a minor hit in Europe.
I guess it’s all over
Jill Jones went to England in the autumn of 1988 to work on songs intended for a second Paisley Park album. Several songs were recorded or revamped with Prince (including Boom, Boom (Can't U Feel The Beat Of My Heart), Flesh And Blood and My Baby Knows. 4 Lust a duet with Prince was re-recorded with Martyn Ware of The Human League and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_17 Heaven 17) producing. A video was filmed for the track Boom, Boom (Can't U Feel The Beat Of My Heart) which would have been the lead-off single, but the album was not completed, however, as Prince and Jill Jones disagreed on the direction of the album, with Jill Jones wanting to sing more mature songs than Prince was providing. Her contract with Paisley Park Records expired in april 1993 but she was able to work with other artists during that time.
Jill collaborated with Nile Rodgers on a song for the Earth Girls Are Easy Soundtrack and with Japanese avant-garde musician Ryuichi Sakamoto on the track "You Do Me," for his album Beauty (released in 1989).
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After leaving the Prince camp, Jill returned to England to work on demos with Tim Simenon of Bomb The Bass and John Reynolds. Later, Jill sang backing vocals on "Oil For The Lamps Of China", the debut single by The Listening Pool, an English band comprised of three former members of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), which subsequently appeared on their debut album Still Life.
Collaborative efforts
Jill’s friendship with Tim Simenon led her to front an English band called Baby Mother, which was a collaborative effort with two former members of a Liverpool band called The River City People. The group became very popular throughout the club scene in England and was offered recording contracts from several record labels. Baby Mother decided to sign with London Records, but the group disbanded without even releasing a single. Jill spent months in New-York with her mother who was fighting a cancer and asked to be released from the project.
Jill co-wrote and produced “The Great Pretender” for Lisa Lisa’ LL77 album and worked on a song with Paolo Rustichelli for his album ‘Mystic Man’ (which also features contributions by Carlos Santana, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock); Paolo Rustichelli also co-wrote and co-produced the club-friendly song “Bald”, her only single released under her own name in the nineties.
In 1996, she toured with Chic as co-lead vocalist as part of Chic. The last show featuring Bernard Edwards who died the following day was released three years later on Live at the Budokan.
The following years, Jill Jones started to work with Chris Bruce (a bassist and guitarist who had previously work with Wendy & Lisa) on a record that would be published in 2001, called Two (under the name Jill Jones & Chris Bruce). In 2004, she formed the duo The Grand Royals with Ian Ginsberg and released the album “Wasted” on the Peace Bisquit label. In 2016, Jill the club-music oriented album called “I Am” on Peace Bisquit, her second solo album since 1987.
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