He got his first "big break" three years later in 1974 as a high school senior. Jones was a French horn player in the school band, and his band director asked him to juggle during intermission at a concert. He did two minutes to "Sweet Meat Slide" by the Royal Guardsmen, doing nothing more complicated than a few behind the back throws. But he never dropped, and the crowd loved it.

 

Jones got a job that summer at a Six Flags theme park, later attended Ringling Brothers Clown College, and then really learned his trade during four years of 13-15 performances - per - week school assembly tours. 

 

"There was a lot of pressure on me at that point,", he said.  "I was in my earrly 20s and thought I knew it all. But they'd grade me every show, and it was humbling to get  graded and find out I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was. I did it four full years, and by the time I quit I was getting the reviews a performer needs to further his career, reviews saying I was the best thing they had ever seen.

He began developing his skills with a tennis racket and three balls, holding the racket with his withered arm and multiplex bouncing three balls off of it with his other hand. Once he had one racket in his hand, he figured he might as well do two, and began juggling them instead of clubs.  He also learned to balance a racket on his foot, kick it from there to a chin balance, and spin it off a balance on his hand to catch in a balance on his foot.

 

Jones has been performing regularly for the past decade at comedy clubs, state fairs and corporate events, mostly in the midwest. The skills he demonstrates includes: playing a bugle, balancing a tennis racket on his foot and juggling two ballls, two rackets in one hand, a three ball multiplex bounce off of a tennis racket head; kicking up a cigarette to catch it in his mouth; three balls in one hand; four ball multiplex; five ball multiplex using two hands; shaker cups using flower pots; hat tricks, unicycle riding; and his trademark of eating a head of lettuce. 

 

He keeps the tricks simple because he takes pride in flawless performance, and his well­honed sense of squeaky clean, self-deprecating humor carries the show superbly anyway. He does impressions, clowns around with a vent partner, Phillipe the Frog, and gets soaked by a squirt-gun wielding audience volunteer. As he introduces his finale trick, he tells the audience he'll juggle a head of fresh lettuce. He picks up the plastic-wrapped head and says, "I know it's fresh because I got it in my own garden... Really! I picked it right off the tree!"

 

As he prepares to blow up a balloon animal for another volunteer, he reminds the audience, "I said I could do this in 10 seconds, so does anyone have a watch with a second hand..... that doesn't work very well?!"