What was the first band John Paul Jones played in?
Despite being just 22 years old when he became a founding member of Led Zeppelin, bass player John Paul Jones already had an extensive music career behind him. While most of his output up to that point had been session work for other artists in the studio, he actually started out in two London jazz and blues outfits in 1961 at the age of just 15.
The second of these acts was led by jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, who’s now more commonly known as the bandleader of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. McLaughlin was four years Jones’ senior and helped channel the young bassist’s formal musical training into the spontaneity of live jazz performances.
In a 2018 interview, McLaughlin told Ultimate Guitar, “I was playing with John Paul Jones in an R&B band Herbie Goins and the Nightimers”.
During this period, Jones still went by the name of John Baldwin and was still over a year away from his first job as a session musician for Jet Harris and Tony Meehan of The Shadows. “And I taught him harmony before Zeppelin was even formed,” McLaughlin added. Seven years before, to be precise.
Still, McLaughlin’s group wasn’t the first band that Jones performed in. He was still a church choirboy and organist in the fourth year of secondary school when that very first opportunity came knocking.
So, what was the very first band called?
In late 1960, Jones bought his first bass guitar, a sunburst Dallas Tuxedo, which was one of the only models of the instrument mass-produced in the UK at the time. Within six months, he’d been recruited by a local blues group near where he studied in southeast London.
The band was called The Deltas, given their penchant for blues standards hailing from the MIssissippi Delta region of the United States. As well as learning the ropes of performing on-stage, the young Jones would obsessively practice the bass solo from Chicago R&B artist Phil Upchurch’s ‘You Can’t Sit Down Part 1’.
He would soon be ready for McLaughlin to take him under his wing as he started an apprenticeship spanning more than half a decade. Before joining the band that would define him.
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