Death of a legend: Quincy Jones could reach the moon

Beneath all the reminders of glory that decorated the last part of Quincy Jones’ (long) life – 80 Grammy nominations for 28 awards all the same… – there were the origins. In the race for respectability of jazz, we often lose along the way the murky flavor of the roots…

Died on Sunday, November 3 at the canonical age of 91, the American musician and producer made no secret of the energy that inhabited the kid from Chicago that he was. “I would have liked to be a gangster,” he admitted to us in 2011 when we asked him about his youth in the gold of the Montreux Palace bar. “Music is an accident,” he added. My father worked as a carpenter for a man named Jones, the leader of a black gang in Chicago. There were bodies everywhere, machine guns, wads of cash.”

Warehouse Thief

It is also during the heist of a warehouse that little Quincy discovers the silhouette of a piano, an instrument that calls to him with all its might. “Every drop of my blood screamed: This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life!” This discovery will indeed change the life of the person who earns it by picking strawberries, as a locker room employee or shoeshine boy, very skilled at polishing the pimps’ Stacey Adam pumps without staining their socks! “My theory is that whatever you do, you have to do it thoroughly, down to the last detail. Empty the whole cup and it will be filled for you twice over!”

The pop glamor of the Jackson years tends to make us forget it, but Quincy Jones is one of the last giants, those who experienced a United States that was deeply divided on racial issues and where segregation was still largely prevalent. In this context, where music can play almost the same role as boxing in extricating oneself from a racialized social condition, young Quincy’s lucky star shines quite brightly.

In Seattle, where his family moved and where he switched from piano to trumpet, he met Clark Terry, one of the best blowers of the time, during a visit with Count Basie’s band. But it was especially his meeting with Ray Charles that marked him, at the age of 16. The 1940s are coming to an end and the friendship that binds the two friends – Charles, 3 years older than him, teaches him the first basics of musical writing – will transform into concerts in the city’s clubs, a drug dealer heroine in common and, later, by several collaborations on recordings.

But the Quincy Jones train is moving at high speed. He won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston at the age of 18, but it was by joining Lionel Hampton’s big band that the young musician would pass the test of fire and prominence. From there, his career turned into perpetual fireworks. In the 1950s, he wrote arrangements for all the stars of the time, jumping into the boat of Dizzy Gillespie, the most prominent trumpeter of the moment.

Student of Nadia Boulanger

In this frenetic agitation, however, he took the time to go to France, to Paris, in particular to follow the courses of the famous teacher Nadia Boulanger, with whom he left very good memories. “I have taught two geniuses in my lifetime. One is Igor Stravinsky. And the other one is Quincy Jones.” He took advantage of his stay to work for Eddie Barclay’s label and wrote arrangements for Henri Salvador, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel…

He experienced some setbacks in the early 1960s, which slowed down his rise. But the failure of his own big band is only an accident along his stratospheric trajectory as a maker of jazz hits. A limitless push: the version he arranged for “Fly Me To The Moon” sung by Sinatra (on a 1964 album) will be the first music broadcast in space during the Apollo 10 and 11 space missions.

At the beginning of the 1970s, he was definitely part of the cream of American musicians, a sort of master renowned for his knowledge of swing, his ability to energize any piece of music. In 1974, just half a century ago, Quincy Jones came close to death for the first time. Victim of a ruptured aneurysm, he recovered perfectly but will no longer touch his trumpet too much.

With Michael Jackson

The seventies saw him begin his most famous collaboration, that with the young prodigy Michael Jackson, met on the set of “The Wiz”, an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” by Sidney Lumet. The producer then takes a new pop turn, a sort of Holy Grail sought by Miles Davis too. Three albums will result. The excellent and invigorating “Off the Wall” in 1979, then the monstrous and irresistible “Thriller” in 1982, the best-selling album of all time with some 70 million copies.

In 1987, “Bad”, another success, concluded the association between the two men, even if Quincy Jones co-organized in 1985 the recording of the charity song “We Are The World”, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.

In his fifties, “Q”, a nickname he owed to Sinatra, still had a hollow nose and, from the end of the 1980s, tried to bridge the gap between jazz, pop and emerging hip-hop with the album “ Back on the Block” which brings together three generations of musicians around its conductor: Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie alongside Ice-T, Big Daddy Kane and Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Chaka Khan, Bobby McFerrin and Al Jarreau!

At the same time, Quincy Jones finally met one of the sharpest promoters of jazz in Europe: Claude Nobs, boss of the Montreux Jazz Festival who shares this vision of mixed, exploratory music, without genre taboos. The feeling passed between the two men and the editions of 1991, 1992 and 1993 were transformed into a co-production with the American producer, sponsor of the event, who managed to convince Miles Davis to play his old titles during an exceptional evening, on the 8th. July 1991.

The festival’s budget increases sharply during this close collaboration – from 5 to 7 million francs – but will lead to friendly companionship of unfailing loyalty and common projects, ideas, contacts. Even at an advanced age, Quincy Jones kept his love of live performance intact and we saw him attend all kinds of concerts every year, without forgetting that of Elton John in 2019. For Mathieu Jaton, current director of the MJF, the good nature of the character translates into an image. “Quincy who arrives at the entrance to the Palace, who gets out of his car, who gives you a huge hug and who says to you: I’m back home.»

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