They are clearly having a communication problem, so I try to help out. I explain to Mr. Dude-Man that he has become a fan of a nonexistent Mike Jones. This metal god he sees before him sitting in a nondescript restaurant parking lot in a nondescript automobile is in fact a highly regarded jazz piano player. Mr. Dude-Man is undeterred. For some reason, while I was talking, he put his arm around me as he tried to focus his intelligence and attention—both in short supply—on what I had to say. Now, ignoring me, he turns to Jones, who is getting ready to drive off. "Can I get a copy of those songs, dude?"
Jones looks totally shocked. "I don't know about that. Um, I would have to ask my boss," he says. The windows go up and he drives away. Mr. Dude-Man leaves disappointed.
*****
Jones' boss is the magician Penn Jillette. This is how a master jazzman finds happiness in Las Vegas: cool casino employers. In addition to playing during routines throughout Penn & Teller nightly at the Rio, Jones fills the pre-show minutes with his distinctive solo piano jazz. And because Penn and Teller do not ask Jones to dummy-down his playing, that 15 minutes is given over to a breathtaking Jones recital—lightning runs and improvisations that somehow sacrifice nothing while delivering everything; all elements of the melody are in place; the listener doesn't have to fill in any part of the music with his imagination. It is a style few have mastered, and Jones has parlayed it into a significant recording career: five albums, some of them reviewed in the respectable jazz press—Jazz Times, Jazziz—and a measure of international renown. But you can't pay your bills with international renown, so the Rio gig is perfect for him.
Penn has also drafted Jones to write theme and incidental music for his radio show. As for the '80s-metal songs, they were created for a play Jillette is working on. "They needed 1980s hair-band music," Jones explains to me in an interview at the restaurant. "They provided me the lyrics for four songs." The task was easy enough for Jones, who attended the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston. "It was great. I had a lot of fun doing it. It is not any different than writing jingles, which I did during the '80s and '90s." Still, Jones, a monster on the piano with few peers, doesn't seem particularly pleased to have been mistaken for an actual metal master. The irony here is that he is usually confused with Mike Jones the rapper. In fact, Jones' biography on his website says, "Mike Jones is a pianist playing timeless jazz. Although often finding himself fielding calls or e-mails for another performer, only THIS Mike Jones can be called a true musician."
Even though you would never mistake him for a rapper, unless you actually see Jones play, he doesn't look the part of a jazzman, either. And it's essential to see him play for another reason. If you only hear him play, and you aren't a piano expert, you would be able to clearly count at least three hands on those keys. You can hear what all three hands are doing. Call it the first trick of the night at the Penn & Teller show. "He controls his hands perfectly, like a guy dealing from the bottom of the deck in a high-stakes game with connected guys who are all packing," is Jillette's dead-on description in the liner notes to Jones' 2001 disc, Stretches Out.
But if you know a little something about the magic of the ivories, it is an amazing thing to sit down for a magic/comedy show in Las Vegas and slowly notice that the gentle piano accompaniment as the audience is seated has accelerated into a territory of dexterity, technique and speed that is scarcely imaginable. This was recently the experience of Pat Thrall. "To see him play like that was mind-blowing," he recalls. Thrall is a seasoned guitar player (Meat Loaf, Asia and Pat Travers) and studio wizard (his most recent credit: mixing, programming and producing for a just-released 2006 remix of Miles Davis' 1969 recording of "It's About That Time"). "I was there to see Penn & Teller and I had no idea," Thrall says. He is still amazed weeks later. "You never expect to run across that much soul, talent and technique just suddenly playing in front of you."
Solo jazz piano makes special demands on a player, who must do it all: create rhythm, melody and solo lines. Most players count on the listener to imagine what isn't played, to make up the difference from their previous listening experience. But not the way Jones plays. The benefit is that it is among the most accessible forms of music. You don't need to know what a "blue note" is (a minor note tossed into a major key) to appreciate Mike Jones' propulsive improvisations as, for close to seven minutes, he stuffs, reworks, works over yet never loses the essential melody line of "Sunny Side of the Street." He makes it seem so easy that the only thing most people don't notice is how hard it is to play like Jones.
According to longtime Jones fan and renowned jazz critic, author and radio personality Neil Tesser, "There are very few people who have ever been able to play with that virtuosity at that level. It is spectacular, awe-inspiring."
Unsurprisingly, Jones' playing is as steeped in jazz history and traditions as it is a display of virtuosity. In his liner notes to Jones' most recent disc, 2005's Live At the Green Mill, Tesser examines the musical quotation on Jones' recording of "Exactly Like You." Tesser points out how Jones has worked references to trumpeter Clifford Brown's "Sandu" into the entire disc, then quickly identifies five other classics, obscurities and show tunes Jones has woven into the fabric of his take on "Exactly Like You." There is nothing exactly like Jones.
*****
Another thing not surprising about Jones is his background: a musical family, a prodigious talent and a relentless work ethic. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, Jones recalls being surrounded by pianos and music. "My dad was a really good amateur singer. We had two player pianos; we had a jukebox and a stereo, from as young as I can remember." Jones' childhood musical education progressed on two fronts: formal and informal, a pattern Jones would repeat at Berklee. His dad set up the suburban basement not unlike the speakeasy spots in which jazz was born, complete with slot machines and piano rolls of Fats Waller. "Most Friday and Saturday nights, instead of going out, my folks would have friends come over, and they would go to the bar at our house and play the piano rolls and the jukebox, and jazz was all he had, and he had beer on tap and the slot machines were authentic, except that they had the backs off so people could take coins and put them back in. It was wonderful. It was great to grow up around that. Then, in 1966, I was just about four years old when they sent me to piano lessons, because I guess I would go pound out what my brother played after his lessons."
Jones listened voraciously to every piano player in jazz, among them Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Bill Evans. All left marks on his playing. All share a radical individuality in their playing, as well as deep respect for and awareness of the jazz repertoire tradition.
Jones was a prodigy until he got to college: "When I was seven, I was a great piano player for seven, and when I was 10, I was a great piano player for 10. In Buffalo I had praise heaped upon me. But when I got to Berklee, there were half a dozen guys much better than me. So my first year I just practiced constantly. I just locked myself in a practice room."
There was another question Jones had to answer at college: What sort of musician did he want to be? Jazz was obviously part of the answer. Jones knew the music, had the chops and was willing to put in the hours. But he was a bit out of step with the times. In the early '80s, popular styles of jazz, like fusion, were as likely to be played on a keyboard as a piano, and the birth of smooth jazz offered nothing that interested Jones. He didn't want to be edgy and he didn't want to be mellow. One night, Jones went to a restaurant near campus to see Dave McKenna play. "At the time I was listening to a lot of Herbie Hancock and Chick Correa." Both were known for their embrace of rock and funk elements. But McKenna was of another generation. He had been playing professionally since near the end of the swing era but began to achieve real renown for his solo piano recordings in the late '70s and '80s, which, as disc titles like Left Handed Compliment suggest, featured McKenna's mighty left hand, which helped create a one-man band. Jones was changed. "Dave McKenna adapted the left hand to play what an upright bass player would play, and play chords at the same time, and solo. When I first heard Dave McKenna I couldn't believe it. Here was a guy who was completely accompanying himself. I loved it. The rhythm was so strong. The swing was so hard. The ideas were nonstop. Dave needed no one else on the stage." For a young player like Jones, who had few peers with such mainstream tastes in jazz, the ability to be a one-man band had obvious appeal. "Around 1981 I made a conscious decision that as a jazz artist I didn't want to push the envelope. I didn't want to study Cecil Taylor. I didn't even want to play as modern as Herbie Hancock. I love a lot of that stuff. But I decided the music that really spoke to me was grounded in tradition but harmonically can go a little more out."
Jones again locked himself in a practice room and focused on learning McKenna's technique. "I started not going to classes that didn't interest me in order to spend more time in the practice room." Jones not only learned how to create McKenna's left-hand effects, he forged his own style. It was the execution of the style he had imagined in 1981: He was able to commit himself to playing traditional jazz, but with the modern flourishes that were crucial to his ability to improvise and explore. Jones had become as unique as the players he admired. *****
Jones lives with his wife in the southwest Valley on a road named after a Beatles song. Although the house is at the end of a dirt road, it isn't as remote as it once was. There is an expensive development visible outside the widow, but no one has moved into it yet. Entering the house, it is only a few steps to the piano. To Jones, this walk is his primary contact with the jazz scene in Las Vegas—he doesn't gig around town a lot. Many nights after the Penn & Teller show, friends come over for movies.
Jones was working with a singer when he moved to Las Vegas in 1999. He also figured that in Vegas he could cash in on being a recording artist with international renown. It was a mistake. He endured a series of hideous jobs, including one where he was up against the constant chant from Wheel of Fortune slot machines. He was about to get out of town for good when he joined the Penn & Teller show in 2002. It was around that time he began to get his tattoos and piercings. While there was a range of reasons behind getting his body so heavily decorated (a relative died, he thought it looked cool and "Why not?" among them), Jones has in the process guaranteed that he will never work a high-end resort lounge again. He is happy about that.
*****
Certainly Jones' core audience will always be the jazz aficionados and piano fans who appreciate all the history, skill and imagination that Jones brings to his playing and recordings. But in 2006, that is a tiny number. This is where the ball of history has taken a tiny bounce in Jones' direction: His talent can be observed by just about anyone for the price of comedy/magic ticket. "Every night, people who aren't necessarily jazz fans, who have never heard of me, come up after the Penn & Teller show to tell me how much they enjoyed my playing. It is very meaningful." He's able to expose his unique style to far more people than most other jazz pianists could dream of reaching. Each night, a few of those people pick up his compact discs and perhaps play them for others, and slowly spread the gospel about who the real Mike Jones is. "I hope the big jazz labels think about that one day," Jones says. Not that he has any interest in going back to the jazz club circuit, beyond his habit of doing a few gigs a year during the rare times Penn & Teller is dark. "I love the way things work out. I always tell both Penn and Teller that if they ever fire me, I am going to be there the next night anyway in my new job as stalker."