Introduction

Biography

Minzo was the son of El­bert Pink­ney Jones and Sar­ah Ca­ther­ine How­ton, and hus­band of Ro­sie M. Green (mar­ried 1907).

He lived most of his life around Bes­se­mer, Ala­ba­ma. A mu­sic pub­lish­er, com­pos­er, and hymn writ­er, he wrote his first song, Some Sweet Day, in 1916. Ano­ther of his ear­ly ti­tles, based on World War I, was Sol­dier’s Dream. He is said to have wri­tten ov­er 200 songs in his life­time.

In his young­er days he sang in the Ri­ley Bro­thers Quar­tet, along with George Ri­ley, C. W. Ri­ley, and Hen­ry God­frey, with John Dye on the pi­ano.

Minzo worked as an in­sur­ance agent for about 15 years, and was dur­ing that per­iod he wrote the mu­sic for Heav­en Will Sure­ly Be Worth It All (lyr­ics by Oliv­er Coop­er) in 1948.

After leav­ing his in­sur­ance job, he ran a gas sta­tion on 20th Street in Bes­se­mer. An ar­ti­cle in the Birm­ing­ham News, Au­gust 16, 1956, wrote of this lo­ca­tion:

Here, where ma­ny of his old Gos­pel sing­ing friends drop by, he is still writ­ing more songs, and has as ma­ny as 50 ly­ing around his place of bu­si­ness, some un­fin­ished, some half fin­ished and some just start­ed.

Any time Mr. Jones gets an idea for a song, no mat­ter whe­ther he is fill­ing a car tank with gas at the time, he will stop and reach in his pock­et for a piece of pa­per, make a few notes so that he may fin­ish it lat­er.

Mr. Jones…says that he has no oth­er hob­by than song writ­ing.

Note: Ma­ny years ago, we con­fused this in­di­vid­ual with ano­ther Min­zo Jones—son of Gip Cand­ler and Zim­mie Jones—who was liv­ing in Toc­coa, Georg­ia, in 1940. We are in­debt­ed to Ro­bert L. Vaugh­an of Mount En­ter­prise, Texas, for re­search that de­ter­mined these were two dif­fer­ent men.