Rarely – if ever – has an American musician received such fulsome praise both during their lifetime and after their death. Such headlines as “Quincy Jones, Giant of American Music Dies At 91” (New York Times) and “Quincy Jones: Musician, producer and arranger who had global hits with Michael Jackson and won 28 Grammys” (The Guardian) were typical of posthumous tributes. But they are less than perceptive or satisfactory when applied to an African American who grew up in Chicago and Seattle, had a schizophrenic mother, and was raised by his father and stepmother, learned to play trumpet at the age of 15, and had a passion for jazz.
As our editor writes, Jones initially played (undistinguished) trumpet with Lionel Hampton, followed in later years by some remarkable collaborations with Ray Charles, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan as well as Dinah Washington, Ray Bryant and Betty Carter. These and other “pairings” have received scant attention by most commentators, but “Q” deserves to be acknowledged as a major composer, arranger, critic, innovator, performer, author and “activist” in the realms of jazz and related genres.
Beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, Quincy recorded several albums (live and studio performances) with an impressive array of sidemen. These included a concert recording in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1960 when the band was making a European tour. The hand-picked players chosen (and introduced by Quincy) included Benny Bailey, Jerome Richardson, Melba Liston, Les Spann, Phil Woods and the excellent but lesser-known pianist Patti Brown and drummer Joe Harris. The concert closes with two rousing versions (long and short) of Air Mail Special arranged by Al Cohn. Two compositions by Jones himself – The Midnight Sun Will Never Set and Birth Of A Band – receive their appropriate tempos.
This Is How I Feel About Jazz (1956) was the first album under his own name, with such stellar performers as Lucky Thompson, Phil Woods and Art Farmer, Milt Jackson and Zoot Sims. The highlights are Stockholm Sweetnin’ – (Sims made a round trip from Washington, DC to New York just to solo on that title) and Sermonette. In the same year he was employed as musical director, arranger and trumpeter in the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra, sponsored by the State Department for a tour of Europe, the Middle East and then on a second visit to South America.
In 1958, Basie recorded an album featuring the compositions of Quincy and Neal Hefti, including Quincy’s The Big Walk, I Needs To Be Bee’d With, Jessica’s Day and Muttnik. With personnel including Thad Jones, Marshall Royal, Frank Foster, Freddie Green, Charlie Fowlkes, Wendell Culley and Joe Newman, it is a fitting tribute to Quincy’s compositional skills. In 1958 he signed with Mercury Records and released The Birth Of A Band (1959), one of his most satisfying albums, featuring Joe Newman, Sweets Edison, Phil Woods and Clark Terry. There is a blistering Jones composition (the album’s title), and memorable performances of Tickle Toe, A Change Of Pace, Tuxedo Junction and another Jones original, Daylie Double. A further landmark LP, The Great Wide World Of Quincy Jones, released in the same year, featured Budd Johnson, Les Spann, Jimmy Cleveland, Art Farmer, Al Cohn and Phil Woods on a well-chosen menu of titles including Lester Leaps In, Caravan, Air Mail Special and Chant Of The Weed.
Despite a brief playing time (31.22) The Quintessence (1961) with Oliver Nelson, Melba Liston, Clark Terry, Thad Jones, Curtis Fuller and Julius Watkins among others is marvellous. Jones’ original and inventive compositions are For Lena and Lennie (later recorded by the Basie orchestra) and the title track. Dizzy Gillespie observed that Quincy “can do almost anything he likes with a band like this”. He went on “And with his background, there are a lot of different things he knows how to do.” Lena Horne and Lennie Hayton provide pertinent comments on the eight tracks. In a glowing review in JJ, Richard Palmer commented that the album “could hardly be richer in mood, texture and variety of colour”. He concluded that “It is almost tragic that the youngsters of today, if they know Jones at all, know him only as Michael Jackson’s producer.”
Long a Count Basie devotee, Quincy in his racy and revealing autobiography, Q (of which I have a signed copy – any offers?), also written with contributions from friends, remembers the Count as “the sweetest cat in the world, but a serial black-belt gambling junkie”. Whatever, they made some outstanding recordings together, most notably Sinatra At The Sands (1966), with Jones arranging and conducting the New Testament ensemble in a programme of truly classic performances. It is the only live album that was officially released during Sinatra’s career. The happy relationship had begun with the Reprise albums Sinatra-Basie: An Historical Musical First (1962), It Might As Well Be Swing (1964) – including the universal hit Fly Me To The Moon – and ending with Sinatra’s last studio recording L.A. Is My Lady (1984).
Chris Ingham, Sinatraphile, pianist and critic, convincingly suggests that L.A. Is My Lady is less than excellent: “The combination of Quincy Jones’ elephantine band (weighed down further by ‘guest stars’ George Benson, The Brecker Brothers and Lionel Hampton) powering out unattractive contemporary big band swing, and a singer who only occasionally sounds like he knows what he’s doing, makes L.A. Is My Lady disheartening listening to.”
Quincy’s admiration for and rapport with major jazz (or jazz-inflected) vocalists was also demonstrated in his albums with Dinah Washington. The Complete Sessions 1955-1961 contains such hits as They Didn’t Believe Me, Perdido, Mad About The Boy, and I Could Write A Book. Her distinguished accompanists included Paul Quinichette, Jimmy Cleveland, Wynton Kelly, Al Cohn and Jimmy Cobb. From their first meeting, Dinah and a much younger Quincy formed a close professional and personal relationship, one recounted with relish in his autobiography. He recalled that she once (in the early morning) phoned with the reminder that “In case you forgot, I got your li’l ass drunk last night and we did the doogie three times.” After Dinah’s death he reflected that “Every single melody she sang, she made hers.” These seminal sessions (they made 10 LPs together) include The Swingin’ Miss D (1955), arguably her best album after Dinah Jams (1954). On Jerome Kern’s They Didn’t Believe Me, Dinah manages to top an alternately restrained and scorching brass section. Edging a little closer to “pop” music, his two albums with Sarah Vaughan – You’re Mine You (1962) and Misty (1990) – are not quite in the same category, but still worth obtaining. The first features Sarah backed by a full orchestra, which is also (on some tracks) augmented with strings. As producer Teddy Reig observed in his liner note, the session is lifted by Quincy’s arrangements, the ensemble performances and (not least) Sarah herself. Discoursing on some of the female vocalists he had worked with, Quincy offered these succinct verdicts:
“Dinah liked a tightly rehearsed band so she could come into the studio, keep it real, and get out quick.” Ella was a “shy almost withdrawn person, so she liked arrangements that allowed her to cut loose and be free”. Sarah Vaughan, on the other hand, preferred “a different kind of sophistication and hipper chord changes”. He continued “But like Ella, she thought like a horn and sang like a horn. Lyrics were almost secondary to both of them. This was the secret of the longevity and success of the great big-band singers: Sassy, Ella, Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Peggy Lee. They were all influenced by great musicians.”
Quincy also admired Miles Davis, and in 1991 appeared with him at Montreux, and helped recreate some of the Gil Evans’ arrangements from Sketches Of Spain and Porgy And Bess. He remembered that “conducting Gil’s orchestrations for Miles was one of the most gratifying experiences in my career”. He was also proud of his recognition by Harvard in April 2000, when it endowed the Quincy Jones Professorship of African-American Music.
Over a long and constantly changing life, Quincy Jones embraced and enhanced all the genres of music. One can only endorse the late Richard Cook’s verdict that his “jazz career was eventually far outstripped by his work in popular music, and his best work in the idiom has been comparatively neglected”. With Quincy’s passing, one can only hope that it will now begin to receive overdue attention.
