Elayne Jones was an American timpanist and the first Black principal performer in a major American orchestra. She also helped introduce the practice of blind auditions to eliminate racism from the audition process.

Jones was born in 1928 in New York, and her parents were Barbadian immigrants. Not much is known about her father, but her mother was an accomplished pianist who worked as a housekeeper. Jones began learning the piano from her mother when she was six years old, and she sang in the choir at her church. She was a very bright student and was enrolled in advanced courses at her junior high school. Later she was accepted into the prestigious High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. As a piano student, she was also required to learn an orchestral instrument, and her first choice was the violin, but Isadore Russ, the violin teacher, said she couldn't play it because she was "too skinny" and suggested that she play percussion because of her ethnicity. After her graduation in 1945, she won a scholarship from Duke Ellington that enabled her to attend the Juilliard School of Music. There she studied timpani with Saul Goodman, and xylophone with Morris Goldenberg.

She completed her studies in 1949 and began an appointment as the timpanist for the New York City Opera Orchestra, a position that was previously held by Alfred Howard. Jones married George Kaufman in 1953, and they eventually had three children together. He convinced her to leave her position in 1960 so she could spend more time with their three children. When Leopold Stokowski learned of her lapse in employment, he offered her the timpanist position with his newly formed American Symphony Orchestra. She accepted it, and she also assisted with the formation of the Symphony of the New World and helped establish the practice of blind auditions. Her and Kaufman ended their marriage in 1964, and in 1972 she moved with her three children to San Francisco and began working as the timpanist of the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Seiji Ozawa. This position was highly controversial when after two years Jones was denied tenure with the orchestra. She sued for racial discrimination and was still refused tenure, but she conversely began a long and prosperous career with the San Francisco Opera. After her retirement in 1998, she mostly focused on spending time with her family, but she also gave lectures and master classes. In 2019 she published her autobiography, Little Lady with a Big Drum, and she was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame. Jones passed away in 2022 after suffering from dementia. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi