Biography

With singer songwriter J Raleigh Jones, it is all about the music and the song. It is about the awesome true stories he writes into his songs. It is about writing and performing to touch your heart or make you want to dance. It is best said by some of his fans.

TRULY TAKEN WITH THE MUSIC...
A VERY TALENTED SONG WRITER...
YOU WILL TOUCH MANY WITH THE
MUSIC.JUST AS IT HAS TOUCHED ME.
K.V.TN

"I may not be a soldier girl, but I am a soldier woman. I've heard both songs; "Damn you Katrina" and "She's a Soldier" as well as, your others, when they were first written and feel very honored to have been there to hear you sing them live! Your heart is in each and every one of your songs and I am so very proud to know you.

God Speed,
J.R." Cynde E. MS.


J.R was born and raised in downstate Illinois. He came from a musical family, and was interested at the age of 8 in writing songs. In high school he played guitar and sang in a 3 piece band at school and church functions as well as a local teen club. As an adult he played in regional bands in central Illinois at clubs fairs festivals and events. But when the country radio station began sponsoring a writers night, he found encouragement from one of the DJ's to pursue his artist career. J.R. obtained a record label deal in Nashville and released an album "Jenny's Eyes" on Castle Records. However he received very limited promotion since the label had a fire and was out of business for over a year. J.R. has had airplay in Europe and Japan, has been on TV in regional country shows in the midwest and deep south. A test was made to determine the reception of J.R.'s music by adding it to a video contest that Music Nation was sponsoring on the internet. It was for videos, but his songs were uploaded to see if they would receive play anyway. During the 30 days in July, he received 19,484 plays with out being in the contest. The 3 songs are on this CD.
In the fall of 2010 Cashbox Records signed J.R and released "She's a soldier" It stayed on the Cashbox magazine charts for 24 weeks, reaching number 10, but crossed over for two weeks to the pop charts. The next release was "The blind man at the door" which reached number 19 on the singles country chart and number 14 on the Americana and Canadian charts. In addition to the Cashbox radio reporting network, J.R's music has been downloaded here on airplaydirect by stations all around the world. His album charted Number two behind John Mellencamp on the release on airplay direct in 2010. It then charted on its own in September of 2011 in the top 30 country album downloads. Another release from his CD is planned for the first of the year 2012.

Now, J.R. has distribution on most major online music stores world wide, including iTunes, Napster, and emusic, Amazon.com,and almost 200 all together . J.R. writes and performs Americana, country, and blues. He is looking forward to promoting his releases and his CD in 2012 as well as performing.