Quincy Jones: An Epic Life In 15 Songs

You’ve got to have some serious game to command headlines when you’re 84. But in 2018, Quincy Jones—the storied bandleader, composer, arranger and producer whose decades-long career sprawled across landmark jazz, pop, R&B and soundtrack recordings—stopped traffic with a no-holds-barred conversation with David Marchese for New York. He had takes on everything: Marlon Brando’s sexuality (“he’d fuck a mailbox!”), the state of pop (“when you go after Ciroc vodka…God walks out of the room”), the Kennedy assassination (“I know too much, man”) and even the Beatles (“the worst musicians in the world…no-playing motherfuckers”).

Whatever his opinion of their musical chops, Jones shared this much with the Fab Four: a world changing vision of popular music. Jones, who died today at 91, leaves behind a body of work that is almost impossible to wrap your arms around. He recorded with the giants of American singing: Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Betty Carter, Frank Sinatra. But he was not limited to jazz or standards. He produced everything from the first hits by ‘60s teen-pop idol Lesley Gore to the biggest selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He was a restless creative powerhouse who ranged far: his 1974 funk album Body Heat would be sampled by Tupac and De La Soul; his 1981 album The Dude would spawn the everlasting R&B power-ballad “Just Once,” sung by James Ingram;his label, Qwest, brought the albums of Joy Division to the U.S. market. 

Beyond music, he was a force in television (executive producing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a breakthrough for rapper-turned-actor Will Smith), media (co-founding VIBE magazine, a key voice of hip-hop journalism) and activism (producing “We Are the World” and founding and funding a host of charities and nonprofits). 

Above all, though, there is the music. Here are 15 highlights from a life and career that was always on cue, because it was always on Q.

“Soul Bossa Nova” (1962): Jones cut his teeth as a trumpeter and musical director alongside such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton; he also played in such unlikely places as CBS’ studio orchestra when Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1961, Jones became vice-president of the Mercury label—the first Black executive at a white-owned label—and continued recording for them as well. His big band boasted players from saxophonist Phil Woods and flutist Rashaad Roland Kirk to future Mission:Impossible composer Lalo Schifrin on piano—and all of them made magic on the exotic, swinging favorite “Soul Bossa Nova,” which earned a second life as the title theme to the trilogy of Austin Powers comedies featuring Mike Myers as a British superspy from the ‘60s.

Lesley Gore, “It’s My Party” / “You Don’t Own Me” (1963): Well established in the jazz world, Jones broke into pop when he and 16-year-old singer Lesley Gore sifted through a pile of hundreds of demos and found only one they wanted to record: a dramatic tale of teen heartbreak called “It’s My Party.” Gore’s plaintive, everygirl vocal and Jones’ dramatic, Latin-tinged production were pure magic, reaching the top of the U.S. pop charts within a month of release. The duo would record three more Top 5 hits that year, including the feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me”—which today has tens of millions more streams than “Party.”

Frank Sinatra & Count Basie, It Might As Well Be Swing (1964): Jones worked as an arranger for Count Basie when he hit New York in 1953 at age 20. A little more than a decade later he was the natural choice as the arranger for Frank Sinatra’s second album with the Count Basie Orchestra. One of Jones’ key decisions was to change a cabaret tune called “Fly Me to the Moon” from waltz time to a punchier 4/4 arrangement, turning Sinatra’s version into the gold standard. Jones also conducted the duo’s stellar Sinatra At The Sands, Sinatra’s first live album, and would work with the singer on one of his final albums, 1984’s L.A. Is My Lady. 

Ray Charles, “In the Heat of the Night” (1967): Q added another weapon to his arsenal in 1964, when he composed a film score to Sidney Lumet’s film The Pawnbroker. Jones eventually earned seven Academy Award nominations, including two for works in 1967 (for writing the song “The Eyes of Love” for Banning and scoring an adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood). His best film work that year – and maybe overall – was the score to the antiracist classic In the Heat of the Night, featuring a sweltering title song sung by Ray Charles, who’d met Jones when both were teenagers in Seattle in the late ‘40s utilized Jones as an arranger in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Little Richard, “Money Is” (1972): An underrated entry in Jones’ soundtrack career, his score to the 1971 Warren Beatty-Goldie Hawn heist comedy $ (Dollars) featured spirited team-ups with Roberta Flack and Little Richard (whose album The King of the Gospel Singers Jones had produced while at Mercury in the early ‘60s). While Richard had not enjoyed a chart hit in many years, his rock & rock wail meshes beautifully with the funk grit of Jones’ production in what would be one of Richard’s last truly great recordings.

“The Streetbeater (Sanford and Son Theme)” (1973): Jones’ best-known soundtrack contribution was actually for the smaller screen. His instrumental “The Streetbeater,” buttressed by sax and harmonica flourishes, was utilized for the opening titles of Sanford and Son, starring Redd Foxx as the cranky junk dealer. As Fred Sandford might say, you’d have to be a big dummy not to appreciate this one.

Aretha Franklin, “Somewhere” (1973): By the middle of the ‘70s, Jones was branching out from his most familiar-sounding works, adding high gloss to other pop styles. One of his best zig-zags was Aretha Franklin’s cover of the West Side Story showstopper “Somewhere” off their album Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), which keeps the Queen of Soul’s piano front and center amid unfussy strings with a complementary saxophone break by Phil Woods.

The Wiz soundtrack (1978): There’s a universe where Jones’ music direction on the film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Wiz never happened. In 1974, Jones suffered a brain aneurysm so threatening that his friends organized a memorial concert in Los Angeles (which Jones actually was healthy enough to attend). After two surgeries and a recovery that forced him to quit playing trumpet, he was back in the producer’s chair, here arranging songs for another Sidney Lumet film, with a cast that included Diana Ross, Lena Horne, and the 20-year-old frontman of the Jackson 5, Michael. 

Michael Jackson, Off the Wall (1979): Michael Jackson debut as an adult recording artist took off like a rocket ship, with Quincy Jones helping guide the budding King of Pop into realizing his exacting musical vision. Over 10 tracks (including No. 1 hits “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You”), Jackson spins a sleek funk-pop phantasmagoria that rages against the dying of disco’s light. It’s impossible to imagine Jackson and Jones could surpass their work together—but neither singer nor producer were exactly artists whose flight paths you could easily predict.

George Benson, “Give Me the Night” / The Brothers Johnson, “Stomp!” (1980): Off the Wall awoke something in Quincy as much as it did in Michael; for the producer, it was a dedication to create the perfect smooth soul with a little bit of stank-face for the jazzheads and funk fans. In 1980, two of Jones’ productions—guitar virtuoso George Benson’s “Give Me the Night,” and The Brothers Johnson’s monstrous dance cut “Stomp!”—chipped away at Q’s obsession, becoming Top 10 hits along the way.

The Dude (1981): Still searching for that perfect all-genre sound, Quincy tried to cast it in his own image on The Dude, his first solo album in three years. With an all-star cast of musicians at his disposal (Stevie Wonder, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, Rufus keyboardist Hawk Wolinski, the Seawind horn section), Jones got even closer to his goals thanks to powerhouse singles sung by up-and-comer James Ingram (whose soul grit spun hits out of “Just Once” and “One Hundred Ways”) and smooth-jazz vocalist Patti Austin.

Michael Jackson, Thriller (1982): Michael Jackson wanted, more than any musician on earth, to be all things to all people. With Quincy’s help he reached that goal. Their work—on their own and together—led them to Thriller, a studio album as greatest hits package that spanned yacht soul, stepper’s delight, arena rock, Halloween novelties and “Billie Jean,” the most haunted dance song ever recorded. 

USA for Africa, “We Are the World” (1985): On the one hand, this Michael Jackson-Lionel Richie ballad made “It’s a Small World” look like Stravinsky. But on the other, this all-star, all-night summit of megastars was a vocal tour-de-force, a living catalog of pop and rock styles across decades and genres. A sign on the studio entrance read “Check your ego at the door”—a command that would never stick in a room full of talent this outsized. But somehow, Quincy Jones kept the train running for the USA for Africa sessions, and “We Are the World” became not only a charity blockbuster but the subject of perhaps this year’s most fun music documentary.

Michael Jackson, Bad (1987): Michael Jackson became the best selling artist on Earth, as well as one of the most famous. Perhaps it was the impossibility of topping himself that pushed him further and further into paranoia, persecution and ice-cold synthesizers. But on Bad, Jackson’s last collaboration with Jones, the veteran producer managed to inject the grooves with some very Quincy-esque flourishes of, from an organ solo by soul-jazz legend Jimmy Smith on the title track to the horn blasts of “The Way You Make Me Feel” to his last-minute decision to include a song from Jackson’s Disneyland attraction on the LP because it made Michael’s manager shake his ass.

“The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite)” (1989): Quincy Jones had nothing to prove even a decade before 1989’s Back on the Block, a star-studded affair that featured elder statesmen of soul and jazz (Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis) alongside up-and-comers like Tevin Campbell and Take 6. Anticipating old-meets-young blockbuster albums like Santana’s Supernatural as well as the star-ladden blowouts of DJ Khaled albums, Block also boasted one of the most intriguing boudoir anthems of the decade: “The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite),” in which James Ingram, Al B. Sure!, El DeBarge and Barry White take turns trying to charm the pants off you. Jones really never lost that spirit as the Pied Piper of the A-list, and it’s one of his many, many attributes that will long outlive him.