You’ve got to have some serious game to command headlines when you’re 84. But in 2018, Quincy Jones—the storied bandleader, composer, arranger and producer whose decades-long career sprawled across landmark jazz, pop, R&B and soundtrack recordings—stopped traffic with a no-holds-barred conversation with David Marchese for New York. He had takes on everything: Marlon Brando’s sexuality (“he’d fuck a mailbox!”), the state of pop (“when you go after Ciroc vodka…God walks out of the room”), the Kennedy assassination (“I know too much, man”) and even the Beatles (“the worst musicians in the world…no-playing motherfuckers”).
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Whatever his opinion of their musical chops, Jones shared this much with the Fab Four: a world changing vision of popular music. Jones, who died today at 91, leaves behind a body of work that is almost impossible to wrap your arms around. He recorded with the giants of American singing: Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Betty Carter, Frank Sinatra. But he was not limited to jazz or standards. He produced everything from the first hits by ‘60s teen-pop idol Lesley Gore to the biggest selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He was a restless creative powerhouse who ranged far: his 1974 funk album Body Heat would be sampled by Tupac and De La Soul; his 1981 album The Dude would spawn the everlasting R&B power-ballad “Just Once,” sung by James Ingram;his label, Qwest, brought the albums of Joy Division to the U.S. market.
Beyond music, he was a force in television (executive producing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a breakthrough for rapper-turned-actor Will Smith), media (co-founding VIBE magazine, a key voice of hip-hop journalism) and activism (producing “We Are the World” and founding and funding a host of charities and nonprofits).
Above all, though, there is the music. Here are 15 highlights from a life and career that was always on cue, because it was always on Q.
“Soul Bossa Nova” (1962): Jones cut his teeth as a trumpeter and musical director alongside such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton; he also played in such unlikely places as CBS’ studio orchestra when Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1961, Jones became vice-president of the Mercury label—the first Black executive at a white-owned label—and continued recording for them as well. His big band boasted players from saxophonist Phil Woods and flutist Rashaad Roland Kirk to future Mission:Impossible composer Lalo Schifrin on piano—and all of them made magic on the........