Quincy Jones

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A resume for Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born 1933), would read like a run-on sentence with too many hyphens: musician-composer-arranger-producer-film and television executive, just to name a few. He propelled not only his own stardom, but that of Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, James Ingram, Donna Summer - again, just to name a few. For more than four decades, Jones left a permanent, unique mark on the world of entertainment.

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr., was born on the south side of Chicago on March 14, 1933. His parents divorced soon after his younger brother, Lloyd, was born, and the Jones boys were raised by their father, a carpenter, and his new wife. She had three children of her own, and three more with Quincy Jones, Sr. His birth mother, Sarah Jones, was in and out of mental health facilities, and it wasn't until his adult life that Quincy was able to enjoy a close relationship with her.

When Jones was 10 years old his family moved to Bremerton, Washington. The Seattle suburb was alive with World War II sailors on their way to the Pacific; the nightlife and its music were the backdrop for Quincy's early teens. Three years later he met a 15-year-old musician named Ray Charles. The two formed a combo and played in local clubs and weddings, and soon Jones was composing and arranging for the group. After high school and a scholarship at Boston's Berklee College of Music, Quincy was introduced to the life of a musician on the road, a road which started in New York and went around the world. He toured with Dizzy Gillespie in 1956, Lionel Hampton in 1957, and then made his base in Paris. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, was musical director at Barclay Disques, wrote for Harry Arnold's Swedish All-Stars in Stockholm, and directed the music for Harold Arlen's production "Free and Easy," which toured Europe for three months, ending in early 1960.

After a financially unsuccessful tour of the United States with a big band made up of 18 musicians from "Free and Easy," Jones served as musical director at Mercury Records in New York. He became the first African American executive in a white-owned record company in 1964 when he was promoted to vice-president at Mercury. At the company he produced albums, sat in on recording sessions with the orchestra, and wrote arrangements for artists at Mercury as well as other labels. Jones wrote for Sammy Davis, Jr., Andy Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, and Aretha Franklin, as well as arranged and conducted It Might As Well Be Swing, an album featuring Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie Band.

In 1969 Jones signed a contract as a recording artist with Herb Alpert's A&M Records, and Quincy's first album with that label, Walking in Space, won a Grammy for best jazz instrumental album of 1969. Quincy Jones was later nominated for 67 Grammys, and had won 25 going into 1997.

His first foray into Hollywood - another crossing of a racial barrier - came when he composed the score for The Pawnbroker, a 1965 film by Sidney Lumet. Two films released in 1967 featured music by Jones: In Cold Blood and In the Heat of the Night. Both scores won enough votes to be nominated for Academy Awards. Jones was advised not to "compete with himself," so he went with In Cold Blood and it was the other film that ended up winning the Oscars. It didn't stop him from going on to write the music for over 52 films.

Television, as well, has featured the music of Quincy Jones, starting in 1971 with theme songs for "Ironside," "Sanford and Son," and "The Bill Cosby Show" (the first one). In 1973 Jones co-produced "Duke Ellington, We Love You Madly," a special for CBS, featuring Peggy Lee, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, and a 48-piece orchestra conducted by Jones. The special was a project of the Institute for Black American Music, a foundation formed by Jones, Isaac Hayes, Roberta Flack, and other musicians with the intention of promoting recognition of the African American contribution to American music. Jones also wrote the score for the widely acclaimed 1977 television mini-series "Roots."

Burned out from producing film score after film score, Jones stopped working for Hollywood in 1973 to explore his own pop music career as a vocalist. His singing debut was with Valerie Simpson on an album called You've Got It Bad, Girl. The title song from the album stayed at the top of the charts for most of the summer of 1973. Jones's next album was an even bigger hit. Body Heat, released in the summer of 1974, contained the hit songs "Soul Saga," "Everything Must Change," and "If I Ever Lose This Heaven." The album remained within the top five on the charts for over six months and sold over a million copies.

In 1974 Jones suffered two aneurysms two months apart. He nearly died, but after a six-month recuperation he was back at work, touring and recording with a 15-member band. Mellow Madness was the first album by the new band, which included songs by George and Louis Johnson, Otis Smith, and Stevie Wonder ("My Cherie Amour").

His 1980 album, The Dude, featured a host of talent directed by Jones, earned 12 Grammy nominations, and won five awards. At the same time The Dudewas released, Jones signed a deal with Warner Brothers Records creating his own label, Quest. It took Jones almost ten years to make his next album, Back on the Block. During that time he was focused on producing hit albums for other artists such as Donna Summer, Frank Sinatra, and James Ingram. In 1983 Michael Jackson recorded a Quincy Jones production, and at 40 million copies Thriller is still the best-selling album of all time. Quincy Jones also has the best-selling single of all time to his credit: the all-star choir on "We Are the World." Another triumph for Jones in the mid-1980s was his production of The Color Purple, the film adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, which featured the Oscar-nominated, debut film performance of Oprah Winfrey.

Jones's projects in the early 1990s included continuing work on an ongoing, mammoth project for which he'd been gathering material for decades, "The Evolution of Black Music." He was back in television, as well, with the Quincy Jones Entertainment Company producing the NBC situation comedy "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," as well as a weekly syndicated talk show hosted by Jones's friend the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Quincy Jones was also working on a film biography of the Black Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The film was a co-production with Soviet filmmakers. Quincy Jones Broadcasting and Time Warner bought a New Orleans television station, WNOL, which Jones was to oversee.

The personal life of Quincy Jones was strained because of the pace of his professional endeavors. He was married and divorced three times (his latest wife was actress Peggy Lipton), and his six children have only recently been able to spend time with and come to know their father. The 1990 documentary "Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones," produced by Courtney Sale Ross, contains poignant scenes in which Quincy confronts his difficult childhood, his mentally ill mother, and his strained past with his children. The film also contains testimonials from Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Stephen Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, Oprah Winfrey, Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine, and others. They talk about an obsessed genius, a workaholic, and a man with a creative brilliance that has touched virtually every facet of popular entertainment since 1950.

In 1993 Jones announced that he was starting a magazine called Vibe. The magazine has been well received as an African American music journal. The album Jones released in 1995 was Q's Jook Joint. The album combined the talents of many of Quincy Jones's counterparts such as Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Sonny Bono and many others. The album was a celebration of his 50 years within the music industry. In 1996 Jones released an instrumental album entitled Cocktail Mix.

Further Reading

Two excellent in-depth and insightful interviews with Quincy Jones are in The New York Times Magazine (November 18, 1990) and The Washington Post Style section (October 6, 1990); Jones is the cover story of the October 22, 1990, issue of Jet.

music producer; composer; music arranger and orchestrator; executive

Personal Information

Born Quincy Delight Jones, on March 14, 1933, in Chicago, IL; son of Quincy Delight (a carpenter) and Sarah Jones; married four times (third wife was actress Peggy Lipton); children: (first marriage) Jolie, (second marriage) Martina-Lisa, 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.

Career

Played trumpet in Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands; wrote musical arrangements for Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn and others; music director and producer, Barchlay Disques, Paris, 1956-60; Mercury Records, music director, 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 & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969; The Wiz, 1978; The Color Purple, 1994; scored television series: Ironside; 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 Vibe, 1993; launched multimedia joint venture QDE, 1993.

Life's Work

An Essence magazine article once aptly referred to Quincy Jones as a "synonym for genius and versatility in the entertainment industry." The multitalented Jones began his remarkable career as a jazz prodigy and eventually progressed into pop music production, film, television 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--in Chicago and raised in Seattle, 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."

"Picasso's My Man"

Jones did study formally, attending Boston's prestigious Berkeley 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 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 back 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 television series, Ironside and Sanford and Son.

Jones's forays into pop left many jazz aficionados--who had counted on Jones 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 music they want and still have everyone buy it," he asserted to Gilmore. 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 Clude] 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

Jones'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 respects; 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."

Jones'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 mood maker and the most skilled manipulator in the business." Jones himself explained that "producing is always an obsession" and summarized his approach thus: "Listeners get bored quickly. So vary the sound. Keep the ear engaged and excited."

"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 organization; "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 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."

Jones's next release, Q's Jook Joint, was in line with his ultimate goal of a historic view of black music. The album marked 50 years in the music business for Jones and in an interview with Billboard, he explained the vision for the Jook Joint. "On Back on the Block, we had Miles Davis, Dizzy, Sarah Vaughn, and Ella Fitzgerald together--and now they're all gone," he explained. "It hit me about what our roots are all about." He felt like all his idols were dying, so he focused on the idea of a presenting history in a music continuum. "You go and lay out the '40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and you'll see a song here that almost represents each period," Jones added. The success of Q's Jook Joint also contributed to the appointment of Jones as producer for the 1996 Academy Awards Show.

Q's Next Frontier

Jones ventured further outside of the music world in the late 1990s with the purchase of two television stations, WATL in Atlanta, and WNOL in New Orleans. He also created a talk show and launched a web site that featured World Music Artist. The talk show, a nightly variety program, shared the name of his magazine Vibe. Although short-lived, Vibe was hosted by comedian Chris Spencer and aired in competition with Letterman, Leno, and the Keenen Ivory Wayans Show. The show's guest list, which included Jones, read like the cover of the latest hip-hop and R&B magazines on the news stands. Before it's demise, comedian Sinbad added a little flavor to the show as host to Vibe's Hip-Hop parade of stars, but was he ultimately unable to save the struggling showcase.

By the end of the decade, Jones was cashing in on the many investments he made. He sold his share of the TV stations to the Tribune Co., sold Vibe magazine to Viacom, and Warner Music Group was buying out his label Qwest Records. Jones's final release on Qwest was 1999's From Q With Love. He continues his association with AOL Time Warner through the Quincy Jones Media Group. The entertainment projects from the media group still included television, films, and Internet projects as well as a first-look agreement with Warner Telepictures.

Jones's concern for the African continent, best expressed through his "We Are the World," efforts, still endured as well. His Listen Up Foundation sponsored trips to South Africa for teens from South Central Los Angeles. While there, the teens helped build homes for the disadvantaged and learned unforgettable lessons. Jones noted in PR Newswire, "One of the most valuable lessons that anyone can learn, that the world is a much bigger place than the communities that they live in, with much bigger problems." Jones also led an effort to encourage world leaders to help decrease the technological divide that exists in Africa during the World Economic Forum Conference of 2001.

Jones was still being honored during this time for his contributions to the music world. Harvard University established a new chair in his honor, The Quincy Jones Professorship of African-American Music, which was supported by the Time Warner Endowment in 2001. He also received the inaugural "Ted Arison Award" presented by the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts (NFAA). The award, named after the late founder of the NFAA, is presented each year to someone who has greatly influenced and contributed to the development of young American artists. According to Dr. William H. Banchs, NFAA president, Jones was an excellent choice. Branchs told PR Newswire. "His efforts to develop young talent have truly made a difference in young artists's lives." Jones was also the first U.S.-born musician to be named Commander of the French Legion of Honor.

With more than fifty years in music, the next step for Jones was the inevitable release of an autobiography. The Autobiography of Quincy Jones was published in 2001. With a career that included such a variety of mass communications and civic contribution, and working with entertainers from Billy Holiday and Charlie Parker through to Michael Jackson and beyond, Jones had many stories to tell. But through it all, Quincy Jones remained dedicated to the music. "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."

Awards

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; Presented with the inaugural "Ted Arison Award" by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA).

Works

Selected discography

• This Is How I Feel About Jazz, ABC/Paramount, 1956.
• The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones, Trip, 1959.
• Quincy's Got a Brand New Bag, Mercury, 1965.
• Sounds ... and Stuff Like That, A&M.
• I Heard That, A&M, 1969.
• Walking in Space, A&M, 1969.
• Gula Matari, A&M, 1970.
• Back on the Block, Qwest, 1991.
• Q's Juke Joint, Qwest, 1995.
• From Q, With Love, Qwest, 1999.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Billboard, July 3, 1993, pp. 8, 77; February 12, 1994, p. 77.
• Broadcasting & Cable, March 23, 1998, pp. 98.
• Business Wire, January 26, 2001, pp. 91.
• Down Beat, October 1992, p. 6; December 16, 1985, pp. 22; March 28, 1998, pp. 68; May 16, 1998, pp. 44; March 31, 2001, pp. 6.
• Essence, May 1994, pp. 110.
• Hollywood Reporter, November 10, 1999, pp. 4.
• Interview, January 1990.
• Jet, May 1, 2000, pp. 35; April 16, 2001, pp. 36.
• Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1991, pp. A-1, A-20.
• Media Week, November 29, 1999, pp. 8.
• Newsweek, August 18, 1997, pp. 66.
• PR Newswire, September 21, 1999; September 28, 2000; January 5, 2001.
• Rolling Stone, November 2, 1978, pp. 24-6; April 12, pp. 43-6.

Online

• http://www.allmusicguide.com.

— Simon Glickman and Leslie Rochelle

Jones, Quincy (Quincy Delight Jones, Jr.), 1933-, African-American musician, composer, bandleader, and music executive, b. Chicago. Jones played trumpet and sang gospel growing up, and studied briefly at Boston's Berklee College of Music (then called Schillinger House). After 1951 he played with Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie and was also an arranger for such jazz greats as Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and his childhood friend Ray Charles. Jones traveled to Paris in 1957, where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, became music director for Mercury Records' French division, and briefly (1960-61) led a big band.

Returning to New York in the early 1960s, Jones became a vice president at Mercury, breaking the executive color barrier there. He also began to compose for films and television, including scores for The Pawnbroker (1965), In Cold Blood (1967), and The Wiz (1978). He coproduced the film The Color Purple (1985) and was responsible for several TV sitcoms. From 1979 to 1987 he produced Michael Jackson's chartbuster albums, catapulting the singer to superstardom. Jones also founded (1980) a record company, established (1990) Vibe magazine, and formed (1991) Qwest Broacasting.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (2001).

Quotes:

"Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing."

Biography

Born in Chicago, African-American composer/musician Quincy Jones grew up in Seattle. An alumnus of both the Berklee School and Boston's Schillinger school of music, the 17-year-old Jones became a trumpeter/arranger for Dizzy Gillespie, then toured with Lionel Hampton before organizing his own band. From the late '50s through 1968, Jones held down executive posts at Barclay Records of Paris and Mercury Records of Hollywood. The first of Jones' jazz-dominated movie scores was for 1965's The Pawnbroker; subsequent film assignments included In Cold Blood (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Wiz (1978) and The Color Purple (1984), which he co-produced. Equally active on the small screen, Jones composed theme and incidental music for the TV series I Spy and Ironside, and in 1978 won an Emmy for his work on the monumental miniseries Roots. A pioneer in the realm of music video, Jones produced and arranged the blockbuster Michael Jackson video Thriller, which earned him one of his two dozen-plus Grammies. Jones also organized and produced the all-star benefit video We Are the World, assembling a fantastic aggregation of top recording talent with the admonition "Check your vanity at the door." In 1990, Jones was the subject of the documentary film Listen Up. Quincy Jones was honored with the Jean Hersholt humanitarian award at the 1995 Academy Awards celebration. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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For The Record...

Born Quincy Delight Jones on March 14, 1933, in Chicago, Illinois. Married three times; with six children. Joined Lionel Hampton’s band in 1951; selected by U.S. State Department to tour South America and Middle East with Dizzy Gillespie in 1956; named vice-president of Mercury Records in 1964; composed first film score for The Pawnbroker in 1965; suffered near fatal cerebral aneurysm in 1974; started Qwest records in 1980; produced top-selling Thriller LP for Michael Jackson in 1982; started multimedia corporation QDE in 1993. Addresses: Record company;—Qwest Records, 7250 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036.

Composer, arranger, musician

With nearly 50 years in the music business, Quincy Jones has proven to be one of the most multi-talented and prolific artists to ever set foot on a stage or in a recording studio. Known in jazz circles since the 1940s and every other circle since the 1980s, Jones seems to have a desire to dip his feet in every aspect of popular culture, and to great effect. A list of his top five selling singles from Billboardmagazine says it all; "Billie Jean," "Rock with You," "Beat It," "Baby Come to Me," and "We Are the World." Sometimes arrogant, always outspoken, and always with his finger on the "sell a million records" button, Quincy Jones can seem to do no wrong.

Quincy Delight Jones was born on the South Side of Chicago and lived there until the age of ten when his carpenter father and step-mother moved to Bremerton, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. One of nine other siblings, his first recollections of music were of a 12-year-old neighbor in Chicago, whose stride piano playing filtered through the walls of his family’s Chicago apartment. Jones wouldn’t touch an instrument though until two years later when living in Washington. Having tried out every instrument in his elementary school orchestra, he settled on trumpet and made amazing progress in a very short time; such prodigious progress in fact that by 14 he had written music for Count Basie and Lionel Hampton and was playing with Billie Holiday. Music had become a full time obsession for Jones. Talking with Ebony magazine’s Aldore Collier he enthused, "something just grabbed me and it was like a vice … like an addiction. And I could never get enough music of all kinds."

Around the same time of his budding music obsession, he met a local musician three years his senior. This blind singer/pianist’s name was Ray Charles and the two formed a group doing club gigs and weddings. Originally self taught, Jones learned to read and write music in Braille from Charles who lost his sight at the age of five. Jones and Charles’s combo played everywhere. From white tennis clubs to black clubs to the after-hours clubs of Seattle, their band began to receive a lot of recognition from more established jazz artists of the day. Asked to join Lionel Hampton’s band at the age of 15, Jones’s heart was broken when Hampton’s wife refused to let someone so young, who should really be in school, join his band.

Jones reluctantly went back to school, and at 18, won a scholarship to the Barclay College of Music in Boston; which he dropped out of shortly after when Hampton asked him once again to join his band. Knowing that to be a musician he would have to get real life experience, in 1951, he joined Hampton and toured the world for three

years, taking in sights and sounds that few other 19 year-olds ever get a chance to experience. Playing with brass greats Art Farmer and Clifford Brown and being tutored by Clark Terry, trumpeter for Count Basie and Duke Ellington in the 1940s and 1950s, led to Jones leaving the band in 1954 and moving to New York to be a freelance arranger. Working for the likes of Tommy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Basie, Cannonball Elderly, and Gene Crape to name just a few, Jones’s reputation was being further cemented in the jazz world.

Q Infiltrates the Establishment
In 1956, Jones was selected by the U.S. State Department to assemble a big band under the leadership of Dizzy Gillespie to tour the Middle East and South America. Jones talked of the trip to Williamsburg, Virginia’s Hall of Arts Foundation, "When they send a black band around the world as ambassadors, you know you’re going to do a lot of kamikaze work, and we did…. We went to Tehran, and Dacha, Karachi, Instanbuland Damascus… it was very exciting. Some of these people had never even seen western instruments before." After doing the State Department tour, Jones returned to the states and worked briefly as a bandleader for ABC-Paramount records. Conducting for Zoot Sims, Charles Mingus, Benny Carter, and Herbie Mann among others, many of his recordings were collected on This is How I Feel About Jazzwhich was reissued by Impulse! in 1974 and Go West, Man from 1978 also on Impulse!.

Moving house about as much as the number of artists he’d arranged and conducted for, Jones took off for Paris in 1957 to study composition and string arrangement with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen. He also worked as music director for Barclay Disques, which through its distribution of American Mercury led to his later association with the successful Chicago based independent label. Being musical director of Harold Arlen’s musical Free and Easy led to Jones leading his own band. The 18-piece band toured Europe and the United States to rave reviews, but with the band members’ families being along for the ride, the entourage collapsed under its own weight and left Jones without a band and heavily in debt. Securing a loan from Mercury Records head Irving Green, Jones in 1960 relocated once again to New York to work as musical director/A&R man for Mercury. Rising to label vice-president in 1964, Jones became a pioneer African-American executive, being the first to hold such a position in a white owned company. While happily still in the music business, Jones found that the corporate life was not for him. Talking to Billboard’s he remembered, "I was behind a desk every day… Awful ! I had to be in there at 9 o’clock, and you had to wear these Italian suits. You had to fill out expense reports and all that kind of stuff. That really made my skin crawl."

Quite possibly Jones’s biggest coup at Mercury wasn’t his executive position, but his unlikely discovery of Lesley Gore. Hearing her sing at a Manhattan hotel, Jones signed the teenager from New Jersey and went on the produce 13 hit pop singles for her including her biggest hit "It’s My Party" which was number one on Billboards top 100 in 1963 and even enjoyed two weeks at the top of the R&B charts. During his stay at Mercury, Jones also produced jazz vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine and white soul singer Timi Yuro. All the while Jones continued as a recording artist in his own right, which he had done since the early 1950’s for the Prestige and RCA labels.

Hollywood Beckons
Seemingly Jones had conquered many worlds, but one longstanding goal of his yet unaccomplished was his desire to score movies. Unable to find work scoring for the major studios, even with the blessing of Henry Mancini, the man behind the mega hit "Moon River" from Breakfasta Tiffany’s amongcountlessotherfilm scores, Jones turned to the world of independent film. Writing the score for young director Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, the story of a concentration-camp survivor, was a great success for Jones, leading to his quitting Mercury to move to Hollywood to do film scores full time. Jones has scored over 33 major motion pictures including In the Heat of the Night, InCold Blood, Boband Carol and Ted and Alice, Cactus Flower, The Getaway, and A Slender Thread. He has also worked in television, composing the themes for The Bill Cosby Show, Sanford and Son and the pioneering synthesizer based TV theme to Raymond Burr’s Ironside

However, Jones’s tireless schedule was not without its problems and he quickly learned that he was not superhuman. While his musical career had produced virtually nothing but winners, his personal life was experiencing considerable difficulties. First married at age 20, that union ended stormily after 14 years and two children, a second marriage to Swedish model Eula Andersson ended badly, and his third marriage to ex-Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton broke apart in 1986. Of his stormy love lives he was honest, telling Life magazine, "I’d been a card-carrying dog…. I did a lot of mean selfish things. God makes it so that you can be young and a dog. But old dogs are really pitiful." Jones’s health had suffered too. Always career minded, rarely slowing down and seldom sleeping, Jones had the scare of his life when in 1974 he suffered a near fatal cerebral aneurysm. Two operations and six months of recuperation had changed Jones drastically. He told Ebony in 1990, "The operation taught me how to be here, right here, right now, and live in the present time." Jones also experienced a nervous breakdown after the dissolution of his third marriage in 1986 where he sought solitary refuge on Marlon Brando’s private island for a month.

On a Qwest to Thrill
Following his sabbatical in 1974, Jones moved away from television and film music to concentrate more on his own music and most notably producing other artists’s material. Although he had produced Leslie Gore in the 1960s and done an album for Aretha Franklin in 1972, Jones was not known as well for his skill in the studio as he was for his arranging and scoring. This would change drastically when in 1978 Jones would be employed to score the film TheWiz. Not only did the score earn Jones a Grammy, it would also be the first time he would work with Michael Jackson, a collaboration that would go far beyond anyone’s expectations and establish both parties as household names. With Jones at the controls, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall was released in September, 1979 to worldwide acclaim and over six million in sales. The follow up to Off the Wall, 1982’s Thriller, went worlds further and became the best-selling album in history. With sales of over 45 million worldwide, Thriller was inescapable between the years of 1983 and 1984. Jones himself even commented on the overkill in Life stating, "If I never see another Thriller record, it’ll be too soon." Jones couldn’t have been too annoyed with the record though, as it landed him three more Grammys to add to his other ten. His production style, described in Life as featuring, "warm rhythms, lush synthesizer textures, (and) extravagant yet uncluttered string-and-horn orchestrations" also worked wonders for The Brothers Johnson, Rufus and Chaka Khan, George Benson, Patti Austin, and Lena Home. He also produced Frank Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady album in 1984, working again with the crooner to make what many consider to be Sinatra’s finest moments on the 1996 Sinatra and Basie album.

Soundtracks, Sitcoms, and Soul Train
While Jones kept very active producing a multitude of artists, he also found time to start his own record label, Qwest, in 1980. With a roster including many of the artists that he himself produced, the label also boasted a diverse array of talent that moved from R&B crooner James Ingram to British pop stars New Order. Another Qwest release was the soundtrack to the film The Color Purple, an adaptation of the Alice Walker novel, which Jones produced with Steven Spielberg directing. Increasingly Jones’s interests turned towards his various business ventures. Possibly the biggest venture Jones had undertaken was his merger with media mogul David Salzmen to form QDE, whose projects have included Vibe magazine which was started in 1993 as a journai of "urban life" and President Bill Clinton’s televised inaugural party in 1992. He also reentered television in the early 1990s, producing such shows as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In The House, Mad TV, and Vibe TV. As well as producing television shows, Jones, with Hall of Fame football player Willie Davis, television producer and ex-Soul Train host Don Cornelius, and talk show host Geraldo Rivera, formed Qwest Broadcasting which owned television stations in Atlanta and New Orleans, making it one of the largest minority owned broadcasting companies in the United States.

More than just a business man, Jones has also been an active supporter of social issues including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Operation Breadbasket and Rev. Jesse Jackson’s People United to Save Humanity. He has also done much to further appreciation of African-American culture through his co-founding of the annual Black Arts Festival in Chicago and through extensive donations to establish a national library of African-American art and music. Certainly his most well-known humanitarian effort has been his instrumental part in the USA for Africa project in 1984, the proceeds of which were to go to help feed the hungry in Africa. "We Are The World," the single released from the sessions, went on to be one of the biggest selling singles ever and brought together on record for the first time artists ranging from Michael Jackson to Bob Dylan to Kenny Rogers.

Holding several honorary doctorate degrees, one Emmy award, seven Academy Award nominations, and 26 Grammy awards among many others, Quincy Jones has succeeded in virtually everything he’s tried. By his sixties he showed no signs of slowing down, looking instead towards the future with his company QDE. By the late 1990s he had started exploring the realm of multimedia, with his first entry in the field being the Q’s Juke Joint CD-ROM which like his album of the same name, explored the history of African-American music. Talking of his situation to Janet Stilson in Channels, Jones said, "We’re positioned to do every dream I’ve ever had."

Selected discography

Albums
The Birth of the Band, Mercury, 1959.
The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones, Mercury, 1960.
Newport, Mercury, 1961.
I Dig Dancers, Mercury, 1961.
Quintessence, Impulse!, 1961.
Brand New Bag, Mercury, 1963.
Hip Hits, Mercury, 1963.
Big Band Bossa Nova, Mercury, 1963.
Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini, Mercury, 1964.
Golden Boy, Mercury, 1964.
Quincy Jones Plays for Pussycats, Mercury, 1965.
Walking In Space, A&M, 1969.
Gula Matari, A&M, 1970.
Smackwater Jack, A&M, 1971.
You’ve Got it Bad, Girl, A&M, 1973.
Body Heat, A&M, 1974.
This is How I Feel about Jazz, Impulse!, 1974
Mode, Impulse!, 1974.
Mellow Madness, A&M, 1975.
I Heard That, A&M, 1976.
Roots, A&M, 1978.
Sounds… And Stuff Like That, A&M, 1978.
Go West, Man, Impulse!, 1978.
The Dude, A&M, 1981.
Back on the Block, Qwest, 1989.
Miles Davis & Quincy Jones Live At Montreaux, Reprise, 1993.
Q’s Jook Joint, Qwest, 1995.

Soundtrack recordings
The Pawnbroker, Mercury, 1965.
Mirage, Mercury, 1965.
Walk, Don’t Run, Mainstream, 1966.
The Slender Thread, Mercury, 1966.
Enter Laughing, Liberty, 1967.
In the Heat of the Night, United Artists, 1967.
In Cold Blood, Colgems, 1967.
For the Love of Ivy, ABC, 1968.
Mackenna’s Gold, RCA, 1969.
The Italian Job, Paramount, 1969.
The Lost Man, UNI, 1969.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Bell, 1969.
John and Mary, A&M, 1969.
The Out of Towners, United Artists, 1970.
Cactus Flower, Bell, 1970.
They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, United Artists, 1970.
Dollars, Reprise, 1971.
Man and Boy, Sussex, 1971.
The Hot Rock, Prophesy, 1972.
Come Back Charleston Blue, Ateo, 1972.
For The Love of Ivy, ABC, 1973.
The Wiz, MCA, 1978.
The Color Purple, Qwest, 1985.
Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones, Qwest, 1990.

Sources
Billboard, May 28, 1994; December 16, 1995.
Black Enterprise, February 1995; June 1996.
Channels, June 25, 1990.
Down Beat, April 1985; July 1996.
Ebony, April 1990; November 1995.
Interview, November 1995.
Jet, January 14, 1985; May 6, 1985; September 8, 1986; January 8, 1990; August 6, 1990; November 19, 1990; March 11, 1991; April 22, 1991; November 13, 1995.
Life, December 1984.
Newsweek, April 10, 1995.
People, October 15, 1990; March 18, 1996; May 6, 1996.
Rolling Stone, April 12, 1984; June 16, 1994.
Stereo Review, June 1990.
Vanity Fair, July 1996.

• Genres: Jazz

Biography

In a musical career that has spanned six decades, Quincy Jones has earned his reputation as a renaissance man of American music. Jones has distinguished himself as a bandleader, a solo artist, a sideman, a songwriter, a producer, an arranger, a film composer, and a record label executive, and outside of music, he's also written books, produced major motion pictures, and helped create television series. And a quick look at a few of the artists Jones has worked with suggests the remarkable diversity of his career -- Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Lesley Gore, Michael Jackson, Peggy Lee, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, and Aretha Franklin.

Jones was born in Chicago, IL, on March 14, 1933. When he was still a youngster, his family moved to Seattle, WA, and he soon developed an interest in music. In his early teens, Jones began learning the trumpet, and started singing with a local gospel group. By the time he graduated from high school in 1950, Jones had displayed enough promise to win a scholarship to Boston-based music school Schillinger House (which later became known as the Berklee School of Music). After a year at Schillinger, Jones relocated to New York City, where he found work as an arranger, writing charts for Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley, Tommy Dorsey, and Dinah Washington, among others. In 1953, Jones scored his first big break as a performer; he was added to the brass section of Lionel Hampton's orchestra, where he found himself playing alongside jazz legends Art Farmer and Clifford Brown. Three years later, Dizzy Gillespie tapped Jones to play in his band, and later in 1956, when Gillespie was invited to put together a big band of outstanding international musicians, Diz chose Quincy to lead the ensemble. Jones also released his first album under his own name that year, a set for ABC-Paramount appropriately entitled This Is How I Feel About Jazz.

In 1957, Jones moved to Paris in order to study with Nadia Boulanger, an expatriate American composer with a stellar track record in educating composers and bandleaders. During his sojourn in France, Jones took a job with the French record label Barclay, where he produced and arranged sessions for Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, as well as traveling American artists, including Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan. Jones' work for Barclay impressed the management at Mercury Records, a American label affiliated with the French imprint, and in 1961, he was named a vice president for Mercury, the first time an African-American had been hired as an upper-level executive by a major U.S. recording company. Jones scored one of his first major pop successes when he produced and arranged "It's My Party" for teenage vocalist Lesley Gore, which marked his first significant step away from jazz into the larger world of popular music. (Jones also freelanced for other labels on the side, including arranging a number of memorable Atlantic sides for Ray Charles.) In 1963, Jones began exploring what would become a fruitful medium for him when he composed his first film score for Sidney Lumet's controversial drama The Pawnbroker; he would go on to write music for 33 feature films, including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and The Getaway. In 1964, Jones' work with Count Basie led him to arrange and conduct sessions for Frank Sinatra's album It Might as Well Be Swing, recorded in collaboration with Basie and his orchestra; he also worked with Sinatra and Basie again as an arranger for the award-winning Sinatra at the Sands set, and would produce and arrange one of Sinatra's last albums, L.A. Is My Lady, in 1984.

While Jones maintained a busy schedule as a composer, producer, and arranger through the 1960s, he also re-emerged as a recording artist in 1969 with the album Walking in Space, which found Jones recasting his big-band influences within the framework of the budding fusion movement and the influences of contemporary rock, pop, and R&B sounds. The album was a commercial and critical success, and kick started Jones' career as a recording artist. At the same time, he began working more closely with contemporary pop artists, producing sessions for Aretha Franklin and arranging strings for Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon, and while Jones continued to work with jazz artists, many hard-and-fast jazz fans began to accuse Jones of turning his back on the genre, though Jones always contended his greatest allegiance was to African-American musical culture rather than any specific style. (Jones did, however, make one major jazz gesture in 1991, when he persuaded Miles Davis to revisit the classic Gil Evans arrangements from Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, and Porgy and Bess for that year's Montreux Jazz Festival; Jones coordinated the concert and led the orchestra, and it proved to be one of the last major events for the ailing Davis, who passed on a few months later.)

In 1974, Jones suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm, and while he made a full recovery, he also made a decision to cut back on his schedule to spend more time with his family. While Jones may have had fewer projects on his plate in the late '70s and early '80s, they tended to be higher profile from this point on; he produced major chart hits for the Brothers Johnson and Rufus & Chaka Khan, and his own albums grew into all-star productions in which Jones orchestrated top players and singers in elaborate pop-R&B confections on sets like Body Heat, Sounds...And Stuff Like That!!, and The Dude. Jones' biggest mainstream success, however, came with his work with Michael Jackson; Jones produced his breakout solo album, Off the Wall, in 1979, and in 1982 they teamed up again for Thriller, which went on to become the biggest-selling album of all time. Jones was also on hand for Thriller's follow-up, 1987's Bad, and the celebrated USA for Africa session which produced the benefit single "We Are the World" (written by Jackson and Lionel Richie), and he produced a rare album in which Jackson narrated the story of the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Having risen to the heights of the recording industry, in 1985 Jones moved from scoring films to producing them; his first screen project was the screen adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Whoopi Goldberg. In 1991 he moved into television production with the situation comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which gave Will Smith his first starring role. Jones' production company also launched several other successful shows, including In the House and Mad TV. He also produced a massive concert to help commemorate the 1993 inauguration of president Bill Clinton, and at the 1995 Academy Awards won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a prize that doubtless found its place beside Quincy's 26 Grammy awards. In 1996 Jones performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival to celebrate his 50th anniversary in the music business. The concert was captured on video and released as a DVD by Eagle Rock. Jones spent the rest of the '90s and first decade of the new century concentrating on his music publishing business and being an "unofficial" cultural ambassador for the United States.

In 2004 he helped to launch the We Are the Future (WAF) project, benefiting children in conflict-inhibited situations all over the globe. The program is the result of a strategic partnership between the Glocal Forum, the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, and Hani Masri, with the support of the World Bank, UN agencies, and corporations. Jones personally lobbied President Barack Obama to create a secretary of the arts position in his cabinet. He also spent considerable time in Brazil, and in 2009 announced his plans for a film about Carnival and some of the nation's musicians and producers. In 2010 Jones released Q: Soul Bossa Nostra through his Qwest imprint, his first album in 15 years. The set featured appearances by popular vocalists Amy Winehouse, Usher, Tyrese, Tevin Campbell, and LL Cool J, among others. Ludacris and Naturally 7 reprised Jones' 1962 hit "Soul Bossa Nova"; the album's lead single/video was a cover of "Strawberry Letter 23" with lead vocals from Akon. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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