Tavo Bonilla
May 20, 2022
San Jose Costa Rica
The story of the most successful music producer in the world will be the center of our article today, and at 89 years old Quincy Jones is a living legend, the friend of Martin Luther King, the producer of Michael Jackson, the brother that Frank Sinatra never had, the man who discovered the talent of Will Smith and lo led to success, and also the boy who grew up in Kentucky and who was fed by his paternal grandmother, who was a slave, with the only thing she had available: fried rats.
We will know the whole story behind this great legend from its beginnings through la cusp to moments of controversy and disputes.
Biography
Quincy Jones was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933 and what was known so far about his early years was limited to the fact that he was the son of Sarah Frances and baseball player Quincy Delight Jones, who moved to live in Bremerton, a suburb from Seattle, when he was 14 years old and there he began playing the trumpet in soul clubs. Now it is also known from what he himself has recounted that he grew up with his little brother, Lloyd, with his paternal grandmother who was a slave in Louisville and that his first years of life were anything but simple. The precariousness in which they lived made them eat fried rats when there was nothing else to put in their mouths and that their mother, Sarah, suffered a mental illness that marked the producer's life. Before joining her father, she already had three children from a previous relationship and for years she was in and out of mental hospitals due to her schizophrenia. A disease that conditioned the lives of her children, including the famous music producer who, according to her, could not have a close relationship with her until she was an adult.
Despite the harshness of some of the situations he lived through, Jones was a precocious genius who found his greatest skill in music. He began taking trumpet classes at school and at the age of thirteen, as he explains in his memoirs, he already made arrangements for trumpeter Clark Terry and two years later he aroused the interest of pianist Lionel Hampton, a relationship that was cut short because his wife The latter denied him to be part of the orchestra until he finished school. His natural gifts made him touch the heaven of music and save himself from an uncertain fate due to a childhood on the edge of the law and the pain caused by his mother's madness.
His history of creations includes names as well known as Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan or Count Basie and also others related to cinema, such as those of director Steven Spielberg or actor Will Smith, since he has composed the bands sound films like The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night or The Color Purple and was the producer of the famous series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Also musical themes for television titles such as Ironside, Sanford and son or The Bill Cosby Show. He has won 27 Grammy Awards and an Oscar among other awards, but also an unbeaten record at the moment: being the producer of the best-selling album of all time, Thriller, by Michael Jackson.
It is also due to his influence that in 1985 some of the leading American artists of the time agreed to record a song that has become an anthem, We are the world, and which then served to raise money for famine victims. in Ethiopia. He published Vibe and SPIN magazines and in 1990 created Quincy Jones Entertainment in a joint venture with Time Warner.
Quincy Jones and the brother he never had.
In his memoirs he dedicates some chapters to Frank Sinatra, for whom the producer was the brother he never had. Both understood each other well until the death of the singer. Jones says of Sinatra: “Frank was my style. He was cool, he was frank and direct and, above all, he was a great musician. I loved him a lot, I admit it; I loved him as much as any other musician with whom I have worked in my life, because he was a man without half measures. Or white or black. If he loved you, he was capable of doing anything for you; if he didn't like you, the problem was yours. I know that he loved me too," he says.
It was one of those afternoons, which would normally be spent between meetings and unremarkable paperwork. In his office at Mercury Records, young Quincy Jones dispatches memos and attends to other people's problems. It's a stable job, but for him, a musician trained in nights out in bars and concert tours, along with the likes of Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Dizzy Gillespie, it wasn't enough for him. He was ambitious. I wanted to raise the bar even higher.
Frank Sinatra & Quincy Jones
The opportunity would come. “One day in 1964 I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. I replied. I heard him say: 'Hello, this is Frank Sinatra, I liked the work you did with (Count) Basie [the One More Time album] and I want you to conduct and arrange my next album, It might as well be swing,'” recalls the musician in the documentary Quincy, available on Netflix.
But Sinatra was a tough man. “At first, he tested me,” Jones recalls. He told me: 'The instrumentation is too dense in the first eight bars.' I replied: 'No problem'.
Like Sinatra, the young arranger was also very confident in his talent. Years as a jazz musician, and composition lessons in Paris with the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger (who had among her disciples Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Burt Bacharach, among many others), gave him a solid musical education. In truth, there was no problem.
“He fixed it right away,” Sinatra recalls in the Netflix documentary. It seemed impossible to me that anyone could do it.”
"The voice" was a man from another generation. It was formed in the big band era when teamwork was important. Often, as portrayed in the extraordinary chronicle of Guy Talese (“Frank Sinatra has a cold”), he despised the self-confidence of the young people of the sixties, who lived the golden age of youth. He was a survivor.
For that year of 1964, the sessions for It might as well be swing, left a battery of songs in which “Fly Me To The Moon” stood out, a classic from Sinatra's repertoire, which prevailed in an era in which the ascendants and electric rock and roll and soul stars threatened to leave crooners like him behind, where Jones was the musical arranger in the repertoire and Sinatra's trust in Jones from then on was complete, leading to a friendship that became to the 2 stars in brothers for the rest of their lives.
Quincy Jones and Smelly.
It was the year of 1972 and Quincy Jones was at the house of Sammy Davis who invited Jones to see The Ed Sullivan Show and the Jackson Five special, from that moment Jones was impressed with the performance of the little boy of only 14 years.
In the year 1977 and after the musical The Wiz, inspired by the Wizard of OZ in its African-American version and with the participation of Diana Ross, Jackson contacted Jones making it clear that he was ready to create his first solo album, however it was not until 1979 that Jones would begin working in collaboration with Jackson on his fifth album Off The Wall, followed by 1982's Thriller and 1987's Bad, these 3 being the singer's best-selling albums, where Thriller remains the best-selling album of the_cc781905 -5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_history.
According to Jones, he was impressed by his professionalism, that he was "genuinely shy" and that he hid "an amazing existence." From that union great successes arose for both and in the autobiography Jones affirms that "until today, nobody has been as great as Smelly". These statements contradict others that became very controversial in which he stated, for example, that Jackson was "greedy, Machiavellian" and that from a musical point of view he had "stolen many things." He has also gone so far as to say that The Beatles have been "the worst musicians in the world, some sons of bitches who couldn't play", or that Paul McCartney was "the worst bassist I've ever heard in my life", but we'll talk about this later. .
It's been many years since Quincy Jones referred to Michael Jackson as "Smelly." (Stinky)
Jones says that he called Jackson that because when they were recording "Thriller", Michael used that word to refer to "funky.", although in an interview with Jones for the Washington Post, he stated that he called MJ that way because he didn't he liked to swear whenever there were mistakes during the recording of the album and he used the word Smelly.
Michael Jackson & Quincy Jones
Michael Jackson & Quincy Jones
at the 1984 Grammy Awards for Thriller (Album of the Year)
Controversies between Jones and Jackson and their breakup.
For the recording of thriller , Michael was ecstatic and expectant for the result of the album but Quincy not, he believed that Thriller would be a failure that would remove Michael from the music scene.
"It won't work Michael, it's crap, who wants to see you wandering around and dancing with monsters"
But Michael told him:
"Have faith Quincy, if it doesn't work out, I'm out."
But Quincy continued:
"It will not reach the sales of Off the Wall, you will spoil everything"
But we know the story, Michael did not have to retire, the album was a success and is still remembered as the best in musical history, Quincy was happy because Michael was not wrong and they both benefited.
Although Bad did not reach the sales of Thriller, it was a huge success despite the criticism but Quincy put many buts to the production, he believed that Michael should return to the origins of Off the Wall, because he did not like that he sang ordinary things in Bad uses a lot slang or big words) but Michael wanted grow up and that caused the break.
DANGEROUS SIN QUINCY
In 1988, Quincy wanted to continue to make headlines on everything Michael did., Bad for him was horrible (just like Thriller) but when he saw the results he changed his mind.
Then Michael began to think about his new album Dangerous, he wrote some songs and hummed them but upon hearing it Quincy said emphatically:
"My God Michael, you no longer have creativity, what the hell are you composing"
Michael laughed and said:
"Quincy I want you to stay with me but I want to get more involved in my music"
Quincy became serious and said:
Are you running me?
And Michael said:
"No, I just want to get more involved in the album, in its content, in the videos that...
Before he finished, Quincy stormed out but told Michael:
UNGRATEFUL!
The rest we already know Michael was the one who took care of everything related to Dangerous, he had new musical producers and Dangerous was a success, even so Michael did not stop naming Quincy as his friend because he did not know everything Quincy would say about him .
HE IS NO LONGER MY FRIEND HE IS UNGRATEFUL AND PRESUMPTIOUS
Furious Quincy Jones, would say que se turned in the real version of the Hulk, he gave interviews left and right about his split with Michael, obviously I blame Michael, here are some of the things he said (the magazine was one of many who hated Michael)
"He is a capricious, ungrateful child and he also takes drugs"
"I composed a large part of his hits, without me, I don't think he would go further"
"He is a strange boy, I formed him, without my Thriller it would not have been a success, I believed in the album while he wanted to throw it away.
Despite all this, cabe It should be noted that together they were incredible and left a unique musical history and with a record that lives to this day with the production of Thriller, which in collaboration created the most important musical production in the history of POP culture to this day, where they included musicians of the stature of the TOTO Band and Eddie Van Halen among others.
Productions and Collaborations
Talk about productions y Jones collaborations in his career is to take into account the huge number of singers he produced themes, in addition to his own productions as a musician, director and arranger.
He has composed the words and music for many of the greatest hits of the 80s and 90s for performers such as Donna Summer, George Benson, Celine Dion, Barry White, Al Jerrau, James Ingram, Al Debarge among many others and_cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_what's more in 1989 he produced what for him was one of his greatest Productions The Secret Garden.
Quincy holds the record for being the artist who has received the most Grammy nominations with a total of 79 and of these he has received 28 awards, including the Grammy Legend Award, in recognition of his musical merits. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by half a dozen universities and has received numerous accolades, including the Emmy Award for the music for the opening episode of Roots, seven Oscar nominations, the AMPAS Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and the Tony.
disputes
In 2018, and about to turn 85 and launch a streaming service, Qwest TV, the legendary producer conducted an unprecedented interview for the American medium Vulture. In it, packed with headlines, he lashes out at Michael Jackson, criticizes the Beatles and belittles U2. In addition, he confesses to having dated the now first lady Ivana Trump and goes so far as to ensure that he knows who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Winner of 28 Grammy Awards, Jones is responsible for the production of the best-selling album in history, Thriller, by Michael Jackson. Among other things, the producer has claimed that Jackson "stole" many parts of his songs from other artists. "I hate to go into this publicly, but Michael stole a lot of stuff. He stole a lot of songs," he said. "Grades don't lie, man. It was as Machiavellian as can be." Jones specifically quoted Billie Jean, a signature song for Jones. The producer suggested similarities between the song and disco queen Donna Sommer's State of Independence, which was also produced by him and released several months earlier in 1982. Both had unusually long synth bass lines. Jones also said that Jackson was a "glutton" and that he should have given partial lyric credit to keyboardist, Greg Phillinganes, for his song Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.
In the interview he also talks about his experience recording with the Beatles. "They were the worst musicians in the world," Jones says at one point. "Paul (McCartney) was the worst bassist I had ever heard. And Ringo (Starr)? Let's not even talk about it," he said. As bad is his opinion of the group from Liverpool as of rock in general, a genre that he describes as the "white version of rhythm and blues". Quincy Jones also weighed in on U2's latest album: "I love Bono with all my heart, but there's too much pressure on the band," said the producer.
These comments exploded social networks, which attacked the producer crossing it out de crazy and that he was trying to return to fame at the expense of others, however experts in psychology have declared that characters of the stature of Jones often have mental wear and tear that leads them to make inappropriate comments and Outside of reasoning, no one can deny the quality of producer and musician that Mr. Quincy Jones has been in the history of our POP culture, who at 89 years of age continues to make very high-quality productions despite the fact that his best years are behind him.
Videos of Some Famous Songs Composed, Produced or Arranged by Quincy Jones:
![George Benson - Give Me The Night (Official Music Video) [HD Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FIF7wKJb2iU/maxresdefault.jpg)
"I said it before los 80s were ours"
