Quincy Jones, who has died at age 91, knew no musical boundaries – San Diego Union-Tribune

Quincy Jones, a genre-hopping renaissance man who memorably collaborated with everyone from Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson to Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Queen Latifah and San Diego blues-soul singer Earl Thomas, Quincy Jones did so he does so many things extremely well in the world of music, film, publishing, television and beyond that it is difficult to concisely define the scope and depth of his achievements.

The 28-time Grammy winner, honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2010 and inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, died Sunday at age 91 at his home in Bel Air of undisclosed causes. His nearly eighty-year career has seen him rise to the top as a leading producer, composer, arranger, publisher, broadcaster and tireless advocate for social change. Or, as Jones put it in a 1996 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune: “I was fortunate to be born at the right time to witness and participate in some of the greatest cultural events in this country.”

This interview took place just two weeks before the 1996 Oscars telecast, which he produced. It was not an easy task for the Chicago native and seven-time Oscar winner, who in 1995 was the first black artist to win the prestigious humanitarian award. Jean Hersholt Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“I don’t feel a drop of pressure, and it’s been going on all day, man, disasters, train wrecks, fires and all that,” Jones said, referring to the Oscars telecast. (All quotes in this acknowledgment article, unless otherwise noted, are from numerous interviews he has given to the Union-Tribune.)

“But you know, everything will be fine,” he continued. “I know most of the people in the program really well; Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier and the young ones – Goldie Hawn, I created (the music for) her first picture (Cactus Flower in 1969) when she won her first Oscar. So I feel comfortable. It’s not an environment where I feel tense.”

If there was any environment that annoyed Jones, he kept it under his vest.

Best known to pop music fans as the producer of Michael Jackson’s breakthrough albums “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” Jones also produced the star-studded 1985 single “We Are the World,” which featured Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Harry Belafonte and Cyndi Lauper among many stars.

After beginning his career in 1951, when the teenage Jones joined jazz vibraphone great Lionel Hampton’s big band, he worked with a dizzying array of artists. These include his childhood pal Ray Charles, film director Steven Spielberg, author Alice Walker, Aretha Franklin, gangsta rapper Ice-T and bebop trumpeter great Dizzy Gillespie (who in 1956 hired Jones, then 23, as his musical director ).

Jones has scored numerous films, including “In Cold Blood” and “The Color Purple,” both of which earned him Oscar nominations. He founded the influential hip-hop magazine Vibe, ran his own record label, Qwest, and produced recordings by artists as diverse as jazz giant Sarah Vaughan and then 16-year-old pop singer Lesley Gore, most memorably for her first chart topper in 1963. “It’s My Party” hit.

Jones has also made a name for himself as an executive producer of films and television shows. His credits include everything from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll” to “MadTV” and the 2023 adaptation of “The Color Purple.”

In 2016, Jones, 83, was the oldest artist honored with that year’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Other honorees included Heart, Rush, Public Enemy, Booker T & The MG’s, Randy Newman and the late Donna Summer, but Jones was undoubtedly the hippest artist in the house that evening at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

The audience held their breath in surprise when Oprah Winfrey appeared on stage to introduce him. She thanked Jones for changing “the trajectory of my life” when he persuaded director Spielberg to cast the then little-known Chicago TV host in the award-winning film “The Color Purple.”

“He’s a living legend,” Winfrey said of Jones, “who both defines the word ‘legend’ and defies it.”

In his acceptance speech for the award, Jones joked with the audience that he was the evening’s leading honoree. “I didn’t want to get into the Hall of Fame too early, so I waited,” he said.

Recalling his beginnings as an aspiring jazz trumpeter and composer, Jones said, “We never thought about being famous or rich. We came from the school of wanting to be the best musician you could be.”

The drive to be the best has been a hallmark of his career, no matter what musical genres Jones skillfully performed or combined.

Jones’ 1989 album “Back on the Block” won six Grammy Awards. Rappers such as Ice-T and Kool Moe Dee performed, as well as such jazz immortals as Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.

While many listeners see little or no connection between hip-hop and the musical styles that formed the basis of the jazz Jones grew up on, he was keenly aware of the important continuum connecting the 1,000-year-old music of the West African griots. (or oral historians) with screams about black American slaves and the later traditions of gospel, blues, jazz, rock, soul, funk and hip-hop.

“It’s all the same!” Jones told me. “And even many rappers don’t know that their roots go back to the griot tradition. I often get criticized for being so eclectic. But since I was 13, we played everything from Sousa marches to bebop to rhythm and blues to big band music. And I’ve done it all my life. So when I started (working) with Michael Jackson, a lot of the beboppers were like, “(Expletive), man. He went to the swimming pool!

“But for me it’s not difficult. I always want to hear this (musical) family together. Blues, funk, bebop, R&B, hip-hop, gospel, because it all came from the same place. And together it has a collective power far greater than any of its individual parts. Radio gives people the flavor of the week. So you have to go up to everyone and say, “Hey, man! This is music to celebrate – All from this. “

In 2001, Jones was the driving force behind the five-episode VH1 television series Say It Loud! A Celebration of Black Music in America.” This was just one of the ways in which he brought attention to the too-often underestimated contributions of black artists, not only to American music, but to its overall culture.

“Too many sides of African-American music have not been exposed,” Jones said at the time. “I have been doing this for 27 years and back then I was more interested in sociology than musicology. The whole real history of African Americans is in music because all the books were written by (white) victors. Coded messages in spirituality, mysterious emotions in the blues – all these things tell the true story of being here in this country.

“I have always been fascinated by the fact that there is no such thing as an “original gospel singer” or an “original blues singer.” For the most part, it is music that represents an entire life experience and an entire nation, not just one person. I think every race and religion is like that.

“There are common denominators in every era,” continued Jones, who was also saluted alongside Van Cliburn, Jack Nicholson, Julie Andrews and Luciano Pavarotti at the 2991 Kennedy Center Honors in Washington

“There’s a call and response in every genre, whether it’s Count Basie’s music or doo-wop or gospel or rap,” he continued. “This music is a fascinating saga. Proof of its depth is the fact that youth across the planet have adopted this music as their emotional Esperanto. And this applies to different generations of music, not only the newest genre, rap.

Jones, a well-educated musician completely free from pretense, was a gracious and charming host when I interviewed him for a Jazz Times cover story at his Bel-Air residence in 2003, after the publication of his riveting book his gripping book “Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones.”

“You should know what you can do and what you can’t do,” says Jones when asked to assess his strengths and weaknesses. “And what you can’t do is try to find people who are the best in the world to do it. To me it is logical and makes sense.

“I think it all comes down to having enough wins to stay alive. Because many of the steps to failure cause you to become withdrawn and withdrawn. And it’s quite the opposite, when you take a risk, take a step and make that step a winning one. And when you win, you’re almost there. The next step you take will be a giant step because that’s how we are built as human beings – it’s a promise that we have within us that God has placed there.

“Stravinsky said that the great responsibility of an artist is to be a great observer and really pay attention. Watch out! The things that guided my life were paying attention, being true to myself, and figuring it out. That’s really what it’s all about. My life was fucked up when I was young, but so what? Deal with it. Solve it. Just breathe in every second of life.”

Originally published: November 4, 2024 at 10:55 am PST