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with some reviewers, who said that, being the only piano player amongst
the performers, and with better guitar players such as T-Bone Walker also

appearing, it was unnecessary. Perhaps playing some guitar on the album
encouraged him to do so live.

Unfortunately, Jones didn’t even get the exposure on the tour album, one

of which had been released for every year since the first tour in 1962, and
would continue for many more years. For some reason, an album of the

1968 tour was not issued.

After the tour he returned once again to Paris, and spent the next few years
working dates across Europe, often using Germany as his base, but gigs

were very few and far between, and he found it difficult to sustain any sort
of reasonable lifestyle.

After a lifetime in music, with odd moments of success, but mostly working

hard with little reward, Curtis Jones succumbed to a heart attack on 11th
September 1971, in Munich. He was buried nine days later in a Sozialgrab

(pauper’s grave), but even then he could not rest in peace, because, with
no one having paid the fees for the upkeep of his grave, it was

unceremoniously sold. A very sad epitaph indeed for such a fine bluesman.

Listening to his music one can plainly hear his reserved, introspective style,

which is perhaps one reason why he found it difficult to sustain any level
of success. His playing was deceptively simple, but the French blues

commentator Jean Buzelin wrote that “his stylistic limitations, far from
provoking the monotony engendered by so many of his contemporaries,

arouse a desire to delve to the very core of his undemonstrative and
harrowing art, to comprehend the personal drama he is attempting to

exorcise through his music”.

I think Buzelin sums up his music very well, and if you don’t know the
name of Curtis Jones, do give his music a listen, as I think you will be

enchanted by his wistful and personal playing and singing.