Quincy Jones

Musician

• Born: March 14, 1933
• Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois

Best known as a record producer, composer, and arranger, Jones also worked as a musician, solo artist, bandleader, conductor, author, and record label executive. During an illustrious career that spanned more than fifty years, his diverse talents led him to work with a wide range of artists, including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole.

Early Life

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr., was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Quincy, Sr., and Sarah Frances Jones. After his parents’ divorce, Jones relocated to Seattle, Washington, with his father, stepmother, and younger brother. While in junior high, Jones began studying the trumpet and singing in a local gospel quartet. In his early teens, he joined forces with friend and pianist-singer Ray Charles (two years his senior), playing at Seattle nightclubs ranging from elite social establishments to jazz clubs such as the Black and Tan. At the age of eighteen, Jones won a scholarship to Boston’s Schillinger House (later renamed Berklee College of Music). After spending a year at Schillinger House, he was given the opportunity to go on tour with jazz musician and bandleader Lionel Hampton.

After witnessing Jones’s talents playing in and arranging for Hampton’s band, jazz double bassist Oscar Pettiford asked the young musician to accompany him to New York to write arrangements for him. It was during this time that Jones began arranging and playing for artists such as Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Cannonball Adderley, and Duke Ellington. He also became acquainted with the city’s burgeoning bebop scene, meeting artists such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.

In 1953, Jones reteamed with Hampton, this time playing trumpet in the brass section of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra during its European tour. In 1956, Jones signed on as trumpeter and musical director for the Dizzy Gillespie Band, traveling to South America and the Middle East on a US State Department-sponsored international goodwill tour designed to ease Cold War tensions. Not long after returning to US soil, Jones was signed to ABC Paramount Records, launching his recording career as a bandleader.

In 1957, Jones returned to Europe to study in Paris with renowned composition instructor Nadia Boulanger. Under Boulanger’s tutelage, Jones studied orchestration, composition, and counterpoint. To fund his studies with the legendary tutor, Jones became musical director for Mercury Records’ French distributor, Barclay Disques, recording artists such as Charles Aznavour, Henri Salvador, and Jacques Brel. Because the New York record labels of that era primarily delegated African American arrangers to writing for rhythm and horn sections, Jones also recognized that working for Barclay would be the perfect opportunity to learn more about arranging for strings.

Life’s Work

The 1960s proved to be an exceptionally diverse decade for Jones—a time when he blazed numerous trails for the African American community. In 1961, he became the first African American to serve as a high-level executive at a major American music label, signing on as vice president for Mercury Records. In 1963, Jones ventured into an arena that had been mostly closed to African Americans, composing the film score for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. This assignment was the first in a long line of major motion-picture scores to be written by Jones. That same year, he received his first Grammy Award, for his arrangement of “I Can’t Stop Loving You” for the Count Basie Band, and discovered sixteen-year-old singer-songwriter Lesley Gore. Jones’s production of “It’s My Party” (1963) became Gore’s first number-one hit. The song also was Jones’s first pop production.

In 1964, Jones began working as an arranger and conductor with Frank Sinatra (who dubbed him “Q”), starting with the Sinatra-Basie album Might as Well Be Swing (1964). In 1969, Jones’s arrangement of “Fly Me to the Moon,” featured on Sinatra’s first live album, Sinatra at the Sands (1966), was the first recording to be played on the moon.

During the mid-1960s, Jones resigned from Mercury Records and relocated to Hollywood to concentrate on scoring for film. The transition, however, was not an easy one. Jones had to battle skepticism in Hollywood, which largely believed African American film composers were limited to scoring only jazz-based arrangements. Nonetheless, with determination, and the support of fellow composers such as Henry Mancini, Jones began to build a reputation in Hollywood as a major talent.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Jones became involved in efforts to help improve economic conditions in African American communities across the United States, supporting community projects such as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Operation Breadbasket and serving on the board of the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). Also during this time, Jones helped form the Institute for Black American Music and founded the Black Arts Festival in Chicago.

Jones turned his attention to his solo career during the first half of the 1970s, recording a series of albums that blended pop, jazz, soul, and rhythm and blues, including Gula Matari (1970), Smackwater Jack (1971), You’ve Got It Bad Girl (1973), and Body Heat (1974). In August of 1974, Jones nearly died of a cerebral aneurysm. After two major brain surgeries and six months of recovery, he returned to the recording studio to fulfill his contract with A&M Records. In 1977, Jones won an Emmy Award for his score to the first episode of Roots, the television miniseries based on Alex Haley’s best-selling book of the same name.

In 1979, Jones teamed up with Michael Jackson to produce Jackson’s fourth solo album, Off the Wall. Spawning four Top 10 singles and officially launching the lead singer of the Jackson Five into solo pop-music superstardom, the multiplatinum release set the stage for Jones’s next collaboration with Jackson, the record-shattering Thriller (1982). By 2010, the multiple Grammy Award–winning juggernaut that generated worldwide chart-toppers such as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” had sold an estimated twenty-nine million units in the United States alone, becoming the best selling album ever.

After the staggering success of Thriller, Jones continued his run of success. In 1985, he produced the hit single “We Are the World,” whose proceeds benefited famine relief in Africa. That same year, Jones coproduced Steven Spielberg’s musical feature film The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s novel. He worked with Jackson for the final time on Jackson's album Bad (1987), another Grammy-winning hit containing several number-one singles. In 1990, Jones and Time Warner established the production company Quincy Jones Entertainment. In 1992 he was honored with a Grammy Legend Award.

Jones continued to be an influential figure in the early twenty-first century. In 2001, his candid self-portrait Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones became a best seller. In 2010, in an effort to benefit earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, he teamed with Lionel Richie to produce a new version of “We Are the World.” They called the recording, which featured more than eighty artists, “We Are the World 25 for Haiti.” That same year also saw the release of Jones's studio album Q: Soul Bossa Nostra, which featured many guest stars on new versions of songs connected to Jones throughout his career. In 2013 Jones filed a lawsuit against the estate of Michael Jackson, claiming that works released after the singer died were edited in order to deprive Jones of royalties associated with his work on the original versions. Contested works included the special twenty-fifth anniversary version of Bad, works from the Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil show, and the concert film This Is It (2009).

Later in his career Jones was increasingly recognized for his remarkable contributions to the music industry. In 2011 was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. In 2013 Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2018 he was featured in the Grammy-winning documentary film Quincy, which was codirected by his daughter Rashida Jones. By that time he was among the all-time leaders in Grammy wins.

Significance

During more than five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones broke down both musical and racial boundaries. He successfully demonstrated that musicians could also be arrangers, composers, and producers; that jazz could be infused with pop, classical music, and rhythm and blues; that the corporate world could coexist with the creative; and perhaps most important, that so-called “Black music” could transcend race and nationality to achieve worldwide success. His work with Michael Jackson in particular led to some of the best selling music of the late twentieth century, greatly influencing the direction of popular music in general.

Bibliography

Gardner, Eriq. "Quincy Jones Files $10M Lawsuit Over Michael Jackson Music (Exclusive)." Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.

Giddins, Gary. Visions of Jazz: The First Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.

Henry, Clarence Bernard. Quincy Jones: A Research and Information Guide. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Henry, Clarence Bernard. Quincy Jones: His Life in Music. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2013. Print.

Jones, Quincy. The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions. Introduction by Maya Angelou. Foreword by Clint Eastwood. San Rafael, Calif.: Insight Editions, 2008. Print.

Jones, Quincy. Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Print.

"Quincy Jones." Academy of Achievement, 19 Feb. 2021, achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/. Accessed 20 July 2021.

Ross, Courtney, ed. Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. New York: Warner, 1990. Print.