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Pearl Williams Jones was born in the District of Columbia, one of those rare persons known as a Washingtonian.  She is… one of three children of The Late Bishop Smallwood Williams and Mrs. Williams of the Bible Way Church of Christ, the District of Columbia’s leading Pentecostal Church which Bishop Smallwood Williams founded.  She is the wife of Williams V. Jones, MD and the mother of two young adults, Yvonne and Virgil, Jr.

But significantly, she is an educator, a pianist, a singer; and recognized around the world as one of the major authorities on Afro-American gospel music.  But, she belongs to Washington, D.C., having attended Charles Young Elementary, Brown Junior High and Dunbar High Schools later becoming a magna cum laude graduate of Howard University.  She earned Mus. B and Mus. M degrees at Howard and later studied piano privately with the late renown Hazel Harrison and Natalie Hinderas.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lycoming College in 1972.

Dr. Pearl Williams Jones made her debut as a singer-pianist in 1966 and thereafter traveled throughtout the United States and in Europe, appearing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall in New York City, Longon’s Wigmore Hall and Suphiensalle in Munich.  Her research in Black music is published in scholarly journals and she is listed in the eighth edition on “International Who’s Who in Music”.