ReutersQuincy Jones
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 10:20
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Petra Steenhoff
editor Online
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Petra Steenhoff
editor Online
The oeuvre of musician, composer and producer <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/michael-jackson-the-secrets-of-the-thriller-album-news-michael-jackson/" title="Michael Jackson: the secrets of the "Thriller" album – News Michael Jackson”>Quincy Jones, who died yesterday at the age of 91, is extensive and versatile. Jones started out as a jazz musician and worked with giants such as Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra.
He released several albums with his own band, including: Big Band Bossa Nova with the number Soul Bossa Nova is perhaps the best known. It was used in all, among other things Austin Powers-films.
Sports fans in the Netherlands know his work from the radio program NOS Along the Linewhich has been the case for many decades Chump Change used as starting tune.
He became much better known than for his own work as an arranger and producer for stars such as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Michael Jackson.
Quincy Jones is the most nominated artist for a Grammy Award in history. He was nominated 80 times over a period of six decades and earned 28 of those nominations.
Like many brilliant musicians, Jones did not have an easy childhood. He was born on the South Side of Chicago, the poor part of the city. His mother was a highly educated woman who suffered from schizophrenia. When Jones was 7 years old, she was taken from her home in a straitjacket and taken to an institution. This experience made a deep impression on the young musical talent.
His father worked as a carpenter for Chicago’s most notorious black gangsters, the Jones boys. And young Quincy also sometimes did odd jobs for them.
Dead bodies and machine guns are what I remember most about my childhood in Chicago.
Quincy Jones
“Bodies and machine guns, that’s what I remember most about my childhood in Chicago. There were gangsters all around us, and I wanted to become one myself,” he said in a 2010 interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph.
When he came across a piano during a burglary at the age of 10, he chose a different path in life. “As soon as I touched the keys, I knew with every fiber, ‘This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.’ From that day on, I no longer wanted to be a gangster, but a musician.”
Not long after, the family moved to Seattle, his father having since remarried. There he took trumpet lessons and sang in a gospel choir. He also met the blind jazz musician Ray Charles, who was two years his senior, with whom he became good friends and performed regularly.
Trumpeter
He received a scholarship to study at Seattle University and a year later left for Boston where he studied music at the Berklee College of Music. But he gave up his studies when he was offered to join jazz musician and bandleader Lionel Hampton as a trumpet player on a European tour.
During this tour he discovered that he was good at arranging music. By the mid-1950s, his reputation as an arranger had grown to such an extent that he was sought after by such celebrated jazz musicians as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Sarah Vaughan.
Frank was like a brother to me. I still wear his ring.
Quincy Jones
In 1957 he left for Paris where he studied with music teacher Nadia Boulanger and composer Olivier Messiaen. To pay for his studies, he worked at the French record label Barclay Disques and accompanied artists such as Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel.
Passport
He returned to America in the early 1960s, where he became the first black man to hold a top position at the Mercury record label. It was also the beginning of his collaboration with Frank Sinatra that lasted until the singer’s death in 1998.
“Frank was like a brother to me,” Jones said in 2013 in an interview. “I still wear his ring. His Sicilian family crest is on it. When I go there I don’t even have to show my passport.”
Together they made the album At the Sandwith the number on it Fly me to the Moon, the first song heard in space.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin played it when he flew to the moon in 1969. That inspired Jones to write the album Walking in Space which in turn was taken into space by astronaut Leland Melvin in 2007.
Leave your ego at home.
Quincy Jones
Although he initially limited himself to jazz, Q, as he was now called by most artists, began to expand his field of work to include film music and pop. He wrote the music for about 50 films, including In Cold Blood, The Italian Job in The Color Purple. He also wrote music for television series such as The Bill Cosby Show in Roots.
Lawsuit over Thriller
He achieved the greatest successes in his career with Michael Jackson, whom he met through the film The Wiz on which they both collaborated, Jackson as an actor, Jones as a composer. He produced Off the WallMichael Jackson’s successful solo debut, which they made together in 1982 Thrillerwhich still ranks as the best-selling album of all time. Also with Jackson’s third solo album, which also sold very well Bad, he took care of the production.
After Jackson’s death, he had a dispute with his heirs over the royalties for Jackson’s posthumously released records, including the film music of This is It and the reissue of Bad.
According to Jones, those songs were deliberately re-edited so he didn’t have to be paid for them. In 2017, the judge ruled that Jones was indeed still owed more than 9 million dollars from the Jackson heirs.
In 1985, Quincy Jones was the driving force behind the song together with Lionel Ritchie We are the World, in which well-known American artists participated to raise money for the victims of the famine in Ethiopia.
To encourage them to work together, he had hung a sign on the door to the studio that read: “Leave your ego at home.”
Jones was involved in many charities. In the 1960s he supported Martin Luther King, the pastor who stood up for the civil rights of the black population in America. He was one of the founders of The Institute for Black American Music and with The Quincy Jones Workshops in of Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation he helped young people who wanted to pursue a music education.
In 2018, a documentary about his life, made by his daughter Rashida Jones, was released on Netflix. Quincy delves deeply into Jones’ private life and his musical achievements. The documentary was received with great praise.
