Music giant Quincy Jones came from the sort of hardscrabble background that can crush souls and choke creativity. But he turned the hardship into inspiration.
As a kid in Chicago (born there amid the Great Depression in 1933), he ran with street gangs. Jones (1933-2024) stole things and got into fights. His mother's emotional problems made the world seem senseless to him.
"They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man," Jones told the AP in 2018, showing a boyhood scar.
It was an unlikely start for a man who brought joy and aural beauty to millions of people listening to music and watching television and movies. After his start as a trumpeter, he became an arranger, composer, conductor and record-breaking producer.
Quincy Jones: Span Genres To Broaden Appeal
Jones knew to overcome his tough childhood, he needed to learn as much as possible.
He collaborated across generational lines with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles and Michael Jackson. Jones won 28 Grammys. He was due to receive his second honorary Academy Award later this month.
Jones received France's Legion of Honor, Italy's Rudolph Valentino Award and a Kennedy Center Honors tribute. Jones was nominated for an Academy Award seven times. He beat racial barriers by becoming a vice president of Mercury Records in 1961.
Jones — who was often known by his nickname "Q," given to him by the always hip Sinatra — earned those honors by forging unforgettable masterpieces.
Go For Big Hits Like Jones
Jones wanted to make a splash, not a ripple in the music business.
He produced Michael Jackson's 1982 humongous hit album "Thriller." And he wrote then-unknown Lesley Gore's 1963 pop standard "It's My Party."
He scored classic smash films "The Pawnbrokers" (1964), "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) and "The Color Purple" (1985). Jones penned theme songs for hit television shows "Ironside" and "Sanford and Son." He composed the soundtrack for "Roots," which won an Emmy. And he coproduced 1985's smash charity single "We Are the World," which was made to raise money for famine relief in Africa.
What was the crux of his greatness?
Upgrade Your Environment
It began with getting away from street life in Chicago. He spent summers in Kentucky with his grandmother. Jones listened to her stories about life in slavery before the Civil War. Then, when Jones was 10 years old, his family relocated to Bremerton, Wash. His father took a wartime job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
One night, he and some buddies broke into an armory. Spotting a piano, Jones tried to play. Jones had an epiphany right there: playing music was what he wanted to do. He was soon playing trumpet in a school band.
He surrounded himself with others interested in music. His best friend was a slightly older singer and pianist who eventually won his own musical immortality. His name? Ray Charles.
Blend Your Skills Into Something Unique
Jones' success was not due to his talent with any one instrument or any single medium. It was his ability to combine, to take many individual threads — like the ensemble of singers who participated in "We Are the World," which included 46 music stars such as Bette Midler, Lionel Richie, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen and Diana Ross — and weave them into spectacular musical fabrics.
It was Jones' flexibility that enabled him to do that.
"For me personally, it was showing how he could move from genre to genre," jazz drummer, composer and producer Terri Lyne Carrington, winner of three Grammy Awards, told Investor's Business Daily. She was the first female musician to win a Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, which she did in 2013.
"He was really an inspiration to those of us who didn't want to be put into a box, those of us who want to move between genres," she said.
Spot Talent Like Jones
It was like Jones had X-ray vision. He could spot other talented people — including those from tough histories like his. Jones saw what they had, and he understood how to extract it.
"He knew what everyone was doing," said Carrington, who had been a drummer on the Jones-produced Vibe TV show 16 years earlier. "I went to the Grammys in 2014. Afterwards, I saw him at Berklee College of Music's party. He told me, 'You made a good record.' He remembered who I was and what I had been doing."
Jones' knowledge seemed encyclopedic and eclectic, far-ranging and often surprisingly diverse. He recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on "Beat It." He lassoed actor Vincent Price for a spooky voice-over on "Thriller."
Bandleader, jazz trumpeter and composer Dizzy Gillespie once said, "He's Doctor Fixit. People go to him because he knows what he's doin'. He knows the sound you've got in you, and he's got the experience and the know-how to get it out."
Learn Everything About Your Field
Another one of Jones' talents was his first-person knowledge of musical history. He made up for what he didn't get from formal education.
"He deeply understood the lineage of Black music," Carrington said. "And why not? He had worked with everyone from Dinah Washington" — a jazz vocalist mainly in the 1950s, who performed the blues, R&B and pop music — "to Michael Jackson."
In his later decades, Jones was a mover and shaker. He could make careers. But he never forgot his own roots. And he never forgot how hard it is to make a living in the music industry.
He won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but he dropped out when jazz drummer Lionel Hampton invited him to tour with his band. In his twenties he toured with his own band.
"We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving," Jones once told Musician magazine. "That's when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two."
Jones: Study Others' Success
Jones focused on what worked. "We in the music business respect success," Carrington said. "And he definitely learned how to be successful."
Berklee College seconds that. Despite Jones having dropped out, Berklee counts Jones as a member of its class of 1951 and treats him as an alumnus. It bestowed an honorary degree in 1983.
Berklee professor Joe Bennett is a forensic musicologist. He provides expert testimony about whether a song has been copied from another piece of music. He's an expert in Jones' body of work.
Asked what Jones' superpower was, Bennett does not hesitate in answering. It was Jones' ear for what the big American audience would like.
"He had success after success," Bennett said. "In 1963 he wrote 'It's My Party' for Lesley Gore. The next year, he was instrumental in bringing bossa nova to America. Totally different genres, but both were huge breakthroughs."
Bennett added, "Jones was a great popularizer. He had a knack for writing fantastic hooks. And he was humble. He told students, 'Don't try to second-guess what will sell millions of records. If it feels right and is authentic in the moment, sales will follow.' And of course, for him, they did."
Keep Experimenting
Yet another key to Jones' success was his willingness to try new things. In 1989, old enough to be most rappers' granddad, he won the Album of the Year Grammy for producing "Back on the Block," featuring rap stars as well as jazz, R&B and new jack swing. That was his first foray into rap.
Berklee professor Bennett said, " 'Back on the Block' was just one example of many in his career where he went down a musical route that interested him. And then through curiosity, innovation, creativity and collaboration, he created something we'd never heard before."
Quincy Jones' Keys
- Award-winning musical genius who produced Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Lesley Gore's "It's My Party."
- Overcame: A tough boyhood living amid street gangs in Chicago.
- Lesson: "There are two kinds of people: those who have nurturing parents or caretakers, and those who don't. Nothing's in between."
