The Eternal Jazz Man: Quincy Jones
In 2024, many notables I’d interviewed over the years joined the ancestors, including Benny Golson, Roy Haynes, Lou Donaldson, Russell Malone, Richard Parsons, and Quincy Jones. In “The Night I Met Quincy Jones,” I recalled meeting him at an affair that Mr. Parsons invited me to, where we laughed together about Benny’s large vocabulary, and he affirmed my dedication to jazz.
In memory of Quincy, here’s a slightly edited profile I wrote published by UPTOWN magazine a decade ago:
No doubt, most of us knew of Quincy Jones, or Q, as many affectionately called him, for producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the best-selling studio record by a solo artist in history. He also produced and conducted “We Are the World” in 1985 for USA for Africa, raising over $60 million for famine relief in Africa. He received more Grammy nominations than anyone—79—and won 28 of them along the way.
In 1964, he became the first Afro-American executive at Mercury Records. Four years later, he was the first black American nominated for two Oscars—best score and best song—in the same year for two different films, In Cold Blood and Banning, respectively. Three years later, he became the first Afro-American conductor for the Academy Awards. For the bicentennial of Bastille Day in 1989, the very American Jones conducted the French National Jazz Orchestra. In 1993, thanks to President Clinton, he became the first black American to serve as executive producer of a presidential inauguration celebration event. He composed the theme songs for Sanford and Son and Ironside. He mentored Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith early in their careers, elevating them to superstardom with The Color Purple and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, respectively, both of which he produced. And was a founder of Vibe, where UPTOWN’s cofounder Len Burnett cut his wisdom teeth.
Reportedly, “Fly Me to the Moon,” which Jones arranged and conducted for Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, was the first song played on the actual moon. That song lived on in the Mad Men–inspired commercial for the 2014 Chevy Impala.
“Some guys put me down for selling out with Michael Jackson,” Jones said, referring to those who doubt his commitment to jazz. “You crazy? Man, we’ve been playing that music all of our lives. That’s the music I love, man,” he shot back, not even hiding his hurt. Despite his tremendous extracurricular achievements, at the heart of it all, Jones was still a jazzman.
“This music is the theme of the universe,” he said via phone. “[It’s] amazing, but jazz has been underestimated. Especially by us.” He detailed his early jazz foundation in the 1990 documentary Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones and in the 2008 glossy coffee-table-style scrapbook The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions.
Born to Sarah Frances Wells, a Boston University alumna who sang in the church choir, played piano, and spoke several languages, and master carpenter Quincy Jones, Sr. during the Great Depression on Chicago’s South Side, Jones learned hard knocks early. As a child, his mother was institutionalized for dementia. Jones Sr. moved his sons, Quincy Jr. and Lloyd, along with his new wife and her children, away from Chicago to Bremerton, Wash., a Seattle suburb, at first, before settling into the city itself. There, Quincy found an outlet for his musical instincts.
By the age of 14, he was playing in Ray Charles’ band and studying with Clark Terry, an influence on Miles Davis who spent years in the Count Basie and Duke Ellington big bands. “Mr. Clark Terry is one of the great trumpet players of the 20th century. I used to like hitting high notes, and he taught me how to put my embouchure so my mouth wouldn’t bleed when I hit high C,” he shared about his beloved mentor at the 2013 Jazz Foundation of America gala held at the Apollo Theater. “He put me on his shoulder. And I was so fortunate to have him in my life. . . He taught me how to groove, how to laugh, how to hang. . . and how to act like a man.”
After graduating from high school, he won a scholarship to Boston’s Schillinger House (now the Berklee College of Music) but dropped out to join the trumpet section of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, a move that truly began his legend-making career. It’s where he became a soldier in the jazz army. As a young man, he almost always chose jazz over everything else, even when the person doing the wooing was John Hammond, the music legend credited for helping to bring Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen to prominence.
“John Hammond called me to do a record with a 17-year-old track jumper from North San Fran- cisco,” he remembered. After listening to him, Jones told Hammond, “I don’t think he’s a jazz singer, but he’s a great, great singer.” AND was set to work with him until he says, “Dizzy came to me—and I’m only 23 then—and he says, ‘Will you be the musical director of my band? Direct the arrangers, put together the band and meet me in Rome a few months from now?’”
His response: “Man, is the Pope Catholic?” Continuing, he said, “I gave the record back to John Hammond; he did it with Gil Evans and Johnny Carisi. But it didn’t work there. Mitch Miller booked that same kid: ‘The Twelfth of Never’ and ‘Chances Are’—Johnny Mathis. . . He sang at Barbra Streisand’s 70th birthday. I said, ‘I turned you down for Dizzy, man.’”
Florida A&M University alum and jazz master Cannonball Adderley was one of his greatest successes as a record executive. “I was an A&R man at Mercury then. I called Bobby Shad and said, ‘This guy’s the next thing I’ve heard next to Bird,’” he says, recalling Adderley’s immediate impact on him. “I didn’t know what producers were then, you know. I said, ‘I just like him.’”
Jones and Adderley, whose first album under Jones was Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, grew so close that Adderley became the godfather of Jones’ daughter Jolie, the first of his seven children. The gold flute the deceased Adderley left his daughter is still among the family’s prized possessions.
Speaking on the jazz magic of the saxophone, Q exclaimed, “Adolphe Sax, who created that thing in 1846, had no idea Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Cannonball Adderley were gonna get those instruments, man! They turned it upside down, man.”
Jones was very concerned about preserving the legacy of the music that had given him so much. “Young people need to know their music history. They need to know how rap and jazz are connected,” he preached. “They need to know that jazz musicians originated rap way back in the day with things like playing the dozens and syncopated rhymes,” he says. “Half of hip-hop slang comes from bebop anyway. Lester Young was saying ‘homeboy’ 80 years ago.” Clark Terry’s wife, Gwen, said that bridging jazz and rap has been a primary goal of Jones since his 1989 Grammy Award–winning Back on the Block album. He even paired up Snoop Dogg and Terry back in 1992.
Ultimately, for Jones, paying it forward was his duty. “Whatever successes we’ve had in life, none of us can claim to have done it on our own,” he says. “It’s all about we, us, and them, not me, my, and I.”
I invite you to watch Jones lead his jazz big band from the early ‘60s. May he and the other greats who joined the ancestral jazz orchestra Rest in Peace.