Anthony "Sooty" Jones

Who is Anthony "Sooty" Jones?

Anthony Jones was an American rock bassist. He played bass guitar for the British band Humble Pie, when Steve Marriott reformed the group in April 1980. Jones is credited on the Humble Pie albums On to Victory released by Atco in 1980, and Go for the Throat also released by Atco the following year.

Anthony Jones was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 18, 1952. [Incidentally, he disliked the nickname "Sooty," an English cartoon chimney-sweep character. When Jerry introduced Anthony to Steve, Steve decided that Anthony looked like "Sooty." Nobody else agreed, but the name stuck.] He had a beautiful voice as a child, and made his first recording at the age of 10. His first instrument was a guitar, which he continued to play at home, but found that he had a gift for bass and stayed with it professionally. From grade school on, Anthony was always in a band, one of which played The Cheetah when Anthony was 14. In his late teens/early 20s, Anthony joined his old school friend Binky Phillips in The Planets, for many years a very well known New York band. When The Planets were not picked up by a label, he started looking elsewhere and auditioned for Jerry Shirley, who was trying to reform Magnet. They immediately became friends, and when Steve Marriott contacted Jerry about reforming Humble Pie, Jerry brought Anthony with him. Together with Bobby Tench, the new Humble Pie recorded 2 albums for Atlantic before band/label/management issues ate the rest of the Pie, so to speak. Jerry and Anthony gave it one more try in 1988-9, with Wally Stocker of The Babys and Charlie Huhn, rhythm guitarist and vocalist for many of Ted Nugent's albums. Sadly, with no significant new material, there was no label interest and the project folded. That was almost the end for Anthony, band-wise. He did try a power trio, with singer/guitarist Pat Hopney and drummer Julian Vaughn, which we named Enola Gay, but it never got off the ground. In 1999, Anthony was working for Le Cirque du Soleil in Santa Monica, California. Late in October, a man with a Chinese tour group passed out in the aisle. While waiting for an ambulance to arrive, the man stopped breathing, and Anthony gave him CPR for the 10–15 minutes it took the ambulance to get there. Two days later, he told the people where he was staying that he had a terrible headache and was going to lie down. He went to sleep and everyone let him sleep, not knowing how sick he was; when they tried, they couldn't wake him. By the time he was taken to the emergency room, the diagnosis came too late. In trying to save a stranger's life, he had been infected with Meningitis; while he was unconscious, his body was suffering stroke after stroke, and by October 29 most of his vital organs had shut down and he was virtually brain-dead. We had the machines disconnected on November 6, 1999. He was 46 years old. Anthony's heritage was Afro-American, Mohawk, and Canadian. It didn't hurt his career that he was stunningly beautiful – a young Harry Belafonte with Mohawk eyes and cheekbones like razor blades—and his showmanship was a considerable asset to every band he played with. -- Patty Jones