Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 235 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
There are times in this country when we need to celebrate triumphs over adversity. This is one of those times. Black music and musicians have gotten us through many times of trouble in the past, and both will continue to do so. Let us gather together today to honor a man who weathered this nation’s racial and economic barriers to rise in triumph against them.
The life and work of Quincy Delight Jones Jr., affectionately known as “Q,” is one such story. A trumpeter, producer, conductor, composer, and arranger, Jones was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago, and left this earthly realm on Nov. 3, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.
For over almost five decades, Jones persevered, rising from a life of abject hardship to become a major influence in not only the music industry, but also in the worlds of film and television. From the moment the news of his death was announced by his family, people from across the nation and around the globe have paid homage to Jones—and not only his friends, but from all whose lives he touched through his craft.
Join us in celebration of his life and legacy.
Let’s take a look at a few of the tributes that have poured in since he passed.
From The New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff:
Quincy Jones, Giant of American Music, Dies at 91
As a producer, he made the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” He was also a prolific arranger and composer of film music.
In the late 1950s and early ’60s, Mr. Jones led his own bands and was the arranger of plush, confident recordings like Dinah Washington’s “The Swingin’ Miss ‘D’” (1957), Betty Carter’s “Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant” (1955), and Ray Charles’s “Genius + Soul = Jazz” (1961). He arranged and conducted several collaborations between Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, including what is widely regarded as one of Sinatra’s greatest records, “Sinatra at the Sands” (1966).
He composed the soundtracks to “The Pawnbroker” (1964), “In Cold Blood” (1967) and “The Color Purple” (1985), among many other movies; his film and television work expertly mixed 20th-century classical, jazz, funk and Afro-Cuban, street, studio and conservatory. And the three albums he produced for Michael Jackson between 1979 and 1987 — “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” — arguably remade the pop business with their success, by appealing profoundly to both Black and white audiences at a time when mainstream radio playlists were becoming increasingly segregated.
Also from the Times, art and popular culture writer Wesley Morris wrote:
Quincy Jones Orchestrated the Sound of America
Jones, who died at 91, erased boundaries, connected worlds and embraced delight. As a producer, he coaxed ingenuity from his players and singers.
I have this book called “The Complete Quincy Jones,” from 2008. It’s the sort of grand coffee table experience so ephemera loaded that it all but spills out photos and reproductions of letters and sheet music and newspaper clippings and report cards. It’s a book that requires a plan to transport it from a store to your house. Some of this stuff is affixed to the pages, as if Jones, who died on Sunday, had assembled it just for me, even though my name’s nowhere near Oprah Winfrey’s effusive “thank you” note. One of the unglued news items, from a 1989 edition of The International Herald Tribune, has now become a bookmark that reads, inartfully: “Quincy Jones: Black Music’s Bernstein.”
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But there’s another, related aspect of that experience, and it’s all over “The Complete Quincy Jones.” In just about every photo, he seems so happy to be wherever he is. Standing next to Hillary Clinton, chatting with Colin Powell, cracking up next to Nelson Mandela, perched beneath a conductor’s podium alongside Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. In one picture he’s got an arm around Sarah Vaughan and the other around Chaka Khan. Elsewhere, he’s planting a kiss on Clarence Avant’s cheek; pressing his cheek into Barbra Streisand’s (she signed that one: “My big ole black butt is sticking out — isn’t it?”; and I’ll just say her dress is dark). A big spread on “The Color Purple,” which he produced and scored, includes a photo of him and Alice Walker, forehead to forehead. Then there’s the intriguing shot of him looking heavenward with Leonard Bernstein at, we’re told, the Sistine Chapel.
I know, I know: Sir, these are pictures. How else would he look? But there’s something going on here for me. On the one hand: I’m just dropping names. On the other: this was a Black man born in 1933 who somehow survived an ominous Chicago upbringing (he remembers somebody pinning a knife to his 7-year-old hand), and now here he is not simply moving and shaking but magnetizing and mattering. I’m sorry, but I have another name to drop. Jones’s middle one: Delight. His parents didn’t miss with that one. He radiated it. His music prioritized it.
Delight, indeed.
Quincy Jones directs a rehearsal of the Orchestra National de France Tuesday, July 4, 2000, in Paris.
Andrew Lawrence, features writer for The Guardian, wrote:
Quincy Jones and Frank Sinatra: the audacious partnership that rocketed them to another planet
Jones was behind many inflection points in American music, but it all began with a brotherhood with Ol’ Blue Eyes
It was in 1964 when Sinatra and Jones collaborated for that first studio album, It Might as Well Be Swing. At the time Sinatra was a commercial colossus, with a blockbuster career in film and music. But as he neared age 50, with jazz quickly giving ground to rock’n’roll, it appeared as if Sinatra, AKA the Chairman of the Board, wouldn’t remain on top for much longer. After leaving Capitol Records, the company that made him a superstar, Sinatra started his own record label by making an album with Basie – a celebrated bandleader who wasn’t the best at reading sheet music or learning new tunes. Jones didn’t just keep them swinging. He arranged Sinatra’s voice in such a way that it made him sound like an instrument in the band and not just another singer taking the lead.
Originally titled In Other Words, Fly Me to the Moon was written in 1954 in the 3/4 time of a waltz. At Sinatra’s request, Jones adapted it to 4/4 time to make it swing. The American composer Bart Howard reckons the song was recorded more than 100 times before Sinatra and Basie released their take. The two-and-a-half-minute standard – with Jones driving the horns and Sinatra’s immaculate phrasing – became the definitive version. During his live performances with the Basie band, Sinatra would make a point of acknowledging Jones – “[the] gentleman who’s been doing these marvelous orchestrations for me, one of the bright young stars in the orchestrating business”.
After the Swing project, Sinatra tapped Jones again to arrange his first live album, Sinatra at the Sands – one of the most consequential live recordings in history. Soon thereafter, Jones’s partnership with Sinatra would lead to opportunities in Hollywood scoring films – another thing Black musicians were not doing at the time, let alone prolifically. In the end Jones’s fingerprints aren’t just all over everything from the Italian Job to the Sanford and Son theme to Austin Powers’s Soul Bossa Nova, but also on the film scoring careers of the RZA, Pharrell and other Black musicians too.
Sinatra and Basie filmed this live performance of “Fly Me To The Moon” in October 1965.
The Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis tackled the long list of stars who worked with Jones:
Dizzy to Donna to Stevie: how hit-making legend Quincy Jones created superstars and changed pop history
Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Dionne Warwick … the powerhouse producer made magical music with everyone who was anyone. We pay tribute to the genius of ‘the Dude’
His ability to slip between genres may well have involved a degree of pragmatism. He had become a recording artist in his own right in the late 50s, leading bands staffed with impressive musicians – one session for his second album featured Charles Mingus, Milt Jackson, Art Farmer and Herbie Mann – but when he formed his own 18-piece big band in Europe in 1959, they achieved both critical acclaim and penury. Resolving to “learn the difference between music and the music business”, he took a job at Mercury Records, where his breakthrough hit was Lesley Gore’s 1963 teen-pop anthem It’s My Party, rush-released to beat a version of the same song Phil Spector had recorded with the Crystals.
On the one hand, you could view that record’s adolescent soap opera as being at odds with the sophisticated and complex music Jones had released on his own recent albums. These included The Quintessence – home to an astonishing, breakneck take on Thelonious Monk’s Straight, No Chaser – and Big Band Bossa Nova, which opened with Jones’s evergreen composition Soul Bossa Nova, best known today as the theme to the Austin Powers films.
On the other, perhaps you could tell they were the work of the same man: after all, beneath the campy melodrama of the lyrics, there was a distinct Latin-American flavour to the rhythm of It’s My Party, an elegance to its punchy horn arrangement. Besides, nobody else in music was shifting with apparent ease between recording chart-topping teen pop singles, arranging and conducting the Count Basie Orchestra for a collaborative album with Frank Sinatra (1964’s It Might As Well Be Swing), releasing progressive jazz albums and pursing a parallel career as a film composer
We could tell his story just with the posthumous tributes, but let’s go back a bit in time to take a look and have a listen to both Jones and those who knew him best.
Quincy Jones relaxes at his Los Angeles music studio on Oct. 16, 1974.
In October 1990, Roger Ebert reviewed the documentary “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones,” which he gave 3.5 stars (out of four).
… we learn in this film that the private Quincy Jones has not always been as happy as his smiling public image on talk shows and the Grammys. "Listen Up" is an extraordinarily frank story of a life that has also contained broken marriages, children who harbor some resentments, and health problems including two harrowing brain surgeries and a nervous breakdown. The odds against both surgeries were 100-to-1. Jones mentions them in the film, and the scar of one of them is still slightly visible above his right temple.
[...]
"Listen Up" is stronger because of its honesty. This isn't a once-over-lightly PR job, but a movie about the peaks and valleys of a man's life. Director Ellen Weissbrod and producer Courtney Sale Ross have looked unblinkingly at the sad as well as the happy times, and some of the most poignant moments in the movie come as Jolie Jones, Quincy's oldest daughter, talks quietly about her father.
There are many other witnesses as well. People who never talk for documentaries talk for this one: Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, the shy Michael Jackson (whose interview takes place partly in darkness).
Here’s the trailer:
In 2008, the BBC produced “Quincy Jones: The Many Lives of Q.” The hour-long documentary is available online.
In 2018, Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones—Jones’ younger daughter with third wife Peggy Lipton—directed the documentary “QUINCY” for Netflix, which went on to win a 2019 Grammy for Best Music Film.
Here’s the trailer:
As Netflix notes:
Beyond his own acclaim as a trumpeter, producer, conductor, composer and arranger, Quincy Jones’ inimitable gift to discover the biggest talents of the past half of the century is unprecedented. He has shaped the pop culture landscape for 70 years, mentoring and cultivating the careers of young talents, from Lesley Gore and Michael Jackson to Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith. Directed by Rashida Jones (Angie Tribeca and Hot Girls Wanted) and Alan Hicks (Keep On Keepin’ On), QUINCY seamlessly threads personal vérité moments with private archival footage to reveal a legendary life like no other. Featuring the all-new original song "Keep Reachin'" by Quincy Jones, Mark Ronson, and Chaka Khan.
For an absorbing look into Jones’ life, in his own words, read his 2001 autobiography, “Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum in January 2002:
The Ride of His Life
The book was written mostly by Quincy, of course. But it's got whole chapters written by people who've known him throughout the years. His old friend Ray Charles. His ex-wives Jeri Caldwell-Jones and Peggy Lipton. His brother Lloyd Jones. His daughters Kidada Jones and Rashida Jones and his son Quincy Jones III, sometimes called Snoopy. His friend, rapper Melle Mel. And others. These people know Quincy. They love him. They respect him. They brought him magic and they were given magic in return. They are members of his Big Band.
You wouldn't think someone so insanely talented in music would be able to write so well. I mean, the man is a songwriter, an arranger, an orchestrator, a movie score composer, a music producer, a film producer. Where the hell does he get off being able to write, too? It's infuriating. But write he does.
It gets under your skin, his way with words. He somehow paints whole scenes, critical scenes, with relatively few words, everything pared down, cut way back to its essence. His childhood in Chicago and Seattle. His instantaneous, life-altering, falling-in-love with music in his early teens. His first road trips as a performer, then later as bandleader. His first European tour. His numerous liaisons with women. His wives. His children. His successes and his rare failures. Somehow, Quincy Jones paints all of this in strokes both broad and intricate and, for the life of you, you won't be able to figure out how he does it. But it enthralls.
Reading Jones’ autobiography, I was shaken by his childhood memories of being sent to Kentucky to live with his grandmother, a former enslaved woman, where he and his brother had to bag rats to eat for dinner because there was so very little food. His hard-working carpenter father, and brilliant mother, who was institutionalized for schizophrenia, were key factors in his early life that drove him to escape with music—and ultimately to leave home, underage, for the music world.
Here’s a segment, via the Library of Congress:
I remember the cold. It was a stinging, backbreaking, bone-chilling Kentucky-winter cold, the kind of cold that makes you feel like you're freezing from the inside out, the kind of cold that makes you feel like you'll never be warm again. I had no music in me then, just sounds, the shrill noise the back door made when it creaked open, the funny grunts my little brother Lloyd made while we slept together, the tight, muffled squeals that rats made when the rat traps snapped them in half. My grandmother did not believe in wasting anything. She had nothing to waste. She cooked whatever she could get her hands on. Mustard greens, okra, possum, chickens, and rats, and me and Lloyd ate them all. We ate the fried rats because we were nine and seven years old and we did what we were told. We ate them because my grandma could cook them well. But most of all, we ate them because that's all there was to eat.
My mother had gone away sick one day and she never came back. That's all we knew. That's all my father told us. "She's gone away sick and she'll be back soon," was what he said, but "soon" turned into months and years, so the two of us had left Chicago and gone to Louisville to stay with Grandma. Laying in bed at night in my grandma's house, I could remember the night before my mother left us. We were downstairs in the living room back home in South Side Chicago during the Depression, Lloyd and Daddy and me, and we heard a crash and the noise of a window breaking, and we ran upstairs and I felt the rush of cold air and saw my mother at the broken window looking out into the street. She was wearing only a housedress, standing in the freezing nighttime air, the snow blowing in on her face, and she was singing, "Ohh, ohh, ohh, ohh--oh, somebody touched me and it must have been the hand of the Lord."
It’s impossible to include more than a smidgen of Jones’ work here. Take a look at his thousands of credits on Discogs, and you’ll understand why. Ao I’m simply going to offer several of my personal favorites, and I encourage you to join me in the comments to share yours.
Quincy Jones cradles his Grammy awards including the album of the year award, for his eclectic album "Back on the Block" during the 33rd annual Grammy Awards in February 1991/
In 1974, Jones released the album “Body Heat,” with the tune “Everything Must Change,” featuring vocals from the songwriter Bernard Ighner, remains unforgettable. It’s since been covered by hundreds of artists.
It is a beautiful and haunting ballad.
I’m a fan of the original “Moody’s Mood for Love” written by Eddie Jefferson, and Jones’ arrangement here, featuring Brian McKnight, Rachelle Ferrell, Take 6, and James Moody is a delight.
Reviewer Richard S. Ginell at AllMusic describes the title song “Gula Matari,” from the album of the same name, as “a dramatic tone poem that ebbs and flows masterfully over its 13-minute length.”
“We’ve made great strides as people of color in this business and in the world, but there’s still a lot of work to do. My album ‘Gula Matari’ means ‘breakers of rocks’ in Zulu, that is what we have to continue to do,” Jones told Variety in 2019.
Meet me in the comments for even more magic from Quincy Jones—and I look forward to hearing your favorites.
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