Quincy Jones: A Maestro of Music and Culture
March 14, 1933 - November 3, 2024
By Amanda R. Thomas
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Quincy Jones, one of the most groundbreaking figures in music and entertainment history, has passed away at the age of 91. With a career that spanned seven decades, very few people, if any, have had a more robust resume. From performer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and bandleader to music director, music supervisor, and record label executive, he played an instrumental role in shaping the soundscape of jazz, pop, and R&B, as well as Hollywood. His work has graced more than 400 albums, he composed more than 35 film scores, and his many accolades include 80 GRAMMY nominations, 28 GRAMMY wins, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Tony Award, 7 Academy Awards nominations, and 4 Golden Globe Awards. He is one of the few producers to have number one records through three consecutive decades, starting in the 1960’s and into the 1980’s, influencing not only the artists he worked with but entire generations of music lovers.
Born on March 14, 1933, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. spent his early childhood in South Side Chicago through the Great Depression. During World War II, his family moved from Illinois to Bremerton, Washington, settling in a segregated temporary housing development built for black soldiers while his father worked a carpentry job at a Naval Shipyard.
Jones began his musical journey at age 11, after breaking into a recreation center nicknamed “the armory” in search of food. Inside the building, in a room next to the kitchen, he discovered an upright piano situated on top of a tiny stage and started pressing its keys. “That’s where I began to find peace…I knew this was it for me. Forever,” he said in his autobiography. “The search for just the right piano notes soothed me, healed me, killed my fear, so I went back the next day, alone, and the next day and the next. With each visit, my nervousness was calmed and my fear dissipated. I’d found true love and nurturing. I’d found music. I’d found another mother.”
This newly discovered passion led him to exploring percussion, tuba, trombone, sousaphone, b-flat baritone horn, E flat alto peck horn, and French horn, however it was the trumpet that became his main instrument.
In 1947, after the war, he and his family relocated to Seattle. Referring to this city as “music mecca,” Jones set out to explore what the town had to offer. “It was jazz that I loved, but anything musical would do: choirs, orchestras, school bands, blues bands, anything. I met…before I was fifteen: Basie, Duke, Woody Herman, Milt Hinton. I would hound them for lessons, information, pumping them on music.” A music teacher at the high school Jones attended allowed him free access to the school’s band room and Jones began forming and joining ensembles. Through the local music scene, Quincy Jones would meet Ray Charles, and the two of them formed a lifelong bond. The following year, Jones, as a member of the Bumps Blackwell Band, backed Billie Holiday when she came to Seattle to perform.
After brief stints studying music at Seattle University, and then Berklee College of Music, Quincy Jones left school to tour Europe with Lionel Hampton’s orchestra. After about a year, he opted to move to New York with the desire to compose and arrange music. He released his debut album in 1957, This is How I Feel About Jazz. Jones would join the Bebop scene happening in New York City, working with jazz greats such as Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Clark Terry, and Dizzy Gillespie.
Soon after, Quincy Jones left for Paris, France to study with and learn orchestration from famed French music teacher, composer, and conductor Nadia Boulanger. His new goal was to compose music for string instruments, something that black musicians were not allowed to do in the United States at the time. Additionally, he was the music director for Harold Arlen’s jazz musical, Free and Easy, andtoured around Europe with his own band formed with musicians from Arlen’s show.
In 1961, Jones returned to the United States and became the first African American vice president of major record label: Mercury Records. This era saw him producing pop records for singer Lesley Gore, including her hit song, “It’s My Party.” He also produced most of Ray Charles album, Genius + Soul = Jazz, and put out his own studio albums such as The Quintessence, and Big Band Bossa Nova, which featured the classic instrumental, “Soul Bossa Nova.”
In 1964, at 29, Quincy Jones received a phone call from Frank Sinatra inviting Jones to work with him and Count Basie on Sinatra’s album, It Might as Well Be Swing. At Sinatra’s request, Jones helped rearrange the 1954 song and popular standard “Flight Me to the Moon,” creating what would be known as the most definitive version of the song. In 1966, he would collaborate with Sinatra and the Basie Band once again on the live album, Sinatra at the Sands.
By the end of the decade and through the 1970’s, Jones would compose arrangements and score music for Hollywood. Some of his credits include movies, The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, In Cold Blood, Cactus Flower, The Italian Job, the theme music for the television sitcom Sanford & Son, music for the television miniseries Roots, and others. He became the first African American nominated for “Best Original Song” at the Academy Awards, as well as the first African American nominated for “Best Original Song” and “Best Song” in the same year, and the first African American to conduct the Academy Awards orchestra. However, it was during the 70’s that Jones suffered a brain aneurysm. Doctors initially gave him a 1 in 100 chance of survival, “It was like a cannon had blasted through my head. What happens is the main vessel to your brain…pops. They operated for seven and a half hours. At the end of the operation, the neurosurgeons came in and said, ‘The good news is you lived. The bad news is we found another one on the other side that could be ready to explode at any minute.’” Two months later, he went back for further surgery, and though successful, he was no longer able to play trumpet. He began shifting focus to humanitarian and social causes.
While working as music supervisor for the 1978 movie, The Wiz, Quincy Jones met Michael Jackson and the two would go on to work together on Jackson’s albums Off the Wall, Thriller,and Bad. Their collaborationsuccessfully transitioned Jackson from child lead of the Jackson 5 to solo artist. The 80’s found him co-writing the song “We Are the World” with Lionel Ritchie, a charity single that brought together 45 renowned music artists. By 1985, he and Steven Spielberg would co-produce the film adaptation of The Color Purple. In the 90’s, Jones arranged the concert, “An American Reunion” with David Salzman to celebrate President Clinton’s first presidential inauguration. Jones and Salzman would form a partnership, QDE, that would branch out into multimedia production and entertainment. He started his own record label, Qwest Records, became chairman and CEO of Qwest Broadcasting, co-founded Vibe Magazine, and produced Will Smith’s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-air. His later years saw him mentoring young musicians, and dedicating much of his time to charity and social justice causes. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 and received an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science this month. “Quincy should be remembered as one of God’s greatest gifts to the world,” said Stevie Wonder in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. He is survived by his 7 children and 3 grandchildren.
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