Bassist Billy Jones is associated with the early days of the Swimming Pool Q's combo, a period that is unfortunately not documented to any great extent on recordings. Ground was broken for this musical pool in 1978, with Jones doing his bass strokes behind the ongoing twin guitar and songwriting collaboration of Bob Elsey and Jeff Calder. Robert Schmid was the drummer, and doggie-paddling somewhere to the side was Anne Richmond Boston, one of an elite group of rock performers who played with prize items from their toy collection on-stage.

At that time the only toys at a Southern rock event were people such as Toy Caldwell, lead guitarist with the Marshall Tucker Band. Jones may have been a musician from Georgia but he was an example of a new breed who were not drawn to hard-rocking boogie. He was much more influenced by avant-garde rock and Captain Beefheart, available on a local basis to the pickers of the Peach State thanks to the presence of the perhaps equally startling Hampton Grease Band. By the time the Swimming Pool Q's made their full-length album debut in 1981, however, aspects of the group's rhythm section had been altered. This included Jones being replaced by Pete Jarkunas.

Bearing in mind that it is always possible to find someone willing to kvetch about a group changing bass players, it should be reported that club denizens from the period recall something of a change in the group's repertoire immediately following the decision to let Jones dry off. Calder has explained in interviews that songs were actually dropped because the new bassist was unable to learn everything in the current book. Considering the band's name, this might be the opposite of skimming scum off a pool if the result was the loss of quality material. Jones can be heard with the group on the first Swimming Pool Q's single, released in 1979. He co-wrote the alarming The A-Bomb Woke Me Up, a number the new bassist did get around to learning, since the group did a new version for the 1981 album. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi