[1][2][3][4] She began learning piano at the age of six from her mother who had originally come to New York with the promise of a career as a concert pianist, but ended up as a cleaner due to her color.
"[5][3][6][4] With time, she joined the choir at St. Luke's Episcopal Church where she preferred to sing harmony and was soon exposed to the music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Frank Sinatra.
According to Local 802 that hosted Jones as a member for over sixty years, she fell in love with violin in musical school but her teacher Isadore Russ told her she was too skinny, instead handing her a pair of drumsticks, based on the notion that "Negroes have rhythm".
[3][1][9] She later joined the orchestra of the San Francisco Opera, and as a freelancer performed for New York Metropolitan shows such as Carousel, South Pacific, and Green Willow.
[3][10][5] In 1972 she won a blind audition for the San Francisco Symphony under the supervision of Seiji Ozawa which made her the only African American to attain such a position at that time.
It is the first racially integrated orchestra in the United States that give Black musicians the opportunity to play orchestral repertoire.
The San Francisco Symphony accepted the advice and in 1972 Jones blindly beat forty people to land herself a job at the company.
[10][5][3]Also, at the beginning part of her career, she was forced to sleep in accommodations meant for African American while her colleagues slept in luxurious hotel.
She continued to perform tenure with San Francisco Opera till 1998 but According to New York Times her "effective firing at the symphony stayed with her"[10][3] Jones met George Kaufman at Adirondacks when she was playing a drum set at a jazz gig in 1952.
He remarked, "I think that her greatest contribution to percussion was that she paved the way for women and non-white players in the mostly-white world of classical music.
"[3][12][9][14] In 2019, Jones became the fourth female member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame and in the same year her autobiography titled Little Lady with a Big Drum was published.