
"I played drug addicts, pimps, hard-cased killers, ex-cons and angry young men," he told The Times in 1995. "In walks Cagney and says, 'Walk to your mark and remember your lines.' That's all I've been doing for 50 years." Jones had mostly small roles of a far grittier nature than his later Disney fare.

Navy without an acting lesson to my name," Jones told the Christianity Today. Still, the studio signed Jones, and in his first credited role, he found himself acting opposite James Cagney in the 1956 drama "These Wilder Years." The veteran actor helped him through their scene. "He's an actor, not singer!", Freed exclaimed as related by Jones in a 1966 L.A. The musical project fell through, but Duke enabled Jones an audition with Arthur Freed, the famous producer of MGM feature film musicals such as "Singin' In the Rain". He was spotted by veteran composer Vernon Duke, who was planning a musical. Navy during the Korean War, Jones got a job acting in a melodrama at Knott's Berry Farm. Dropping out of school at 15, he worked for a short time singing in a club in that city, but when the club closed, he returned to Decatur and got his degree but Jones had gotten the show business bug.
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"It was in New Orleans I really learned how to sing", Jones told the Pittsburgh Press in 1969. Born in Decatur, Alabama and christened Dean Carroll Jones, the actor's father worked for a railroad company and the family moved often, living in Washington, DC, Nashville, and New Orleans.
