Quincy Jones

A Research and Information Guide

Clarence Bernard Henry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136329333
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica

Quincy Jones: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography and discography on one of the most prolific composers, arrangers, and conductors in American music. This reference work will appeal to wide range of musicologists, ethnomusicologists and cultural studies scholars.

1

Quincy Jones: A Biography

Quincy Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 14, 1933. As a youth growing up in the South Side of Chicago, there was a constant and tangible musical presence where Jones was constantly exposed to Chicago’s rich culture and many different styles of music. Even at a young age Jones exhibited skills in musicianship. He was often drawn to the sounds of music in his neighborhood as being a positive experience.

By the early part of the 1940s, Jones and his family relocated to the Pacific Northwest to pursue a better life. His personal engagement with music began in 1945, when he was approximately eleven years in Sinclair Heights, an African American neighborhood in the Navy town of Bremerton located in close proximity to the Seattle, Washington area. At a recreation center called the Armory, Jones and some neighborhood friends broke into the soda fountain area and found a freezer where lemon meringue pie and ice cream were stored. But for Jones, there was a much greater artistic awakening in that the Armory was the place where he discovered a small stage where an old upright piano was located. As he touched the keys he began to find a sense of peace.¹

From the experience at the Armory and as time progressed, for Jones music became something that he felt that he could control that offered a type of creative freedom. Jones’s early influences also involved his continued active exploration of music in the city of Seattle, where over time he was able to musically develop a deep sense of inner hearing and memory. This also involved his constant engagement of acquiring knowledge about the concepts and functions of music (e.g., harmony, structure, form, and style).

Early on Jones was able to receive formal music instruction at the racially integrated Robert A. Coontz Junior High School. At this particular school, Jones sang in the choir and performed in the band. He also had opportunities to study many different musical instruments—drums, tuba, B-flat baritone horn, French horn, E-flat alto horn, Sousaphone, piano, violin, and clarinet. But these instruments were not suited for him. Ultimately, Jones began to concentrate on the trumpet as his principle instrument. His father was highly supportive of his musical talents and provided Jones with his first trumpet.

Jazz trumpeter, Clark Terry served as one of Jones’s early important mentors/teachers. As a professional musician, Terry had performed with many different bands that included Charlie Barnet, Count Basie (big bands and small ensembles), and Duke Ellington.² In 1947 when Jones was thirteen years old, he constantly sought music lessons from Terry who would often travel to different parts of the United States to perform jazz concerts. In Seattle on one occasion while Terry was performing at the Palomar Theater, Jones approached this jazz musician and introduced himself and mentioned that he was in the process of learning how to play the trumpet and write music. As a result, when Terry was in residence in Seattle, Jones would often pursue trumpet lessons with Terry. Jones and Terry often worked for hours, and when the music lessons ended, Jones would attend school. The lessons provided by Terry were beneficial to Jones’s future as a musician.

Another musician who greatly influenced Jones’s interests in compositional writing, early creative thinking, development, and ideas about musical diversity was popular musician, Ray Charles (1930–2004). Jones also became acquainted with Charles in Seattle when he was fourteen years old and when Charles was approximately sixteen years old. Charles was talented and had the ability to read music in Braille, a skill that he passed on to Jones. Charles was also an independent musician who pursued many activities and possessed an ability to perform styles ranging from jazz to classical music.

In their close friendship, Charles emphasized to Jones the idea of inclusiveness and as a musician, being open to performing a variety of music styles. For example, Jones performed in Charles’ band at social engagements held at venues such as the Seattle Tennis Club, Washington Social Club, bar mitzvahs, and frat dances. The band was required to perform a variety of music styles which greatly benefitted Jones’s future development as a musician, composer, and arranger. Charles not only inspired Jones’s interests in musical diversity but he also taught Jones some techniques of notation that would be beneficial to Jones’s skills in writing compositions and arrangements throughout his career.

Jones attended James A. Garfield High School. In addition to his music study at this local high school, he also became proficient as a vibrant trumpet player while performing in a semi-professional band organized by his friend, Charles Taylor. This band was later incorporated as the Bumps Blackwell Junior Band. The director was known as “Bumps” whose real name was Robert Blackwell who played the vibraphone (vibes) and served as a mentor for the group.

In many ways, performing with the Bumps Blackwell Junior Band further prepared Jones to be competitive as a professional musician. When he became a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra a few years later, he had already acquired firsthand knowledge of the inter-workings of the performance stage; big band ensemble format; instrumentation; audience and performer responses; and jazz, and rhythm and blues repertoire.

THE LIONEL HAMPTON AND DIZZY GILLESPIE BANDS

Lionel Hampton (1908–2002) and Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993) were two legendary bandleaders who greatly influenced Jones’s early career in jazz. Lionel Hampton and Jones first became acquainted in 1948 when Hampton performed a concert in Seattle at the Palomar Theater. When Jones was fifteen years old, he attended one of Hampton’s concerts and made his way backstage and showed Hampton his first composition The Four Winds Suite, an intricate instrumental work that demonstrated Jones’s promise in learning how to master the craft of writing and arranging compositions—transposing instrumental parts, exploring timbres, textures, harmonies, and comprehension of various underlying rhythmic structures in orchestral works. After playing it, Hampton was very impressed and invited Jones to join his orchestra. But the problem was that Hampton’s wife (Gladys) objected and encouraged Jones to remain in Seattle and to complete his education.

Jones completed his high school education. But before his graduation he performed with the jazz workshop band under the direction of Gus Mankertz of Seattle University. This band also performed Jones’s first composition, The Four Winds Suite. Because of his significant talents and compositional skills, Jones received several music scholarships from Seattle University and this was followed by his advanced study in contemporary music at Schillinger House in Boston (currently known as Berklee College of Music) where Jones studied arranging, big band ensembles, music theory, and jazz solo analysis.

While studying in the city of Boston, Jones interacted with popular musicians of the highest caliber such as performing at some of the local clubs with famous bebop bassist Oscar Pettiford who later sent for Jones to come to New York and do several arrangements. Eventually word of Jones’s talents was expressed to Lionel Hampton who again attempted to recruit Jones for his orchestra.

By 1951, Jones was reinvited to become a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra as a trumpet player and arranger. He toured with Hampton for approximately two years (from 1951 to 1953). Performing with Hampton was one of the most important opportunities in Jones’s early professional career. By performing with Hampton’s orchestra Jones learned the significance of becoming a perfectionist, especially when observing Hampton’s work and performance ethics of having one of the best bands in jazz/popular music history.

“Kingfish” (1951) was Jones’s first professional composition he wrote when he was eighteen years old while he was a member of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. Even as a teenager, this composition greatly showed Jones’s promise as a professional composer and arranger of popular music. In the composition, Jones integrated complex rhythms and textures with different stylistic influences from Swing, bebop, cool jazz, and rhythm and blues styles. In his compositional writing, Jones also included introductory melodic material arranged for a vibraphone (played by Hampton) and an improvisational trumpet solo (played by Jones). The arrangement of “Kingfish” also incorporated unison passages written for horns and flute, walking bass³ patterns, virtuosic improvisations written for several instruments, swing rhythms, piano harmonic chords and rhythmic accompaniment which support the soloists, and call-and-response/short repeated (riff) patterns in contrast played between the instrumental sections.

In 1953 Jones toured with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra in Europe where some of the members of the group included Clifford Brown, Art Farmer (trumpets), Jimmy Cleveland (trombone), Gigi Gryce, Anthony Ortega (alto saxophones), Monk Montgomery (bass), and others. After performing with Hampton, in 1953, while in Europe, Jones organized one of his first instrumental ensembles known as “Clifford Brown & Art Farmer with the Swedish All Stars.” This particular ensemble was one of collegiality and musicianship. In addition to American jazz trumpeters Clifford Brown and Art Farmer, other members of the ensemble included Swedes Arne Domnérus (alto saxophone), Bengt Hallberg (piano), Lars Gullin (baritone sax), Åke Persson (trombone), Gunnar Johnson (bass), and Jack Norén (drums).

This particular group recorded Jones’s original composition, “Stockholm Sweetnin” (1953), a composition where Jones created a rich textural arrangement of instrumentation comprising lyrical melodies arranged for a combination of four horn parts—trumpet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, and trombone. This composition is also an example of Jones’s expertise in writing horn arrangements.

In his early career in the mid-1950s, many of the musicians who Jones collaborated with after working with Lionel Hampton were rhythm and blues musicians such as Louis Jordan, The Treniers, and others. Although Jones was writing and recording various popular styles, he did not stray away from the jazz tradition. One of his most significant international experiences was in 1956 during his affiliation with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band on the first official US jazz goodwill tour that was initiated by the Harlem, NY Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. with the idea of forming international/goodwill relationships with foreign countries through the performance of African American popular music.

Jones had previously collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie in 1954 when he had performed as a trumpeter with the Gillespie band and recorded the albums Afro (Norgran, 1954) and Diz Big Band (Verve, 1954). As a result, Gillespie was highly impressed with the musicianship and compositional skills of Jones in assisting in organizing the goodwill band tour. In 1956 Gillespie appointed Jones as music director, frontline trumpeter, and arranger for the official band tour of the Middle East, Far East, and South America.

The goodwill band tour was significant because it brought together African American and White musicians in international performances of jazz during a time in the 1950s when America continued to be a segregated society. The musicians considered it a high honor to have been selected to participate in a State Department tour and having an opportunity to represent America in cultural affairs.

In many areas that were included on the goodwill tour itinerary (e.g., Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Argentina) it was quite unusual for the locals to interact with African Americans and jazz musicians. But the opportunities that Jones gained from performing with Dizzy Gillespie’s tour band were also invaluable to his life and career when he soon found many other opportunities to expand his career in composing and as a bandleader.

THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

In 1957 Jones assumed a position in Paris, France as a music director, arranger, and conductor for Barclay Records, a company that was owned and operated by Nicole and Eddie Barclay. One of the reasons why Jones accepted the position at Barclay Records was to concentrate more on composing and writing for string instruments. He was initially going to remain in Paris for only a few months. However, his stay in Paris lasted longer than he had expected.

At Barclay Records, Jones collaborated with American jazz musicians such as Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan (1924–1990) (vocalist) and Zoot Sims (tenor saxophone) with the Eddie Barclay Orchestra on the album Vaughn and Violins (1958). He also produced this particular album that includes his arrangement of “Misty” (1958) (originally composed by Errol Garner [music] and Johnny Burke [lyrics]). The collaboration for the recording was an ideal opportunity because Vaughn had a distinct ability to interpret many styles of music in performances and recordings with a variety of musicians and instrumental ensembles. As a composer, Jones had high regards for Vaughn’s vocal ability and it was not a difficult task to write a string and vocal arrangement for such a dynamic singer. Jones’s arrangement of Misty has become a popular music standard.

While in France, Jones also prepared compositions and arrangements for vocal groups and musicians such as the Double Six of Paris and Billy Eckstine. But in addition to composing in jazz, Jones was also interested in incorporating elements of classical music in his works. He was greatly influenced by classical composers such as Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, and many others. During his time, in France, one of the legendary musicians who inspired Jones was Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), who was one of the first staff members of the Ecole Normale du Musique where she taught harmony, counterpoint, music history, analysis, organ, composition, and keyboard harmony. Boulanger was also a founding member of the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau in 1921 and became its director in 1948.

Beginning in the early 1920s, many American composers went to France to study at the American Conservatory with Boulanger. Among her American students included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Roy Harris, Walter Piston, Ross Lee Finney, Phillip Glass, and Elliott Carter. There were also a few African American musicians, excelling in the classical music tradition, who studied with Boulanger. These include Nathaniel Dett, George Walker, and Julia Perry.

In Boulanger’s studio, Jones was required to analyze many complex classical works such as Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.⁴ In studying with Boulanger, Jones gained a deeper insight into the fundamentals of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Quincy Jones: A Biography
• 2. Discography: The Recordings of Quincy Jones
• 3. Works in Film, Television, Special Programs, Performances, and Documentary Films
• 4. Annotated Bibliography: Writings in Books, Liner Notes, Reference Sources, and Journal Articles
• 5. Special Collections and Archival Holdings
• Appendix. Quincy Jones: Awards, Honors, and Special Recognition
• Index of Names
• Index of Albums, Soundtracks, Film Titles, Book Titles, Liner Notes, Journals, Music Scores, Series, and Collections
• Index of Organizations, Institutions, Publishers, and Record Labels