In 2018, Quincy Jones gave an interview to Vulture so gleefully jaw-dropping that the journalist responsible was later interviewed about the interview. Among other topics, he reckoned The Beatles “were the worst musicians in the world”; claimed he once dated Ivanka Trump (“wrong father, though”); and fondly recalled that actor Marlon Brando would “fuck anything”. The internet inevitably melted down and, adorably, Jones’ six daughters (including Parks and Recreation’s Rashida Jones) reportedly staged a “family intervention” about his “‘wordvomit’ and bad-mouthing”.
Well, the man they called LLQJ – loose-lipped Quincy Jones – had more than a few stories to tell. It’s hard to think of an area of contemporary pop culture that he didn’t help to shape in some way, from film and TV (via his production company Quincy Jones Entertainment) to, of course, music, on which he had as great an impact as anyone in the last 50 years.
He’ll be remembered best as the producer of Michael Jackson’s 1982 opus ‘Thriller’ – still the biggest selling album of all time, having shifted an astonishing 70million-plus copies. Yet his music career was as diverse as it was impressive: here was a solo star who had shared his Midas touch with the biggest names of the 20th century. Who else could count Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg and Queen Latifah as colleagues?
Album of the Year. Credit: CBS via Getty Images
Quincy Delight Jones Jr., who has died at the age of 91, was born in Chicago in 1933. He grew up hearing his next-door neighbour play the piano and, as he recalled in his 2002 autobiography, Q, happened upon one himself after breaking into a recreation centre to eat lemon meringue pie. “That’s where I began to find peace,” he wrote. “I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”
So it proved. By the age of 14, he was performing in Seattle with a young Ray Charles; the following year he backed jazz legend Billie Holiday at the city’s Eagles Auditorium. He described the latter show as “one of my most incredible memories”. This is some statement, considering the ascent he would soon experience.
Jones played second trumpet for Elvis’ first-ever TV performance, on CBS’ Stage Show, in January 1956, before touring South America and the Middle East as musical director for Dizzy Gillespie, another all-time jazz great. In the late 1950s, he became a producer for Mercury Records, where his adaptability proved an enormous asset during a period of great musical change. Rock’n’roll had crested in terms of popularity, which left many artists at a crossroads.
He was an arranger on both 1958’s ‘Somebody Up There Digs Me’, 1940s jump blues pioneer Louis Jordan’s too-late attempt to cash in on rock’n’roll; and Little Richard’s ‘The King Of The Gospel Singers’, a glossily produced gospel record that ushered the Architect of Rock’n’roll into the 1960s. This eclecticism stood Jones in good stead throughout the decade. He produced 10 Top 40 hits for pop singer Lesley Gore between 1963 and 1965, including the enduring classics ‘It’s My Party’ and ‘You Don’t Own Me’, and scored soundtracks to films and TV shows such as 1966’s In Cold Blood and 1969’s The Italian Job.
Jones’ soundtrack work was particularly impressive given that Black musicians were rarely allowed to work on film and TV projects, and rarer still on those that did not focus on African-American themes. In 2020, he said the renewed energy around the Black Lives Matter movement, which followed the murder of George Floyd, had been “coming a long time, man”, adding: “People have been turning their heads the other way, but it’s all the same to me – misogyny, racism. You have to be taught how to hate somebody.”
He gravitated towards funk and disco in the 1970s, when he produced solo material including the hit 1974 album ‘Body Heat’ and collaborated on such indelible tracks as the Brothers Johnson’s relentlessly groovy ‘Get The Funk Out Ma Face’. It was to prove his king-making decade, as he produced much of the soundtrack to The Wiz, the Motown Production adaptation of the Broadway musical. Here he became close to Michael Jackson, sparking a partnership that would change not just both of their lives but also the face of popular music.
First came 1979’s ‘Off The Wall’, produced against the initial wishes of executives at Epic Records, who, Jones wrote in Q, considered him “too jazzy”. Jackson insisted upon Jones, resulting in a bravura album that combined disco, funk, R&B and more, received unanimous critical acclaim, spawned four Top 10 singles – a record from one album by a solo artist at the time – and sold more than 20million copies. After that, they were off to the races: with ‘Thriller’ and 1987’s ‘Bad’, the duo crafted a trilogy of records that shifted a combined 130million copies.
This marked one of the most commercially and creatively fruitful musical partnerships of all time, and it’s to his credit as an innovator of all stripes that it does not define Quincy Jones’ legacy. Having broken barriers to even score film and TV soundtracks, he formed his aforementioned, wildly successful production company in 1990, which was responsible for the beloved sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, launching Will Smith’s career in the process. Having been an early champion for rap, he saw his work sampled by Ludacris, MC Lyte, 2pac, Ye and many more.
His life was not one long ascent without interruptions. Jones said he felt suicidal after falling $100,000 into debt after one European tour in the 1950s, while he also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974. And not every record he made was a ‘Thriller’: he expressed regret at his 2010 album ‘Q: Soul Bossa Nostra’, on which he and various hip-hop and R&B artists reinterpreted 15 tracks associated with him. “You gotta hope you can make all the mistakes you can so you learn,” he said in 2017. “I made all the mistakes. All of ’em.”
And yet. Having stumbled upon that piano two decades before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he overcame so much to become the Grammys’ second-most awarded recipient, with 28 gongs to his name. When he wasn’t putting everyone on blast, Quincy Jones reflected on his own unparalleled career in that 2018 interview. “The experiences I’ve had!” he said. “You almost can’t believe it.”