Quincy Jones

Quincy Delight Jones Jr., known as Quincy Jones and called Q , is a Trompettiste, Arrangeur, producing Compositeur and American born the March 14th 1933 with Chicago.

Biography

Born in Chicago, Quincy Jones knows a difficult childhood: poverty, mother interned for mental disease,… After several removals, his/her father settles in the suburbs of Seattle and it is there that Quincy Jones made knowledge with the music. He tests himself initially as an autodidact with the piano, then learns the trumpet at the school. At 13 years, it receives some courses of Clark Terry, at the time of a passage of the orchestra of Count Basie in Seattle. The financial position of the family is difficult and, apart from its hours of school, he carries on the activity of shoeshiner of shoes. He becomes acquainted with Ray Charles, his elder 3 years. The two friends form a combo which occurs in the clubs of the city. Quincy Jones forms also part of local orchestras. At 18 years, it obtains a purse to continue off its studies with the “Berklee College Music” of Boston.

It quickly leaves this establishment to integrate the orchestra of Lionel Hampton as trumpet player and Arrangeur. In spite of ridiculous wages (17 dollars the evening according to its memories), Quincy Jones remains 4 years in this Big band with which it makes even a round in Europe. It settles then a time with New York where it exerts as trumpet player but especially arranger “free lance”. He writes arrangements for many musicians (Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, Ray Charles).

In 1956, Quincy Jones is engaged by Dizzy Gillespie as trumpet player and musical director of sound big band for a round organized by the State Department to the Middle-East and in South America. A little later it records its first disc as leader for the label “ABC Paramount Records”.

In 1957, Quincy settles in Paris where he studies near Nadia Boulanger and works like “staff to arrange” for the label of Eddie Barclay (arrangements for Henri Salvador, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel,…). The group the Double-Six records an album devoted to its compositions. It is, the time of a European round, directing of the troop which plays the musical comedy “Free and easy” of Harold Arlen. In 1960, it forms a big band with 18 musicians of the troop. In spite of the musical quality of the orchestra, the experiment shows a financial fiasco and pushes Quincy Jones, man however fundamentally optimistic, at the edge of the depression.

It goes back to the United States where, thanks to the assistance of Irving Green, it becomes arranger then musical director of the label Mercury. It is within this framework that it will arrange tens of albums of jazzmen but, also and especially, artists like Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett,… In 1964, it is named vice-president of the label. The same year he writes to his first film music the Pawnbroker ( The Pawnbrocker ) of Sidney Lumet. In the years which follow, he writes many others of them (see appendix). He also works for television: musics of the iron Man ( Ironside ), Sanford and its and of the Bill Cosby Show . It militates in many movements antiracists and social near Martin Luther King or of the Reverend Jesse Jackson (founder of “People United to Save Humanity”) (PUSH). It helps the IBAM financially (“Institute for Black American Music”) and is one of the founders of “Black Arts Festival” of Chicago. In 1973, Quincy Jones by-product for CBS Duke Ellington, We Love You Madly , a television program in homage to the work of Duke in which Sarah Vaughan takes part, Aretha Franklin, Peggy Lee, Count Basie, Joe Williams, the group Chicago. Simultaneously with its activity of producer and type-setter, Quincy Jones continues to record discs, for several labels, under its name, often closer to the Rhythm and blues, the Funk or the Pop music that jazz.

In August 1974, it is victim of a Aneurysmal rupture and undergoes two big operations. After six months of stop, it takes again an intense activity. It produces Off the Wall the first album solo of Michael Jackson which is an enormous business success. In 1982, the test is transformed with Thriller . This album is sold to 55 million specimens. After a third album, Bad , Michael Jackson goes " rompre" with Quincy Jones, but the fortune of this last is definitively assured. Its financial position makes it possible Quincy Jones to buy the royalties of compositions of many musicians (it currently has the rights on approximately 1.600 titles). It also enables him to be, in 1985, Co-producer of film of Steven Spielberg the Color crimson ( The Color Purple ). The same year, he is Co-organizer of the recording of We Are the World , title " humanitaire" against the famine in Ethiopia. In 1988, it remixe Blue Monday of New Order. Quincy Jones does not forget therefore the jazz. In 1991, for example, it directs to the Festival of Montreux the orchestra which accompanies Miles Davis for the recovery by the arrangements written by Gil Evans. In 1993, Quincy Jones and David Salzman organize the concert of nomination of the president Bill Clinton.

Jones and Salzman found the company “QDE” (Quincy Jones/David Salzman Entertainment) which as well produces music, plays, films, television programs - of which the “Prince of Bel Air” (Fresh, Prince off Bel Air) for NBC-TV - and other products multimedia. QDE, whose Quincy Jones is the chairman, publishes also the review Vibe . Quincy Jones founds his own label Qwest Records . For anecdote, in 2001, Quincy Jones is made " Commandeur" Legion of honor by Jacques Chirac. In spite of its age, Quincy Jones is very active always today.

He is the father of the type-setter Quincy Jones III.

Discography

Albums studios

  • 1961 Quintessence
  • 1962 Big Band Worked Nova
  • 1994 Q' S Jook Joint (various artists)

Anthologies

  • 1989 : Back one the Block

Film musics

As curiosity, the topic of the credits of three films of the series Austin Powers is in fact “ Soul worked nova ”, a title drawn from the album of Quincy Jones “ Big band worked nova ” (1964). Quincy Jones briefly appears in his own role in the episode three ( Austin Powers in Goldmember ).

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