Herb Boyd-No publication, no matter how extensive the obit, can capture the essence of the life and legacy of Quincy Jones. To cite that he was an extraordinary trumpet master, producer of “Thriller,” composer of music for films and television, only begins his remarkable stay among us, which ended Nov. 3, Sunday night at his home in Bel-Air, according to his publicist, Arnold Robinson. He was 91.“
Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” his family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”
His passing is not only a great loss to his family, but he leaves behind an impressive slice of Americana that will never be lost or replicated. His accomplishments are absolutely astonishing, milestones so incredible that in his autobiography “Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones,” he called on others for their contributions. Even so, he offered this personal blurb: “Music was the one thing I could control,” he wrote. “It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didn’t have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than in the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled penciled notes.
“Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant, and cool,” he continued. “The men who played it were proud, funny, worldly, and dap dressers. The New York cats and kittens who came through town were like kings and queens.”
Two of the towns these flashy musicians came through were Chicago, where he was born March 14, 1933, and Seattle where he spent his formative years and began his musical development. At the very beginning, and as soon as he had learned the intricacy of his instrument, his prodigious chops were evident, so much so that he played backup to the legendary Billie Holiday, and toured with Lionel Hampton, while still in his teens.
Lucy Jackson, one of the numerous friends and associates cited in his 13-page acknowledgments in his book, recalled that Jones got his “music from his mother,” she began. “She played piano too, but not jazz. Religious music was her style.” Sarah Jones, she declared, was quite a woman before she got sick. “My mother had gone away sick one day and she never came back,” Jones once said.
Quincy’s first public performance was not on the trumpet but as a singer in an a cappella group led by Joseph Powe, former director of the famous Black gospel choir called Wings Over Jordan. “Mr. Powe had books by Glenn Miller on arranging and Frank Skinner’s book on film scoring at his house,” he recalled. “I asked him if I could babysit just so I could study his scores and arrangements. He agreed and I couldn’t get enough. I was in heaven.”
From hanging around jook joints and perfecting his ability to shine shoes of pimps, he heard the music and learned about the nightlife and culture of the top musicians. Renowned trumpeter Clark Terry remembered Quincy as a “rugrat,” a bothersome young boy begging for lessons. Terry said he had barely finished a gig and grabbed a few winks when Quincy would be waking him up. “We’d work a couple of hours and then he’d go to school,” Terry recounted. “He had a beautiful embouchure. I had to straighten out his upper embouchure a little for high notes and power because his lips used to bleed, but he had great potential.” Quincy was only 13 then.
A year later, Quincy met Ray Charles, who was just two years older. He spent enough time with Ray to refine his musical prowess, learn to cook chicken, and Ray even taught him Braille. He was well prepared in the walk of life and musical skills when he entered Coontz Junior High School. “By the time I graduated Coontz and entered James A. Garfield High School in Seattle in 1947, I had something I didn’t have before: confidence.” He also had references from Ray and Bumps Blackwell, assuring him of solid introductions to bandleaders.
He was on the bus with Lionel Hampton’s band when Gladys Hampton, his wife, surveyed the bus and asked Lionel “What’s that boy doin’ back there?” “He’s in the band,” Hamp replied. She told her husband that Quincy was not a man but a boy. “You get back in school,” she told Quincy. “Get your education. When you’re finished, call us. Maybe we’ll find a place for you then.”
Quincy was accepted to study at Seattle University but turned down the offer, feeling the curriculum was too dry. Instead, he accepted a scholarship from the Berklee College of Music. On his way to the famed musical academy, he traveled through Chicago and then on to New York City where one night he met Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, who took him on a trip to a dope house. After forking over his last 17 dollars to Bird, money he had earned writing an arrangement for pianist Oscar Peterson, Quincy waited in vain for Bird to come out of the house where he had gone to feed his habit.
A few years later, the academy behind him, Quincy was an official member of the Hampton band, which was sectioned off on the bus based on your favorite addiction. The mainliners, heroin users, occupied the back of the bus. During one stint in Detroit, Quincy met Malcolm X. Even then, Quincy said, Malcolm had “a certain sureness about him, and dare I say it, a sense of peace.” By 1953, despite his love for the Hampton band, he felt it was time to move on. He was 18.
Three years later, his star still in ascension, he signed with ABC-Paramount Records and a year later embarked for Paris to study with the esteemed Nadia Boulanger, and also become the musical director for the Les Disques Barclay label. While in Europe, he formed The Jones Boys, composed mainly of musicians who performed with Harold Arlen’s “Free and Easy Tour.” “Nadia,” he wrote, “was one of the greatest teachers of twentieth-century composition. She was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic …” She tutored such luminaries as Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, and a number of African American musicians such as Donald Byrd. She told Quincy that “Your music can never be more or less than you are as a human being.” His group, The Jones Boys, got rave reviews but the money was scarce.
During his long tenure in Hollywood, Quincy met all the best, brightest, and richest of the town, including Frank Sinatra, whose generosity was memorable for him, particularly flying boxing great Joe Louis to a heart specialist in Texas. By 1968, Quincy was well ensconced there with his wife, Ulla, and had worked on scoring the film “In Cold Blood,” “one of the best film scores I’ve ever done,” he wrote. Meanwhile, he collaborated with Sinatra on several TV shows and recordings, putting him in touch with other notables — Peggy Lee, Billy Eckstine, and more. He wrote of Sinatra that all you really needed to know of him was his handshake.
Quincy experienced a brain aneurysm in 1974 and a nervous breakdown in 1980, and later resumed his productive career.
n nearly every genre of music, be it bossa nova, blues, pop, or cinematic. But he rocked the universe in 1983 with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” “Michael was a different kind of entertainer,” he wrote. “Completely dedicated. He practiced his dancing for hours. Every kick, every gesture, every movement was carefully conceived and considered.”
He lamented that Michael “reacted to the externals of our success. It’s like a hurricane in a black hole. It sucks you in and stretches you and spits you out.” He also produced other Jackson bestsellers — “Off the Wall,” “Bad,” and obtained the rights to Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” which later became a Stephen Spielberg film. Then came the massive “We Are the World,” and Quincy’s magic was really necessary when you’ve corralled such a studio full of fully developed egos.
Listening to the commentators on MSNBC shower Quincy with praise, and seemingly without teleprompters, was gratifying, particularly the extensive salute by Willie Geist, who opined on Quincy’s genius in conducting music and managing a range of talent.
The list of awards and commendations at the back of Quincy’s autobiography is practically another book.
Geist gave shoutouts to Quincy’s children — Jolie, Rachel, Martina, Quincy Jones III, Kidada (who was dating Túpac Shakur before his death), Rashida, and Kenya. It was while working with Rashida that Quincy explained how different voicings would work as they rearranged parts of Aretha Franklin’s “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” which she said was one of his favorite productions. “I watched him as he was writing and I thought to myself, ‘That’s him. That’s the essence of him. That’s his immortality.’” (amsterdamnews)
