Fernando Jones

21st Century Bluesman and 2008 Keeping the Blues Alive recipient (education) Fernando Jones, a self-taught musician, has been a professor at Columbia College Chicago since 2005.

Jones is featured in the Travel Channel’s “America the Wright Way” series (spring of 2008). This worldwide broadcast has been viewed in over 125 million households. Last year he was featured in Eric Clapton’s Crossroads DVD, Dateline NBC, and was interviewed by the publisher of Downbeat Magazine for Musicians Studio. He began performing, playing the guitar, and writing songs when he was only four years old. In Chicago, he’s the go-to guy for all things Blues.

Jones has been recognized and celebrated by his peers and the press as being on the "cutting edge" of the Blues. As a composer, he has taken great pride in performing his original works publicly to help insure the evolutionary development of this musical movement. He is always lobbying for the proper recognition of this indigenous African-American art form and its people.

While refuting the many negative stereotypes that haunt this music, Jones is on a mission to show people the joy and beauty through academic implementations, lectures, and concert performances throughout the world. As a result, Jones' hands were photographed by National Geographic Magazine.

His book, I Was There When The Blues Was Red Hot, has been used as a resource by the likes of the Discovery Channel, Newsweek, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Living Blues Magazine, London Times, and Al-Jazeera. Radio stations such as ABC, BBC, CBS, CLTV, NBC, WTTW, and WGN have celebrated him for his playing style and unique perspective on the status of Black music in America.

As a playwright and actor, Jones received critical acclaim from the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, UIC Alumni Magazine, and received Jefferson and Black Theatre Alliance Award nominations. He is currently a professor at Columbia College teaching the nation’s first collegiate Blues Ensemble.

Fernando Jones is a proud member of the National Alliance of Black School Educators and the Chicago Area affiliate - CAABSE; Real Men Cook; the American Federation of Musicians (Local 10-208); Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) as a songwriter & publisher; the Chicago Blues Festival Planning Committee; founder of Blues Kids of America, and KoKo Taylor Celebrity Foundation board member. He has secured endorsements from Fender Musical Instruments and Jim Dunlop Guitar Picks & Accessories.