QUINCY JONES as a small boy grew up in rural Kentucky and Chicago. When his father had to flee the mob, they moved to Seattle. Jones’ mother was schizophrenic. His father was busy working to support the family. At fourteen, he was virtually living on his own, inspired by his friend Ray Charles who, at sixteen, had an apartment, a gig and a girlfriend-and he was blind. Both men are Horatio Alger success stories.
Arranger, composer, producer, performer, Quincy Jones has been nominated for 76 Grammy awards and has won 23. Innovations in technology, the creation of a mass media, have ushered in a thrilling epic period in world music. Quincy Jones, mogul, political powerbroker, one of the most successful African-American businessmen of all time, has been at the forefront of this revolution. Five iconoclastic decades have been shaped by his genius.
This winter, Office for the Arts at Harvard University honored Jones for his contribution to the world as well as the University with whom he has a long history. In 1974, his daughter Rashida’s imminent birth prevented Jones from accepting an artist in residence stint at Harvard. Rashida in 1997 got a BA from the Big Crimson while Dad garnered an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree that same year. On February 19th, 2004 in Sanders Hall, family friend Professor Jerold Kayden presented Jones with a silver inscribed bowl from Tiffany. Another friend, Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates was the interviewer.
There are other ties to Boston: Jones attended Berklee School of Music when he was 18 years old. Incredibly, race and gender be damned, his mother attended Boston University before her illness robbed her of sanity. Quincy Jones’ childhood resembled Antwone Fisher’s far more than the BILL COSBY SHOW, which he later scored.
He discussed his close friendship with Frank Sinatra. They shared a pain from childhood that both tried to erase by living every moment to the fullest. “God gave me two heads but only enough blood to operate one at a time.” Frank was there through all the marriages, children, and divorces. “Sinatra either loved you or would run you over like a Mac truck in reverse.”
Like many artists who are far ahead of their time, Quincy was dealing with a creative process that was not always pretty. His volume of work is nothing less than astounding. His filmography alone is prodigious. From 1962-70, he scored 8 films per year. His first film score was THE PAWNBROKER. Music is the soul of a film, he said. And yet, he cautioned, there are a million things one must consider: You can’t get carried away and blow away the dialogue. You’ve got to find a sound that supports itself in balance with the emotion of the script; which is not to say that Fellini can’t choose a calliope to play during a murder scene.
In 1967, he scored IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. Ironically, the suits at Universal overseeing IN COLD BLOOD left the room when they saw the color of his skin. They wanted to replace him with Leonard Bernstein. Director Richard Brooks said, “Up yours! Quincy Jones is doing my score.” The music was far too avant-garde to win the Academy Award and lost out to THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. “Jazz and blues are the classical music of pop,” he says. In THE WIZ, New York’s World Trade Center was the Emerald City. Sadly, Jones produced a music video there the night before 9/11. He recalls when synthesizers were “the size of this room. He nicknamed his tech “Ernestine” after Lily Tomlin’s switchboard operator. Robert Moog, creator of the Moog Synthesizer, asked Quincy why Black musicians weren’t using his brainchild, whereupon Q replied, “Bob, if it doesn’t bend, you can’t get funky.”
Jones was a full-blown film producer on THE COLOR PURPLE. The project was a peak career moment. It was climbing that mountaintop that led him to nervous exhaustion and a reassessment of his life’s true purpose. Being one of the U.S. delegation to Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration in South Africa, for example, was “an unparalleled experience.”
The films he’s chosen lately, AUSTIN POWERS and KILL BILL, defy his age. “Hip-hoppers are the most creative people I’ve worked since the Beboppers.”
“Keep renewing, reinventing,” he advises. “In business, be a moving target. I get music from the hum of a washing machine. Michael Jackson studied gazelles and antelopes.” Quincy’s nickname for Jackson is “Smelly” because when Jackson liked a groove, he’d call it “smelly jelly.” Coerced by Gates and the audience to comment on Smelly’s latest woes, Jones replied, “Michael started as a poor little black boy who’s ended up as a rich white woman.” Still, Jones, who produced three of the biggest selling albums of all time OFF THE WALL, THRILLER and BAD, argues that much of the choreography seen in music videos today had its genesis with Michael Jackson. Jackson’s artistic influence into the airwaves rivals no one else, except perhaps Quincy Jones.
“It can’t be about Benjamins. [$] It’s gotta be about Goosebumps: If you get them, other people will, too…Despite all the Grammys, special awards and testimonials that maturity bestows, it will always be the values you carry within yourself-of work, love and integrity-that carry the greatest worth, because these are what get you through with your dreams intact, your heart held firm, and your spirit ready for another day.”
Top Ten Revelations about Q:
10) Ate rats, too small to realize it, tasted good
9) Picasso was his neighbor in France
8) Never learned how to drive
7) Born same year, month, day and hour as Michael Caine
6) Has seven children by four different women
5) Daughter was Tupac Shakur’s girlfriend when he was murdered
4) Recovered from nervous breakdown on Marlon Brando’s island
3) Bagged Sharon Tate’s party the night of Manson Murders
2) Was present when Sinatra introduced JFK to Marilyn Monroe
****1) Nicole Richie is his goddaughter!!!!!