Grace Jones

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Lore & Background

Jones. She collaborated with the Compass Point All Stars and later with Sly & Robbie.

Reader's Guide

Grace Jones's significance lies in her multifaceted career as a model, musician, and actress, and her lasting influence on discussions of gender expression and androgyny. As one of the most prominent Black models of the 1970s, she challenged conventional beauty standards with her bold features and androgynous appearance, working with top fashion houses and photographers.

Did You Know?

• She earned Saturn Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Conan the Destroyer, A View to a Kill, and Vamp.

Roots in a Musical Household

John Baldwin was born on 3 January 1946 in Sidcup, Kent, into a household where music was a profession rather than a pastime. His father, Joe Baldwin, played piano and arranged for big bands in the 1940s and 1950s, working notably with Ambrose and his Orchestra, while his mother also earned a living in the music trade. The family toured England together as a vaudeville comedy act, and young John learned piano from his father starting at age six. His influences stretched across genres: the blues of Big Bill Broonzy, the jazz of Charles Mingus, and the classical piano of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Constant parental touring meant he was sent to boarding school at Christ's College in Blackheath, London, for formal musical study. At fourteen he became choirmaster and organist at a local church and bought his first bass, a Dallas Tuxedo solid-body electric. He later part-exchanged his way to a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass he kept until 1976. He has credited the fluid bass solo by Phil Upchurch on "You Can't Sit Down" as the moment he was drawn to the instrument.

The Grind of Session Work

After playing in The Deltas at fifteen and then the jazz-rock group Jett Blacks, Baldwin's career accelerated in 1962 when the Shadows' Jet Harris and Tony Meehan hired him for a two-year run. In 1964, on Meehan's recommendation, he began a relentless stretch of studio work with Decca Records that would last until 1968. During those four years he played on hundreds of sessions, expanding his role to include keyboards, arranging, and general studio direction. His credits spanned an extraordinary range: string arrangements on the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow," bass work for Donovan, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, Shirley Bassey, and Dusty Springfield, and arranging duties for Mickie Most's projects with Tom Jones, Nico, and the Walker Brothers. He even arranged the score for the 1968 film Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter. The pace was punishing—two or three sessions a day, six or seven days a week, with fifty or sixty arrangements a month by 1968. He later admitted he could not remember three-quarters of the sessions he had played on. It was during this period that he adopted the stage name John Paul Jones, a suggestion from friend Andrew Loog Oldham.

Building Led Zeppelin

Jones and guitarist Jimmy Page had crossed paths repeatedly in the studio, and by 1967 Jones had contributed to the Yardbirds' Little Games album. That winter, while working on arrangements for Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," he told Page he wanted in on whatever the guitarist was planning next. When the Yardbirds fell apart and Page was left scrambling to fill previously booked Scandinavian dates, bassist Chris Dreja departed for a career in photography, leaving a vacancy. At his wife's suggestion, Jones reached out to Page directly. The guitarist, impressed by Jones's formal training and creative ideas, invited him in immediately. Vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham rounded out the quartet, initially billed as the "New Yardbirds" before settling on the name Led Zeppelin. Musically, Jones brought something distinctive to the group's sound: the singing, melodic bass lines in "Ramble On" and "The Lemon Song," and the restless shifting time signatures in "Black Dog." Paired with Bonham, he formed a rhythm section grounded in funk and soul grooves that gave the band's heaviest material its forward momentum.

Beyond the Zeppelin

The death of drummer John Bonham in 1980 brought Led Zeppelin to its end, and Jones turned his considerable talents toward a solo career and a wide array of collaborations across genres. He has worked with musicians spanning rock, pop, and experimental territory, demonstrating the same versatility that had made him indispensable in the studio decades earlier. One of his most high-profile post-Zeppelin ventures was the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, a project he shared with Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and Alain Johannes, which allowed him to reconnect with the collaborative, genre-bending spirit that had defined his early career. In 1995, Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Led Zeppelin, a recognition that cemented his place in rock history not merely as a session player or arranger but as one of the foundational architects of one of the most influential bands of the twentieth century.

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