This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Obituaries
Motown drummer dies
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 26 March 2009
Drummer Uriel Jones (pictured on the left with fellow Funk Brothers Eddie Willis and Bob Babbitt), who worked with the likes of The Temptations, Four Tops and Smokey Robinson, has died at the age of 74 after suffering a heart attack.
A member of Funk Brothers, Motown Records’ house band, he played on myriad hits, including ‘Signed Sealed Delivered, I’m Yours’ by Stevie Wonder, ‘What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted’ by Jimmy Ruffin, and ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye.
According to Paul Riser, a Motown arranger and musician, Jones often played with his fellow surviving Funk Brothers. The band were the subject of an acclaimed 2002 documentary, ‘Standing In The Shadows Of Motown’, a film that brought the group’s members a degree of recognition denied them during Motown’s sixties heyday.
Jones is survived by his wife and three children.
