Singer, recording artist, entertainer, wife and mother. A well-rounded, hefty alto female singer known publicly as "Ann Jones", and humorously coined as the "Kate Smith of country music". Her birth name was Anna Neoma Matthews, the seventh daughter of eleven children born to Edward and Addie Matthews in Hutchinson, Kansas. Ann was given her first guitar at the age of 14 in lieu of money she earned babysitting. Soon after, she and her sister Martha Frances began to develop their musical skills playing guitars and singing country ballads in Hutchinson and on radio station KCRC in Enid, Oklahoma where the family migrated. As a duo act, the sisters got airtime on local radio stations in the lower midwest, which ended in 1937 when each girl chose husbands both named "Jones", but apparently unrelated. When the remaining family moved again to Anaheim, Anna met and married Huey Jones of Buena Park, California, and they began married life living with her parents. During the war years, she played on an all-girl softball team and worked as a fruit packer, while her husband worked for North American Aviation building airplanes in Hawthorne, California. After her father's death in 1944, Huey and Anna helped support her mother as her professional musical talents began to blossom. Billed as "Ann Jones", her first hit record "Give Me A Hundred Reasons" was released in early 1949 on Capitol Records. In December 1949, she began hosting a weekly television program called "Ranch Round Up" on KTTV in Hollywood. Next, she hosted her own program as a disc jockey for station KVAN in Vancouver, Washington, as did future country star Willie Nelson. More hit records followed for Ann Jones on Capitol and King labels, some as solo efforts, and others as "Ann Jones and her Western Sweethearts", a pioneering all-female band comprised of (at various times) Blanche Emerson (steel guitar), Vonnie Fitchie (vocals and guitar), Dorothy Louise "Dottie" Moore (bass), Linda Simonds (bass), Doodle Lankford (drums), and Daure Hillman (accordion). From the mid-1950's to the early 1980's, Ann Jones and her Western Sweethearts toured venues, nightclubs and barn dances across the United States, and abroad playing and entertaining at military bases and troops overseas. Ann Jones rounded out her career playing in Reno and other Nevada casinos and nightclubs where she, her husband and daughter retired to quietude and obscurity.