Getting to the Heart of Her Singing

Eclecticism drives singer Thelma Jones. “Nobody ever told me to specialize in one area,” she said. “So I take what I like and I sing it.”

It’s not that Jones doesn’t have taste--there’s just a lot of music she likes. Raised in Fayetteville, N.C., at a time when local radio played only rhythm and blues, gospel, and country and western, Jones found herself drawn to all three.

“Mahalia Jackson was my first big influence, because she sang from the heart and you could feel it in her voice,” said Jones, who has lived in the Los Angeles area since 1980 and now lives in Burbank. “But then Hank Williams influenced me, too, because he also sang from the heart.”

Later, when Jones moved with her family to Harlem as a teenager, she discovered jazz via Count Basie and Duke Ellington. “That music was so sophisticated,” she said.

Jones appears Friday at Chadney’s in Burbank with a trio featuring Mark Massey on keyboards. As you might guess, her show will be an across-the-board affair. She might do “Baby, I Love You,” a song made famous by Aretha Franklin, or “Midnight Train to Georgia,” a Gladys Knight number. Expect something from Willie Nelson--”He’s a wonderful writer”--and, of course, jazz.

No doubt, Jones will do her favorite tune, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which was a No. 1 Billboard pop chart hit for Roberta Flack in 1972. “That’s a very spiritual song for me, about a person, a place and time in my life,” she said. Jones has had many people tell her how her version has moved them, she said, most recently after a concert at the Santa Monica Pier.

“A woman said that she was in such grief because her sister had died, but hearing me sing the song lifted her,” said Jones. “That kind of response means so much to me.”

Jones may love to sing--indeed, she can’t remember a time when she didn’t sing--but it’s reaching people that is perhaps her raison d’etre.

“Think of it, all songs have a message,” she said. “They will touch somebody someplace, depending on the mood of the song. And you can get the message across. The great singer Ruth Brown told me once that it’s not always politically correct to say whatever’s on your mind, but you can always find the right way to say it with a song.”

As a child, music surrounded Jones. At home she sang along with the radio and listened to her father play blues and gospel piano. But it was an aunt, Mitty McLauren, who was responsible for getting Jones her first glimpse of life in the limelight.

“She taught me ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ a gospel song,” said Jones, “and then had me sing it in her church. The response was overwhelming, with everybody whooping and hollering. I think it frightened me, but soon I was singing in the choir and in glee clubs. That got me started.”

In New York, Jones sang in church with such renowned gospel leaders as the Rev. James Cleveland and Clara Ward. She turned to secular songs when she heard such people as Sam Cooke and Ray Charles.

It was Charles’ song “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” that really put Jones over. She sang it for a tough crowd in an amateur show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. “They booed everybody off the stage before me . . . I was petrified. Then I started singing, and the people started shouting--but I thought they were booing and ran off halfway through the tune. I won anyway.”

Next came recordings, including a No. 1 blues hit with “Never Leave Me” in 1965, and an eponymously titled album for Epic Records about 10 years later. In Southern California, Jones works regularly at Lunaria in Los Angeles and Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

* Thelma Jones sings 9 p.m.-1 a.m. Friday at Chadney’s, 3000 W. Olive St., Burbank. No cover, one-drink minimum per show. (818) 843-5333.

Short Takes: Niacin, a sizzling jazz-fusion band featuring bassist Billy Sheehan, drummer Dennis Chambers and keyboardist John Novello, plays at 9:30 p.m. tonight and Friday at the Baked Potato, 3787 Cahuenga Blvd., Universal City. $10 cover, two-drink minimum. Call (818) 980-1615. . . . Latin / jazz violinist Susie Hansen brings her exhilarating show on Thursday, 9 p.m., to New York West, 19540 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana. No cover, no minimum. Call (818) 758-3900.