2024-10-26 00:35:04
Some people remember Jack Jones as the guy who sang “The Love Boat” theme song. Others knew him for his rather saccharine Grammy Award-winning hits of the early 1960s, “Lollipops and Roses” and “Wives and Lovers.” Many considered him the best Great American Songbook singer of the rock generation.
I knew him as a guy who loved to tell accordion jokes.
Jack, who died Wednesday at Eisenhower Medical Center at age 86, was a national treasure and an institution in the Coachella Valley. He played the first season of the McCallum Theatre in 1988 and made it his resident theater until the COVID pandemic. Former McCallum President and CEO Ted Giatas made Jack the theater’s spokesman, and their campaign to sell the McCallum as “your theater” helped it overcome the mountains of debt accumulated in the 1990s.
Jack’s shows became dazzling celebrations of not just his talent, but his love of this community. He played with symphony orchestras, big bands, and small combos — never doing the same show twice – and lived up to the potential most of the world didn’t see.
In 1964, Frank Sinatra anointed Jack as “the best potential singer” of all of that year’s male newcomers, which included The Beatles.
Sammy Davis Jr. called him “Mr. Good Singer.” Mel Torme described him as “the best of the pop singers who sing contemporary material.” Jazz and cabaret critic Will Friedwald presented him with a Mabel Mercer Award by calling him “the last piece of the true cross; the youngest of the generation for whom these songs were written.”
When his voice roughened from smoking five packs of cigarettes a day in the 1970s, New York Times critic Stephen Holden praised him for traits such as his “world-weary cragginess” and “sudden flights into a quasi-falsetto.”
I wrote for a quarter century that he was heir-apparent to Tony Bennett as Sinatra’s successor.
But Jack never took that stuff seriously. He made jokes about Sinatra and Bennett refusing to retire. When he sang “The Love Boat” with a cool swing that would get your head bopping, he’d disrupt the mood by impersonating a foghorn.
He’d tell the audience he knew “Wives and Lovers” was sexist, but “It’s my hit, dammit, and I’m going to sing it.” Then he’d change the lyrics to make fun of it.
Jack toured military bases with Bob Hope during the Vietnam War and came away with a penchant for quips at inopportune moments. When someone would shout out a request for a song, he’d reply, “I don’t do that one, but this one has a lot of the same notes!”
He astonished musical legends with his prowess. One night after he was inducted into the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 2003, he played to a McCallum audience, including Barry Manilow, Suzanne Somers, Diane Schuur, Barbara Sinatra, and “Love Boat” star Gavin MacLeod. Sinatra swooned as he sang her late husband’s theme song, “Put Your Dreams Away.”
Schuur indicated he nailed “Dangerous Mood” even after Jack said he had “no right to sing the blues.” After the concert, I was in the green room when Manilow approached him and asked if he did that kind of show every night. Jack said matter-of-factly, “That’s my show.”
Another night, I was at Pete Carlson’s Golf & Tennis in Palm Desert when saxophonist Tom Scott was killing it before a crowd of jazz lovers nestled among the golf clubs and tennis rackets. Jack had sung that afternoon at a Jackie Lee Houston luncheon honoring Carol Channing, and he had just gotten off the road. He was tired. But Scott announced there was “a local singer” in the crowd, and he asked Jack to sing.
After cracking a couple of jokes, Jack launched a primordial scat on the classic Joe Williams blues, “Alright, okay, You Win,” and got the night’s only standing ovation. It left Scott stunned that someone could come in cold and do that.
I wrote after that evening, “Sooner or later, people will realize he’s the best there is.”
Jack grew up the son of show business royalty. His mother, Irene Hervey, had a 50-year film and TV career, including movies such as “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Destry Rides Again,” and the film noir classic, “A Cry in the Night.” She earned an Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on “My Three Sons.”
Her co-star in the 1940 film, “The Boys of Syracuse,” was her husband, Jack’s father, Allan Jones, who had already co-starred in the Marx Bros. classics, “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races.” Allan was a classically trained singer with a novelty hit with “Donkey Serenade.” He didn’t like his son’s fascination with Sinatra’s pop stylings, especially his dark “For Only the Lonely” LP. But, when his son wanted to pursue his own singing career, he added him to his show in Las Vegas.
Jack had attended University High School in Hollywood with Nancy Sinatra, who became a lifelong friend. His family had a second home in Palm Springs near the Sinatras, where Jack would try to ride his bike through dirt roads. He attended Nellie Coffman Junior High School in 1950.
I’ll never forget being in the principal’s office of Nellie Coffman Middle School when my son attended that school in the early 2000s. The school had moved to Cathedral City, but the principal had a photo on his wall of the class of 1950, and there was Jack.
My relationship with Jack stumbled out of the starting blocks. I didn’t like the rock covers his record labels made him sing in the 1970s. So I wasn’t a fan. In the mid-1990s, he portrayed Sky Masterson at the McCallum at the start of a national tour of the musical, “Guys and Dolls.” I wrote that he hadn’t “found his character yet”, and Jack was so angry that he wrote a letter to the editor.
Then I heard him sing with a jazz combo. His recording career was on the wane, and he decided to do what he had always loved: jazz. I was astonished by his inventive vocals. His tone and range were always remarkable, but I raved about his passion and musicality.
When my wife, Jane, produced the first Jazz Celebrity Golf & JAMS Session as a benefit for Big Brother Big Sisters of the Desert in 1997, Jack was so impressed with all the great musicians who turned out for free, including his close friend, former Count Basie vocalist Joe Williams, he showed up the next year. He huddled with blues-based jazz singer Ernie Andrews and the late great jazz vocalist Mike Costley, and I suggested they sing Williams’ hit with the Basie band, “Alright, Okay, You Win,” And it blew the audience away.
Jack showed an amazing facility for scatting, and he developed a relationship with Costley that generated vocal fireworks every time they appeared on stage together.
“He had a brilliant voice, and he was a nice guy.”
— Bill Marx
When the Jazz Celebrity Golf and JAMS Session lost its sponsor in 2002, Jack tried to make it a benefit for the McCallum. That didn’t happen, but Jack and I remained friends. He even admitted he did “find his character” in “Guys and Dolls” a few weeks after my review.
By then, he had earned acclaim for his starring role in a national touring production of “Man of La Mancha.” He proved he could assume the character of Dox Quixote at the drop of a helmet by actually starting his concerts by applying Quixote makeup on stage. Then he’d sing a series of songs, including his stirring hit recording of “The Impossible Dream.”
I used to urge him to record a whole album of blues, and in 2021, he finally did. He called it “Every Other Day I Have the Blues.”
Jack never ascended to the position of “Sinatra’s heir.” His voice and health began to falter by the time his dear friend, Bennett, was ready to relinquish that title. But Jack found happiness in the desert with his sixth wife, Eleonora, with whom he had the time to be a proud dad to his two daughters, Nicole and Crystal, and three grandchildren.
One of his best local friends was Bill Marx, a jazz pianist with a similar heritage. Jack’s father, Allan Jones, had acted with Bill’s father, Harpo Marx. They met in Los Angeles and followed a similar path to the desert, becoming friends and musical partners.
Bill called Jack 10 weeks ago when it was rumored that Jack had rallied from leukemia. Jack was busy and said he’d call back, but he never did. On Thursday, Marx spoke fondly of his friend.
“He had a brilliant voice,” he said, “and he was a nice guy.”
