Helen Jones Woods
Helen Jones Woods is a jazz and swing trombone player most renowned for her performances with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. She was inducted into the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame in 2007.About
In her 1940s heyday, young Helen Elizabeth Jones was in the top female jazz band in the United States. She started playing with the group when she was only 11 years old, when it was still the "school band" of Piney Woods Country Life School in Mississippi. Her father, Laurence C. Jones, founded the school in 1909. Helen was one of six surviving members of the band interviewed in the 1986 documentary film International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
After the band dissolved in 1949, Jones moved to Omaha and worked as a licensed practical nurse at Douglas County Hospital. Jones Woods and her husband, William Alfred Woods, lived in the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects while he attended Creighton University. Upon graduating, he became the first African-American to earn an accounting degree there. Wood's fourth child is Cathy Hughes, a successful business entrepreneur from Omaha. Today, Jones Woods lives in North Omaha.Family
