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Europe and stayed, living firstly in Denmark - closely followed by Memphis

Slim, who settled in Paris.

Dupree was friends with Curtis Jones, who had been down on his luck for

some years, and he persuaded him that not only would he find a welcome
in Europe, but also fairly regular gigs. Having arranged a series of concert

and club dates for his friend, Jones flew to Zurich in January 1962, and never

went back to his homeland.

According to the census documents, Curtis Jones was born on 18th August

1905 (although he himself stated it was 1906!), into the poor farming

community of Naples, Texas, which stands almost on the border with
Louisiana. His sharecropping parents had six children to provide for, and

things got worse when his Mother, Agnes, died when he was barely 18
months old. It is not known what she died of, but it might have been small

pox, because Jones noted in an interview that his family were burned out of

their shack by white farmers, who feared the spread of the condition to their
own families.

Having resettled in the same area, his Father, Willis, married again, to Mary
Sampson, whose sister played guitar. She allowed young Curtis to try his

hand at learning the instrument, and in the words of the man himself, “I

fiddled with guitar and done pretty good”!

However, he was not so keen on the calluses on his fingers as a result of
playing, so took up the organ of his local church instead - usually during

school lunch breaks - having been working in the fields at age 8, he was a
late starter with any schooling. Realising that playing the pump organ was

hard physical work he moved to the piano, initially taking some lessons, but
eventually deciding to plow his own musical furrow. “I wanted to play the

blues or boogie-woogie, so I learned my own way”.

In his early teens, tired of sharecropping, he rode the freight trains to Dallas,
and managed to get some bookings at gambling joints and black clubs

outside the city limits, thereby eking out a fairly precarious living. He
accepted that he wasn’t good enough to get any better dates, but at least was

learning and improving all the time. He also came into contact with local

musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and ‘Whistlin’ Alex Moore - he
called the latter ‘the best bluesman I ever saw’.