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Ohio Players bassist retires to funky town — Jamestown

Marshall "Rock" Jones finds peace and quiet in the country

Staff photo by Bill Lackey At 68, Ohio Players bassist Marshall "Rock" Jones is enjoying the quiet life in Jamestown.

File photo The Ohio Players released a trio of all-time funk classics in the mid-1970s, including "Honey." The semi-naughty covers, however, remain just as memorable as the music.

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 1:46 AM Saturday, May 30, 2009

JAMESTOWN — He rode around in Ferraris, flew on the Concorde, partied with Playmates and had a $600 a day cocaine habit.

And now Marshall “Rock” Jones is arguably the only guy in the village of Jamestown (pop. 1,856) to have ridden around in Ferraris, flown on the Concorde, partied with Playmates and had a $600 a day cocaine habit.

The bassist for the Ohio Players — whose music helped define the flash, dazzle and funk of an entire decade — has quietly retired to this sleepy country village, and the sheer weirdness of it isn’t lost on him.

“They say it’s Ku Klux Klan territory,” Jones joked, “but they’ve been very nice to me.”

In the three years since moving to the outskirts of Jamestown from Los Angeles, Jones admittedly makes as few trips into town as possible.

But even without wearing a sequined cape or his old trademark turban, it’s probably still hard to hide his presence.

“It’s a small town,” he said. “Word probably gets around.”

What Jones has found, though, is a place to grow old gracefully.

“I’ve been around the world three times and I’ve met everybody twice,” he said.

His life has been like a roller coaster — baby, baby — and at 68, it’s time to get off.

“I like the peace and quiet,” he said. “I don’t hear no sirens. I don’t hear no dogs. I don’t hear no gunshots. All I hear is crickets, and, at my age, that’s fine with me.”

Loving Ohio’s cost of living

Born and raised in Dayton — where the Players all lived, even at their biggest in the mid-1970s — Jones is just happy to be back in Ohio.

“It’s affordable here,” he said. “A pack of cigarettes in California costs $10.”

Believe it or not, though, Jamestown wasn’t his first choice for a retirement community.

“I really wanted to get as close to Yellow Springs as possible,” he said. “That’s my kind of town. But the very first house I saw on the computer was this one.”

He fell in love with the century-old farmhouse so he bought it.

But don’t assume that the twice-married grandfather of nine (and great-grandfather of one) is just kicking back on his porch with a glass of Country Time.

He has a legacy to defend.

“I must have 30 lawsuits pending,” he confessed.

Most of them stem from the unauthorized sampling of the Players’ music by hip-hop artists.

Frankly, there wouldn’t be much hip-hop as we know it without plundered old-school funk grooves.

“You know the story,” Jones said. “Technology has come along and it’s allowed for these things to happen.”

Jones doesn’t mince his words — music, he insists, has become more of a craft than an art.

“These kids know how to manipulate computers,” he said, “but there’s no music behind it. If they were artists, they wouldn’t have to sample my stuff.”

The Ohio Legal Players

He realized there was a big problem in 1992 when Mary J. Blige released her first hit, “What’s the 411?”

“That’s my bass line,” Jones said.

And for future reference, that bass don’t come cheap.

While producing the now-late Biggie Smalls, Sean “Diddy” Combs sampled a song off the 1971 Players album “Pain” — and in 2006, he was ordered to pay $4.2 million for doing so.

Diddy, according to Jones, has appealed.

Jones, who’s written a yet-to-be-published book on the Ohio Players and their many legal endeavors, even set aside the bass for a while to chase down money owed to them.

“I think if I took the bar,” he said, “I’d pass it.”

But the man still can play that opening riff to “Skin Tight” like 1974 was just yesterday.

He’s still torn up about the theft of a Music Man Sabre bass two years ago — a gift from Leo Fender himself in the late ’70s — but Jones seems content to play a grungy-looking Squier Bullet he recently bought for 95 bucks at a pawnshop.

His daughter has offered to get it cleaned. He’s resisted.

“You clean it,” Jones said, playing along to a blues song on the stereo, “you take the funk off it.”

The sampling issue is particularly galling. The way he sees it, he took the effort to teach himself how to play bass.

“Why sit down and learn when you can just sample?” he asked. “It took me years to develop.”

And in the case of the Players, those guys worked like crazy mad before their big break.

Survivor of band’s early days

The band has come to be identified with the ’70s, but truthfully, 2009 marks the group’s 50th anniversary.

The band formed in 1959 as the Ohio Untouchables, and with the death last year of guitarist-vocalist Robert Ward, Jones is the last-surviving member from that era.

“I’m the only one left,” Jones said, pausing. “Damn. It just dawned on me.”

At the time, they were best known for backing the Falcons, a Detroit vocal group containing future soul superstars Wilson Pickett and Eddie Floyd.

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