He made stars like Frank Sinatra or Michael Jackson great – and became a legend himself. At 90, Quincy Jones can look back on a remarkable life's work.
This man wrote music history: Quincy Jones
Whether jazz, pop or film music: what multi-talent Quincy Jones tackled became a success. He has won 28 Grammys in the course of his career and has been nominated a total of 80 times. It was he who pulled the strings behind the scenes of Michael Jackson's “Thriller”, the charity hit “We Are the World” or the cult series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. For more than six decades he shaped the music business, producing albums by Ray Charles, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Dizzy Gillespie or Charles Aznavour and U2 – to name just a few. He was the first African American to serve as a vice president on the executive floor of a major record label. He shook hands with the music greats of this world as well as with the Pope and Nelson Mandela. In short: Quincy Jones has probably achieved everything in life that he ever dreamed of.
Growing up in the ghetto
His life began anything but promising. His story sounds a bit like the fulfillment of the American dream: A boy from a poor family makes it to the top with a lot of hard work – in his case the Olympus of musicians.
Quincy Jones with his big band around 1960
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago. The US is on the ground, battered by the economic depression. It's the time of mafia boss Al Capone. The boy grows up in the notorious ghetto on the city's South Side. He always has a knife in his pocket – just in case – and only wants one thing: to become a gangster. “You want to be what you know, and we knew that,” he says in the 2018 film about his life. And also that he never saw a white man until he was eleven. Actually, his criminal career is inevitable, but then one day Quincy breaks into a US Army veterans' home. There is a piano in the corner and the boy strums the instrument for fun. It's the beginning of a great love. He felt “an irrepressible desire to do something like that”.
Dizzy Gillespie's “bad dude”
And so it is that Quincy Jones becomes a musician. His father divorced his schizophrenic mother and he moved to Seattle with the family. There Quincy meets Ray Charles, who is two years older than him, and they become best friends.
As a 14-year-old, Quincy was already playing in various bands with his friend, in the afternoon dance music in the white tennis clubs, at night bepop in the city's jazz bars. At 19, Quincy is a trumpeter in the orchestra of Lionel Hampton, one of the hottest entertainers of the 1950s. None other than jazz icon Dizzy Gillespie certifies Quincy to be a “bad dude”, a musician who knows all the tricks. From the beginning he tried to compose and arrange as well; he shares the stage with Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday and eagerly learns from his bandmates.
In 1956 Dizzy Gillespie hired him as orchestra leader and took him on tour, in the same year Jones worked in New York on his first album “This is how I feel about Jazz”.
Despite the initial successes, Quincy Jones went to Europe because jazz was still considered inferior black music in his homeland. He's lucky, he gets a place at university: in Paris, the greats in their field, Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, teach him the art of composing and arranging. Later, this knowledge will enable him to conquer musical areas that have long been closed to black musicians.
Successful in every category
In 1964, Quincy Jones became Vice President at Mercury, one of the leading record labels at the time. He is the first African American in such a position. In the same year he produces the first album for Frank Sinatra. In 1969, the crew of the Apollo 11 heard Jones' version of “Fly Me To The Moon” during their moon landing, as did all those who sat spellbound in front of the television worldwide. Jones also writes film scores, including successful theme songs for “Roots” and “The Color Purple”.
Miles Davis (left) and Quincy Jones in 1991 at the Jazz.Festival in Montreux – where Jones is a regular guest was
His stylistically confident flair for the most diverse musical styles from bossa nova to soul and funk make him a sought-after producer and conductor.
The most successful record in the world
In 1974, Jones suffered a brain hemorrhage. He has to give up playing the trumpet, throws himself more into his work as a producer and founds his own label, “Quest Records”. When he takes former child star Michael Jackson under his wing, Jones finally rises to the Olympus of the music world: The second jointly produced album “Thriller” (1982) becomes the best-selling record of all time with more than 66 million copies.
Successful duo Jones and Jackson
Three years later, under Jones' leadership, the song “We are the World” was created for the Band Aid charity project. Jones had rounded up Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Kenny Rogers and Tina Turner to make the album to raise money for victims of the terrible Ethiopian famine of 1984-85.
Don't be afraid of crossing genres
Jones likes to experiment, he always breaks new musical ground and has an ear for musical styles from all corners of the world: Maybe that's why his music easily spans the decades, and a hit from the 1960s is still successful today.
Active even in old age: Jones at work
But Quincy Jones does not only get praise : He is accused of exploiting black culture and distorting rhythms in order to create commercial music that can also be easily consumed by white people. However, it is mostly white people who accuse him of betraying his black brothers and sisters.
Quincy Jones' secret of success
On this 14. March Quincy Jones celebrates his 90th birthday. “With the power of music I reach the hearts and minds of millions of people,” he once said. The musical genius has created countless musical gems – true to his motto: “The last thing that will disappear from our planet is water and music.”
French musician Matthieu Chedid aka M pays homage to Jones' lifetime achievement at the 2019 Montreux Jazz Festival