The world lost legendary multi-disciplinary musical powerhouse Quincy Jones yesterday. He was 91. Here’s his vision in his own words at different stages of his life and career.
Jones’ career is a litany of firsts for African-Americans and of career achievements no one of any color could match. That includes some 80 Grammy nominations and 28 wins. But it’s worth reflecting on what he was struggling against and how close the USA’s chattel slavery system was to his generation. His grandmother was an ex-slave from my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, a city which has in turn been spotlighted by the BLM movement for institutional anti-Black racism in its police force. His grandmother was born on a Kentucky plantation. He was born on the south side of Chicago, a child of the Great Migration in the USA. He could trace ancestry both to central Africa – and, reminding us of how twisted US history can be, to white Confederates.
Quincy Jones himself was reflective and articulate on all these legacies of racism – anti-Black and otherwise. There’s this extended interview for the American Academy of Achievement, a DC-based nonprofit. He contrasts the progressive, mixed-race education he got at Garfield High School – which had “everything, Filipino, Jewish, black, Chinese, everything, all together” – with the landscape he discovered as he toured as a 20-year old touring with Lionel Hampton:
It gave you some sense of perspective on past, present, and future. It took the myopic conflict between just black and white in the United States and put it on another level because you saw the turmoil between the Armenians and the Turks, and the Cypriots and the Greeks, and the Swedes and the Danes, and the Koreans and the Japanese. Everybody had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these conflicts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.
For any of us working in production from the side of technology, Jones’ sprawling resume is a great reminder of the importance of diverse musical experiences. Apart from the Lionel Hampton gig, Jones was an arranger and conductor for Count Basie and worked with everyone from Ray Charles to Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington. So when you think “Thriller” alongside Quincy Jones, you should absolutely dig into where that musical experience came from. Quincy Jones could conduct, he could arrange, he could compose, and he learned the hard way how to work with anyone.
There’s this fantastic interview from PBS’ Jump Street, featuring a young Oscar Brown, Jr. It reveals a lot of what Quincy saw as valuable in a “consummate musician.”
“I love that concept … the man has flexibility, he has chops, he has the musicianship and everything. Which he earned as a musician who went through the streets, wherever you want to go. In a nutshell … here’s a man that didn’t ask the question how do I get over; how do I get better is what he said. And better and better and better. And that’s the school I came from.”
In 2014, he sat down with Jian Ghomeshi and ran through the full history you might want – yes, including Thriller, Bad, and “We are the World.”
He also sums up his motto – which applied to his work as a shoe shiner (literally) as well as producer. “Really giving everything you got to everything. Every genre you do – our motto back then was, empty the cup, and it comes back … twist as full. Everything you do – shining shoes or whatever, just do it the best that you can do.”
I hate to link Spotify, but it’s beautiful how he arrives at releasing negativity at age 85. And he quotes Nadia Boulanger: “your music will never be more or less than you are a human being.”
Back to the Jump Street bit to close:
“Every day is a brand new day. It’s what you call present time. It’s got nothing to do with what happened yesterday. It’s what’s happening right now.”
Bonus: Quincy plus Herbie plus a Fairlight – “This is why Quincy and I can get together, and no matter what kind of instrumental sounds we have, we use them according to how we feel.”