Jones, Quincy 1933–

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Quincy Jones 1933–

Producer, composer, arranger, record company executive

An Essence magazine article once aptly refered to Quincy Jones as a “synonym for genious and versatitlity in the entertainment industry.” The multitalented Jones began his remarkable career as a jazz prodigy and eventually progressed into pop music production, film, telvision scoring, and participation in the vaunted “information superhighway” of the 1990s. He has won 25 Grammy awards and a slew of other honors—some of which reflect his work on the top-selling recordings of the modern era—and coordinated the most successful benefit in music history, the release of “We Are the World.”

Yet Jones has managed to keep his accomplishments and prominence in perspective, maintaining a balance of passion, curiosity, and good humor that impresses his peers almost as much as do his more tangible achievements. His dream project, a history of black music from prehistory to the present, has been in the works for decades and has yet to be realized, but no one familiar with Jones’s drive and sense of purpose would consider this formidable undertaking beyond his grasp.

Born Quincy Delight Jones—as was his father—he evinced an early aptitude for music; his mastery of the trumpet led him to bandstands with jazz ensembles by the age of 15. Of course, two years before that, he had felt sufficient confidence in his talents as an arranger to send some charts he’d done to legendary jazz bandleader Count Basie.

Much of Jones’s education came at the feet of greats like pianist-singer Ray Charles and vibraphonist-bandleader Lionel Hampton; the latter hired Jones when the aspiring trumpeter was still a teenager. The talented youth also played with such brilliant jazz figures as singer Billie Holiday, bebop icon and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and bandleader Billy Eckstine. Ultimately, however, he felt more comfortable as a composer and arranger than as a trumpeter. “I always felt that the orchestra itself was my instrument,” he explained to Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore in 1978. “I had to make a commitment as some point, and I was more fearless with an arrangement than with a horn. It was kind of like going to bed with the music, then taking it out on a date later.”

Jones did study formally, attending Boston’s presitgious Berklee School of Music and working with Parisian arranger Nadia Boulanger; Paris, in fact, became his home for some time. It was there that he worked as a jazz producer and led his own ensemble. One of his neighbors in the

At a Glance…

Born Quincy Delight Jones, March 14, 1933, in Chicago, IL; son of Quincy Delight (a carpenter) and Sarah Jones; married four times (third wife was actress Peggy Upton); children: (first marriage) Jolie, (second marriage) Martina-Usa, Quincy III, (third marriage) Kidada, Rashida. Education: Attended Seattle University, Berklee School of Music (now Berklee College of Music), and Boston Conservatory; studied arranging with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Played trumpet in Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands; wrote musical arrangements for Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and others; music director and producer, Barchlay Disques, Paris, 1956-60; music director, Mercury Records, 1961, named vice president, 1964. Scored films, including The Pawnbroker, 1965; in Cold Blood, 1967; In the Heat of the Night 1967; For Love of ivy, 1968; Cactus Flower, 1969; Bob & Carni & Ted & Mice, 1969; The Wiz, 1978; The Cotor Purple, 1994. Scored television series Ironside and Sanford and Son; recording artist on A&M Records, 1969-80; founded Qwest Records, 1981; produced single “We Are the World” to benefit African famine victims, 1986; founded magazine Woe, 1993; launched multimedia joint venture QDE, 1993; selected to serve on U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, 1994; founder of nonprofit organization Listen Up Foundation.

Selected awards: 25 Grammy Awards, including three as producer of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, 1982, and six for album Back on the Block, 1991; 1994 Polar Music Prize.

Addresses: Office— 10880 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2110, Los Angeles, CA 90024. Record company —Qwest Records, 3800 Barham Blvd., Ste. 503, Los Angeles, CA 90068-1042; 1250 Ocean Ave., #3D, Brooklyn, NY 11230-7420.

French capital was quintessential twentieth-century painter Pablo Picasso, who provided a model of creative longevity to the ambitious Jones; indeed, another idol, bop saxophone genius Charlie “Bird” Parker died young, claimed by drug addiction.

“Picasso’s my man,” Jones told Rolling Stone’s David Ritz in 1984. “Picasso’s my model. Didn’t moan, didn’t groan, just kept waltzing and wailing and sharpening his chops, even in his nineties. Now, when I was coming up, Bird was the man. No doubt that Charlie Parker was the baddest cat of this century. I mean the motherf—er was ferocious. But unlike Picasso, Bird couldn’t get his ass out of the bake alley. He split four decades before he should have. For a kid, that’s not a very productive example.”

On his return to the United States in 1960, Jones signed on at Mercury Records, becoming one of the industry’s first black executives. The following year, he became music director and produced his first hit pop record, Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party.” By 1964, he was a Mercury vice president. Also during this period, Jones broke into film and television scoring, providing themes for such motion pictures as The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, and In the Heat of the Night and later the TV series Ironside and Sanford and Son.

Jone’s forays into pop left many jazz aficionados—who had counted on him to help preserve the form—nonplussed. He has repeatedly scoffed at such attitudes. “The underlying motivation for any artist, be it [modern classical composer Igor] Stravinsky or [jazz trailblazer) Miles Davis, is to make the kind of muic they want and still have everyone buy it,” he asserted to Gimore. And he has long questioned the concept of the “purity” of jazz, as his words to Down Beat writer Frank Alkyer attested: “Purism? Nothing about jazz is pure. It’s quadrilles, blues, country, marches, Brahms, Beethoven … everything!” He further declared, “Anything that has a pure soul, no matter what you call it, is credible music.”

Jones proceeded to establish his own credibility as a recording artist, exploring funk, fusion, and other contemporary forms on albums like Sounds … and Stuff Like That. While some of his harsher critics carped about his electronic leanings, he felt his background had led naturally to such projects. “I was lucky to come up in an environment where I had to play everything, from bebop and blues to [twentieth-century classical composer Claude] Debussy,” he noted to Rolling Stone’s Gilmore. “I was playing trumpet in an R&B band in Seattle when I was 14, so what I’m doing now isn’t exactly alien to me. That was in 1947, the heart of the bebop era, and there weren’t a lot of cats who shared my view that you should explore music without wearing blinders.” Jones demonstrated a similarly expansive outlook as producer, working with R&B sensations the Brothers Johnson, jazz guitarist George Benson, disco diva Donna Summer, and modern vocal giant Frank Sinatra, among many others.

Near-death Experience Brought Balance

Jone’s star was very much in the ascendant when he found himself in the hospital, undergoing operations to repair two aneurysms in his brain. The year was 1974; the surgery was so fraught with danger that he was not expected to survive. As Rolling Stone contributor Ritz reported, Jones’s closest friends surrounded his hospital bed after the final operation, intending to pay their last repects; very gradually, the stricken patient raised his arm and gave his friends the finger. “If y’all think I’m cutting out,” he murmured, “forget it.”

After coming so close to death, Jones emerged with a new sense of purpose and a philosophy of balance that has served him well in the frenetic world of entertainment. “After I came out of the hospital, I couldn’t believe what I saw,” he told Interview. “Man, all the details of the trees! People’s eyes! Everything was so evident, much more so than before. I could feel the intensity of the breeze, because I was finally paying attention. It affected my perception of my whole existence.” As a result, he reevaluated his work. “Before that, I was doing a lot of things that I didn’t care to do,” Jones averred to Gilmore. “Now, I just do exactly what I love.”

Jone’s involvement in the screen adaptation of the hit musical The Wiz —an R&B reworking of The Wizard of Oz —was especially rewarding, as he enthused to Gilmore at the time: “People used to ask me what the biggest moment of my career was. I would have to say now that it’s The Wiz. Wait until you hear Diana Ross and Michael Jackson singing together! I’ve been in the music business for 30 years, and I’ve never been happier. I feel like I’m 15 years old.” His work on this project led naturally to the production of Jackson’s album Off the Wall —which sold some eight million copies.

When Jones contracted to record the follow-up, he hoped merely to gain a fraction of Off the Wall’s success; the result, 1982’s Thriller, became the biggest-selling album of all time—it moved some 25 million units—and earned Jones three Grammy awards as producer. He worked again with Jackson on the latter’s album Bad; he also revealed to Ritz his peculiar nickname for the star. “We call Michael Jackson ‘Smelly’ because he’s so polite and proper we can’t even get him to say the word funky. Honest to God!”

Meanwhile, Jones had launched his own record label in 1981, Qwest, which was distributed by Warner Bros.; his own recordings, not to mention several by artists he produced, were released on the label. Jackson’s massive hits aside, Jones had emerged as one of the most reliable—and relaxed—producers in popular music. As an unidentified “observer” told Ritz, “In a field crowded with egomaniacs, Quincy works by hiding his ego. He’s so modest and cool, you wind up doing exactly what he wants, no questions asked. That’s why his records sound so relaxed. He’s the ultimate moodmaker and the most skilled manipulator in the business.” Jones himself explained that “producing is always an obsession” and summarized his apporach thus: “Listeners get bored quickly. So vary the sound. Keep the ear engaged and excited.”

Mounted “We Are the World”

In 1986, Jones involved himself in a massive undertaking to generate assistance for victims of famine in Africa. Jackson, Ross, Stevie Wonder, and a veritable solar system of pop stars participated in Jones’s charity single for the USA for Africa organizaiton; “We Are the World” raised $50 million, and Jones managed the whole affair with aplomb, demanding of his all-star vocal talent, “Check your egos at the the door.” Evidently they did, though cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s version of the recording session in his strip Doonesbury had some of them demanding a receipt.

“My lifetime project, though,” Jones confessed to Ritz, “involves putting this whole Afro-American thing together into a single, cohesive musical expression. I’ve been working on it for 20 years, and I may need another 20 to get through. It’s a symphony, it’s an opera, it’s a minstrel review, and a big band bash. I don’t know what it is, except there it is, keeping me up, invading my dreams.” Every time he felt ready to tackle the massive project, he admitted, a new job came along.

Although Jones has not yet realized this dream, he did emerge with an ambitious recording of his own, 1991’s Back on the Block; that album traced a lineage between bebop and rap and enlisted an impressive array of performing talent. Jones took home six Grammy awards as a result, including those for album of the year and best producer. The title track, featuring rap stars Ice-T, Melle Mel, Big Daddy Kane, and Kool Moe Dee, won the statuette for best rap performance by a duo or group. The Grammy awards ceremony took place during the Persian Gulf War, and the producer took note of the crisis in his acceptance speech, urging, “Pray for peace on earth, and when we get peace on earth, let’s take care of the earth.”

In 1993 Jones announced that he was starting a magazine, the slick black music journal Vibe. Though the first issue received mixed reviews, it was quickly established as a standout publication in the field. Also that year, Jones and David Salzman, his partner in television production, formed a joint venture called QDE to provide entertainment on the so-called electronic superhighway; they planned to provide multimedia and interactive programming. They also intended to pursue film production, having negotiated a first-look deal with Warner Bros.

Meanwhile, the entertainment world’s Renaissance Man continued to produce records for other artists, found time to appear at events like the Montreux Jazz Festival, and, in 1994, received the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, Sweden. In his acceptance speech, quoted in Billboard, Jones fondly recalled his past performances there, remarking that “coming back to Sweden is like returning to my old home.”

Most of all, Quincy Jones remained dedicated to exploring new musical avenues. “I used to sit and watch Charlie Parker at Charlie’s Tavern,” he recollected to Down Beat’s Alkyer. “I’d look at him with awe as he would walk over to the jukebox. He’d play [Stravinsky’s] Sacre Du Printemps, The Rite of Spring, and then pull out another dime or whatever it was and listen to a country & western tune…. Everything! That’s how it’s supposed to be.” Like Parker’s jukebox, Quincy Jones’s musical dreams combine the eclectic tributaries of American music into a symphonic ocean. He himself employed a culinary metaphor when discussing his occupational ideal in Interview: “I just want to eat the whole menu, because, man, it’s all so beautiful.”

Selected discography

Brand New Bag, Mercury.

Ndeda, Mercury.

The Dude, A&M.

The Best of Quincy Jones, A&M.

Sounds … and Stuff Like That, A&M.

I Heard That, A&M.

Mellow Madness, A&M.

Body Heat, A&M.

You’ve Got It Bad, Girl, A&M.

Smackwater Jack, A&M.

Gula Matari, A&M.

Walking in Space, A&M.

The Birth of a Band, A&:M.

The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones, Trip.

The Quintessential Charts, MCA.

Mode, ABC.

My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Impulse.

This Is How I Feel About Jazz, (recorded 1956 and 1957), GRP/Impulse, 1992.

Back on the Block, Qwest, 1991.

Soundtracks

In the Heat of the Night, Liberty.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Bell.

Cactus Flower, Bell.

They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, Bell.

Dollars, Reprise.

For Love of Ivy, ABC.

The Wiz, MCA.

Roots (television score), Warner Bros.

Also produced albums for various artists, including Michael Jackson, George Benson, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer, Leslie Gore, James Ingram, the Brothers Johnson, and Patti Austen.

Sources

Billboard, July 3, 1993, pp. 8, 77; February 12, 1994, p. 77 Down Beat, October 1992, p. 6. Essence, May 1994, p. 110. Interview, January 1990.

Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1991, pp. A-l, A-20. Rolling Stone, November 2, 1978, pp. 24-6; April 12, pp. 43-6.

—Simon Glickman

Contemporary Black Biography