Singer, songwriter, and storyteller Aristotle Jones hits all the right notes.
written by christy perry tuohey
Photographed by carla witt ford
See Aristotle Jones perform at The Johnnie Johnson Jam on Saturday, July 11, 2026, at Palatine Park in Fairmont.
His performances have been described as “captivating” and full of “positive vibes and joyful energy.” Singer–songwriter Aristotle Jones describes his sound as Appalachian Soul. Every song Jones writes, every story he tells bears his love for music, history, and community.
He comes by that deep affection honestly. Jones grew up in Huntington but spent summers with his grandparents, Robert A. and Daisy Jackson Jones, in Osage. Robert Jackson was a coal miner and farmer and sang in a gospel quartet. As a kid, Jones absorbed stories and songs of the once-booming mining town on the farmhouse’s front porch. “After we would get done feeding the pigs and weeding the garden and riding the tractor and cutting the hay, we’d sit down and we’d start singing there,” he remembers.
When he was 6 years old, he told his parents he wanted to be a singer and he wanted a saxophone. Although the sax never materialized, as a college student, he taught himself to play a guitar that a friend asked him to keep while she was studying abroad. “I learned three chords, and it changed everything,” he remembers. “I learned E minor, which was a great chord for the blues.”
At Berea College, he was exposed to what he calls “a megadose of Appalachia. You know, we’re doing contra dances and square dances and folklore and hiking in the woods,” he says. “So it was like diversity within a pocket of my home.”
Besides gospel, bluegrass, and folk, the soundtrack of Jones’ life included ’50s doo-wop, his parents’ records from the ’60s and ’70s, and ’90s radio rock. He brings that eclectic mix to his own compositions, like “Whatcha Think About That?” He has even refreshed a classic state anthem, “The West Virginia Hills,” a tune first penned in the 1880s. “ ‘West Virginia Hills,’ it has that line, ‘If o’er sea or land I roam, still I think of my happy home.’ And to me, that means that’s what you carry with you.”
Although Jones considers himself first and foremost a musician, he was named a Fellow by the National Association of Black Storytellers for his work weaving the colorful stories of the Scott’s Run community into his performances.
READ MORE STORIES FROM OUR SUMMER 2026 ISSUE