Quincy Jones, trumpeter, composer and sound genius, has died

The American producer to whom we owe Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” moved from jazz to hip-hop, always successfully. An exceptional career which has lastingly defined the musical canons dominating the market. Quincy Jones died this Sunday, November 3 at the age of 91.

OWe remember him dozing off, under the spell of a Vevey wine, backstage at a special dance Music night at the 2012 Montreux festival. From Nile Rodgers to Mark Ronson and from Grace Jones to Cerrone, everyone greeted him reverently leaving the stage. Quincy Jones owed this respect in large part to a record that had never been broken: Thriller, Michael Jackson’s album, of which he was the producer, has sold 65 million copies since its release in 1982.

But Quincy Jones was not just the jackpot man. Nominated seventy-nine times for the Grammy Awards, he has won twenty-seven. He even adapted the first music played on the Moon, Fly me to the Moon, sung by Frank Sinatra, a dear friend whose ring he wore. From jazz to hip-hop, his genius covered the entire modern evolution of African-American music, at the same time as he campaigned tirelessly to defend the rights of his community.

At 13, he played with Ray Charles

In the great book of the American dream, a long chapter should be devoted to Quincy Jones, who started from very low to reach the highest. His life is a scenario – we are waiting for the biopic – which begins in Chicago in the 1930s. As a child, he dealt with a father who was a member of the Jones Boys, black gangsters and ultraviolent adversaries of Al Capone; a mother who is put in a straitjacket before her eyes, and who is taken to an asylum for dementia; pimps who slip him a few dollars to watch the girls; the litany of score-settling and other summary executions; his own hand nailed to a post by a switchblade — he was 7 years old and was scarred for life.

Quincy was 11 years old when his father moved to Seattle to escape the underworld. Sometimes a shoe shiner, the kid reproduces the family tradition by carrying out a series of burglaries. Until the day when, busy robbing a grocery store with his brother, he comes across a piano in the back room. “When I touched it, every cell in my body told me that this is what I will do for the rest of my life,” he told one day Hollywood Reporter. Au Guardianhe confides: “That’s when I chose music as my mother. And music has never let me down. »

He first chose the trombone, to be as close as possible to the majorettes in the marching bands. Then the trumpet, taught to him by Clark Terry, a future pillar of the orchestras of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who would become his mentor and friend. At 13, Quincy, in the company of a certain Ray Charles, was already dancing five nights a week in the city’s clubs. So much so that he never shows up at school before 11 a.m. But his teacher, rather than punishing the dunce, encourages the musician: “That’s what God wants you to do, and that’s what you should do.” »

Quincy Jones did what God wanted him to do and what God didn’t even imagine he would do. A scholarship allowed him to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston at the age of 18, to perfect his self-taught knowledge. Engaged in Lionel Hampton’s orchestra, Quincy then exploited his qualities as trumpeter-composer-arranger-producer with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington in particular.

In Paris, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger, Eddie Barclay made him his artistic director at the end of the 1950s. A position he also held at Mercury Records, becoming one of the first African-Americans to take on such responsibilities in the music industry. While he won his first Grammy thanks to an arrangement for Count Basie (I can’t stop loving you), his music from Pawnbroker, film by Sidney Lumet, propelled him as composer of soundtracks, Ambush, by Sam Peckinpah, The color purple, by Steven Spielberg. In the 1970s, the CV of Quincy Jones, who regularly published jazz albums under his name, was already impressive.

Quincy met Aretha Franklin when she was 12, Stevie Wonder when he was 12, Michael Jackson when he was 12 too. But he didn’t really get to know her until seven years later. Quincy then supervises the music of The Wiz, the film by Sidney Lumet which brings together Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, who is looking for a producer to boost his solo career.

We know the rest: the association of the two geniuses gives birth toOff the wall (1979), Thriller (1982) et Bad (1987). The trilogy crowns the “King of pop”, while the production of Quincy Jones defines musical canons which still dominate the market, overcoming the racial distinction – pop or R & B – in the American charts. On the roof of the world, “Q” brought together in 1985 a line-up of stars of unequaled density, to sing We are the world against famine in Ethiopia, specifying in his letter of invitation: “Leave your egos at the studio door. »

A career full of ten

Quincy Jones was capable of an album as flamboyant as Back on the block (1989), whose cast includes Miles Davis, Barry White, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and rapper Ice-T. Despite his infidelities, jazzmen have always shown him great respect — he conducted Miles’ final concert in Montreux in 1991. In France, we will remember that a symphony tour stopped at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris in 2019. Sitting on a throne, Quincy Jones watched stars parade covering Michael Jackson’s hits, ten years almost to the day after the singer’s death, before getting up and leading the orchestra, baton in hand, on Let The Good Times Rollsung by Véronique Sanson. Leaving the stage, he said: “Paris I love you” et “let the good times roll”. A career full of ten, overviewed here, to which are added his activism with Martin Luther King in the 1960s, his initiatives in favor of African-American expressions, his support for Democratic candidates and presidents, up to Barack Obama, to whom he will ask – in vain – the creation of a Ministry of Culture.

Quincy Jones did it all, he even died before he was dead. It was in 1974: after a ruptured aneurysm which left him with little chance of survival, his loved ones organized a farewell ceremony in Los Angeles. Quincy Jones himself attended, alongside his neurologist, who kept him calm, while Marvin Gaye and Sarah Vaughan sang his praises. Marvin and Sarah finally left long before him. “Q” has only just joined them.