Death of Mr. Jones
- From: Babs <bambiemoore@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:48:48 -0800
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071113/NEWS01/711130327/1002/NEWS
Bob Dylan muse, RIT professor dies at 63
Jeff Spevak
Staff writer
(November 13, 2007) - Jeffrey Owen Jones, a film professor at the
Rochester Institute of Technology and, inadvertently, the featured
metaphor in Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," has died.
The 63-year-old Pittsford resident died of lung cancer on Sunday, just
five days after delivering his final lecture at RIT. And four decades
after inspiring Dylan to write these words, delivered over spooky
organ and minor-key piano:
You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home
Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
What was happening was the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and Jones, a
summer intern at Time magazine, convinced his editor to allow him to
do a story on the harmonica's folk-music renaissance. He was
introduced to Dylan by Peter, Paul and Mary, and led to a truck, where
a five-minute interview was conducted as Dylan groupies pounded on the
sides of the vehicle.
As it turned out, the harmonica was irrelevant: The following night,
Dylan electrified the folk-music world by plugging in his guitar,
creating one of the most talked-about events in popular music.
And that fall, when "Ballad of a Thin Man" was included on the Highway
61 Revisited album, Jones recognized Mister Jones, who Dylan fingered
as representing an overly smug academic world, and over-educated to
the point of naiveté.
"I was thrilled - in the tainted way I suppose a felon is thrilled to
see his name in the newspaper," Jones wrote in a story for Rolling
Stone magazine some years later. "I was awed too that Dylan had so
accurately read my mind. I resented the caricature but had to admit
that there was something happening there at Newport in the summer of
1965, and I didn't know what it was."
"It wasn't a big thing in his life," said his brother, Christopher
Jones of New York City. "He was amused by it."
Indeed, much more happened to Jones in the ensuing years. He had been
born in Manhattan and raised in Westport, Conn., going on to become a
star athlete and Rhodes Scholar finalist at Williams College,
Williamstown, Mass. He spent time in Uruguay on a Fulbright
Scholarship, earned a master's degree at Middlebury College in
Middlebury, Vt., and lived in Spain for a while, writing and directing
films.
He returned to Williams College to teach Spanish and take on the post
of dean of freshmen, moved on to become editor of Psychology Today
magazine, worked for CBS, produced promotional and educational videos
and won a New York Emmy in 1997 for Outstanding Fine Arts Programming.
He was 54 when he and his wife, Ellen, had a son, Eli. They moved to
Pittsford where he had several jobs before settling in at RIT to teach
film and animation. With pencil still in hand, he even worked at the
Democrat and Chronicle as a copy editor several years ago.
"He just loved Rochester, loved Pittsford, loved his friends here,"
said Christopher Jones. "He had a 9-year-old son, that's the real
tragedy, and he didn't want to spend his last days in some kind of
experimental program and not be with his son."
Jones was diagnosed with lung cancer just two months ago, but it
quickly spread throughout his body. Besides his wife, Ellen Hyman
Jones, son Eli Owen Jones and brother Christopher Jones, he is
survived by his brother Robert Haydon Jones of Westport, Conn., and
sisters Jeremy Jones of Philadelphia and Jude Anne Jones and Pamela
Cathlyn Jones, both of Westport.
A memorial service will be held at 12:30 p.m. today at St. Catherine
of Siena Church, 26 Mendon-Ionia Road, Mendon.
"He was a loving person with a tremendous personality," Christopher
Jones said. "It's a cliché, but he never had a bad word to say about
anyone. People came from literally all over the world - Spain,
California, Indianapolis, I mean everywhere - to say goodbye to him."
"Dylan didn't paint a vignette of my brother that one would
necessarily be proud of," said his sister Pamela Cathlyn Jones. "But I
think my brother was in the middle of history making. As my brother
Christopher said, he was highly educated, but full of soul himself,
and played the harmonica himself. And he drove a VW."
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