DAVY JONES

]Monkees singer Davy Jones dies in Florida at 66


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Wed Feb 29, 02:38 PM

Davy Jones, a former actor turned singer who helped propel the TV rock band The Monkees to the top of the pop charts and into rock `n' roll history, died Wednesday in Florida. He was 66.

Jones, lead singer of the 1960s group that was assembled as an American version of the Beatles, died of a massive heart attack in Indiantown where he lived, his publicist Helen Kensick confirmed.

Jones was a former racehorse jockey-turned-actor who soared to fame in 1965 when he joined The Monkees and they embarked on an adventure that included a wildly popular U.S. television show. Jones sang lead vocals on songs like "I Wanna Be Free" and "Daydream Believer."

The band was assembled as with its personnel designed to be the instant stars of an American TV series seeking to evoke the Beatles, then already famous for their music and such films as "A Hard Day's Night and "Help!"

Auditions for The Monkees were held in the fall of 1965, attracting some 500 applicants. Jones - who was born Dec. 30, 1945, in Manchester, England - had stylishly long hair and a British accent that helped with his selection. He would go on to achieve heartthrob status in the United States.

Nonetheless, musical ability wasn't paramount in the casting decisions. While Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork had some musical experience, Mickey Dolenz had been a child actor, as had Jones along with being a jockey in his native England.

In August 1966, the Beatles performed in San Francisco, playing their last live set for a paying audience. The same month, the Monkees released their first album, introducing the world to the group that would star in the NBC series when it premiered in September 1966.

The first single, "Last Train to Clarksville," became a No. 1 hit. And the show caught on with audiences, featuring fast-paced, helter-skelter comedy inspired as much by the Marx Brothers as the Beatles.

It was a shrewd case of cross-platform promotion. As David Bianculli noted in his "Dictionary of Teleliteracy," "The show's self-contained music videos, clear forerunners of MTV, propelled the group's first seven singles to enviable positions of the pop charts: three number ones, two number twos, two number threes."

And though initially the Monkees weren't allowed to play their own instruments, they were supported by enviable talent: Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and Neil Diamond penned "I'm a Believer."

Musicians who played on their records included Billy Preston (who only later played with the Beatles), Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Ry Cooder and Neil Young.

After two seasons, the TV series had flared out and was cancelled in the summer of 1968. But the Monkeys remained a nostalgia act for decades.

According to The Monkees website, Monkees.com, Jones left the band in late 1970. In the summer of 1971, he recorded a solo hit "Rainy Jane" and made a series of appearances on American variety and television shows, including "Love American Style" and "The Brady Bunch."

Jones played himself in a widely popular Brady Bunch episode, which aired in late 1971. In the episode, Marcia Brady, president of her school's Davy Jones fan club, promised she could get him to sing at a school dance.

Amid lingering nostalage for the Monkees, by the mid-1980s, Jones teamed up with former Monkee Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and promoter David Fishof for a reunion tour. Their popularity prompted MTV to re-air The Monkees series, introducing the group to a new audience.

In 1987, Jones, Tork and Micky Dolenz recorded a new album, "Pool It." Two years later, the group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the late 1990s, the group filmed a special called "Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees."

Jones is survived by his wife, Jessica.

Davy Jones was born in Leamington Street, Openshaw, Manchester, England, on 30 December 1945. At the age of 11, he began his acting career, and appeared on the British television soap opera Coronation Street as Ena Sharples's grandson, Colin Lomax in 1961. He also appeared in the BBC police series Z-Cars. However, after the death of his mother from emphysema when he was 14 years old, he left acting and trained as a jockey with Basil Foster.
Foster was approached by a friend who worked in a theatre in the West End of London during casting for the musical Oliver!. Foster replied, "I've got the kid." Jones was cast and appeared to great acclaim as the Artful Dodger. He played the role in London and then on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award. On 9 February 1964, he appeared with the Broadway cast of Oliver! on The Ed Sullivan Show, the same episode on which The Beatles made their first appearance. Jones says of that night, "I watched the Beatles from the side of the stage, I saw the girls going crazy, and I said to myself, this is it, I want a piece of that."

Following his Ed Sullivan appearance, Ward Sylvester of Screen Gems (then the television division of Columbia Pictures) signed Jones to a contract. A pair of American television appearances followed, as Jones received screen time in episodes of Ben Casey and The Farmer's Daughter. He also recorded a single and album for Colpix Records, which charted but were not huge hits.

From 1965 to 1971, Jones was a member of The Monkees, a pop-rock group formed expressly for a television show of the same name. With Screen Gems producing the series, Jones was shortlisted for auditions, as he was the only Monkee who was signed to a deal with the studio, but still had to meet producers Bob Rafelson's and Bert Schneider's standards. Jones sang lead vocals on many of the Monkees' recordings, including "I Wanna Be Free" and "Daydream Believer". Jones met Laramy Smith in 1967, introduced by Eirik Wangberg (then a producer and co-owner of Sound Records), and they co-produced The Children, an Austin, Texas group Jones discovered while on tour with the Monkees. A single was released on Laramie Records entitled "Picture Me", which reached Billboard at number 2 with a bullet

After the Monkees went off the air, the group disbanded. However, Jones continued to perform solo, while later joining with fellow Monkee Micky Dolenz and songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart as a short-lived group called Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. He also toured throughout the years with other members as various incarnations of the Monkees.

In February 2011, Jones mentioned rumours of another Monkees reunion. "There's even talk of putting the Monkees back together again in the next year or so for a U.S. and UK tour," he told Disney's Backstage Pass newsletter. "You're always hearing all those great songs on the radio, in commercials, movies, almost everywhere." The tour came to fruition entitled, "An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour."

In 1978, he appeared with Micky Dolenz in Harry Nilsson's play The Point at the Mermaid Theatre in London. Jones continued acting as he appeared in one episode of The Brady Bunch, two episodes of My Two Dads, an episode of Here Come the Brides, and two episodes of Love, American Style. He also appeared and sang, in animated form, on an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies and in an episode of Hey Arnold. Also, Jones made a cameo appearance as himself in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SpongeBob vs. The Big One" (his appearance was meant to be a pun on Davy Jones' Locker), a third-season episode of the sitcom Boy Meets World and the Brady Bunch spoof movie of The Brady Bunch Movie. In 1997 he guest-starred as himself on the television show Sabrina the Teenage Witch and sang "Daydream Believer" to Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart).

In later years, Jones performed with his former bandmates in reunion tours and appeared in several productions of Oliver! as Fagin. He continued to race horses with some success in his native England, while residing in Beavertown, Pennsylvania. He owned and raced horses in the United States and served as a commercial spokesman for Colonial Downs racetrack in Virginia. Jones maintained a residence in Indiantown, Florida as well.

In 2001, Jones released "Just Me, an album of his own songs, some written for the album and others originally on Monkees releases. In April 2006, Jones recorded the single "Your Personal Penguin", written by children's author Sandra Boynton, as a companion piece to her new board book of the same title. On November 1, 2007, the Boynton book and CD titled "Blue Moo" was released and Jones is featured in both the book and CD, singing "Your Personal Penguin". As a result of the collaboration, Jones became a close friend of Boynton. Also in 2007, Jones recorded the theme for a campy movie comedy called Sexina: Popstar PI.

In December 2008, Yahoo Music named Jones "Number 1 teen idol of all time". In 2009 Jones was rated second in a list of 10 best teen idols compiled by Fox News.

In 2009, Jones released an album entitled "She" which is a collection of handpicked classics and standards from the 1940s through the 1970s. Also in 2009, Jones performed in the Flower Power Concert Series during Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival.

On the morning of 29 February 2012, Jones was found dead at his Indiantown, Florida home at the age of 66. His publicist announced that Jones had been complaining of chest pains the day prior, and suffered a heart attack in his sleep. Jones is survived by his widow Jessica and four daughters.

When commenting on Jones' death, Time magazine contributor James Poniewozik praised the classic sitcom, and Jones in particular, show saying "even if the show never meant to be more than entertainment and a hit-single generator, we shouldn’t sell The Monkees short. It was far better TV than it had to be; during an era of formulaic domestic sitcoms and wacky comedies, it was a stylistically ambitious show, with a distinctive visual style, absurdist sense of humor and unusual story structure. Whatever Jones and The Monkees were meant to be, they became creative artists in their own right, and Jones’ chipper Brit-pop presence was a big reason they were able to produce work that was commercial, wholesome and yet impressively weird."

Jones was married three times, to:

Linda Haines;
Anita Pollinger; and
Jessica Pacheco, a Telemundo television presenter (August 30, 2009).[16]
He has four daughters from his first two marriages:

Talia Elizabeth (October 2, 1968) and Sarah Lee (July 3, 1971) with Haines; and
Jessica Lillian (September 4, 1981) and Annabel Charlotte (June 26, 1988) with Pollinger.