Born to Sing – Local Diva Tells Her Story

Ms. Juanita Jones

Ms. Juanita Jones, who turned 94 on June 14, is the oldest resident of Pisgah View Apartments Ð and she loves to sing.

By Cathy Holt

 “I’ve been a singer ever since I was born. I sing with a lady from Canton, we go out to nursing homes and everywhere! She plays the violin-she do the playing, and I do the hollering! She heard me singing at a prayer meeting at the Senior Citizens, and she said to me ‘You’re the one I’m hunting.’ Then she started taking me around to different places to sing.”

Ms. Jones believes she knows at least 300 spiritual
songs by heart, such as “Give Me That Old Time Religion,” “Swing Low,
Sweet Chariot,” “Peace in the Valley for You and Me.” Recently, she
sang at the Church of God, without a microphone. “I’ll sing in black
churches, white, blue, red or yellow,” she says. “I love to give my
gift. Anyone can holler with me if they want!”

Born and raised in Asheville, she says “I
was born and bred right here in the briarpatch.” Her family lived in a
house on Clingman Avenue near Hilliard. Her grandmother, Sudy Gudger,
was a singer, and Ms. Jones remembers her rocking on the porch and
singing the old songs.

“The old songs have the spirit in them,”
she says. She attended Livingston Street School, Hill Street School,
and Allen Home School for Girls. Mount Olive Baptist Church was her
church for many years, until she moved to West Asheville and Pisgah
View Apartments in about 1970. Then she attended Mount Carmel Baptist
Church. Back in her youth, Ms. Jones loved to dance-jitterbug, tango,
you name it.

“I was a hum-dinger,” she recalls. Two of
her children also live in Pisgah View: Lela Mae Little and Henry Jones.
Each of them looks in on her once a day. She has another daughter, Pat,
and “a whole flock of grand-kids.”

She gets around with her walker. When her
son asked if she wanted a wheelchair, she said “Who wants a wheelchair?
I’ve got to keep up my strength.”

Her advice to the youth: “Go to church. It
isn’t right, people killing people, many times for no reason at all.
Don’t play around! Straighten up and fly right, ‘cause your wings are
drooping.

Whatever talent you got, use it! God loaned it to you. Make something of yourself. Time is short!”