Death of Quincy Jones, flagrant genius of jazz and pop – Libération

Ray Charles, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and of course Michael Jackson… Throughout a career that has never left the summits, the jazz trumpeter turned arranger has composed or produced a thousand and one albums that have become cult, until ‘at the top: “Thriller”. And left its mark on more than half a century of American music, from be-bop to hip-hop to pop.

Once upon a time in America. This is what we are talking about when recounting the fabulous destiny of Quincy Jones, who died this Monday, November 4 at the age of 91, a man who started from less than nothing to go to the highest, star among the Hollywood stars. Twenty-seven grammys, honorary medals worthy of an apparatchik, hits you name it, here, in all registers, for all tastes, in all eras, these few charms and certifications on which the entertainment industry feasts disc say too little of such a talent at the crossroads of two centuries. “From the first drafts to the Internet, I really saw the world change. I just hope that satellites and cell phones will not homogenize everything, that people will be able to keep their identity”he worried in 2000 in Liberation. Embodying the American dream better than anyone, Quincy Jones was no less lucid about the future of a world that is not going so smoothly.

Everything was really not written in advance in this epic novel which makes up such a life: childhood of poverty, on the South Side of Chicago where he was born on March 14, 1933, eating whatever his grandmother could find . A mother soon to be absent, except in her nightmares, due to schizophrenia; a carpenter-joiner father who has to struggle with the kids. He lacks everything, he will retain a sense of resourcefulness. Little Quincy Delight Jones Jr was one of the many kids in the neighborhood