QUINCY
With nearly 3,000 songs recorded, 300 albums, 51 film and television scores, and 27 Grammy awards, Quincy Jones is to put it mildly, undoubtedly a living legend. ‘QUINCY’, the documentary directed by Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks chronicles the life of the 85-year-old record and film producer, who is most famous to a generation of people for his work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller and his film The Color Purple. The filmmakers spent six years chronicling Jones’ generation- and genre-spanning career, which took him from a life of poverty on Chicago’s South Side to one of fortune and fame after finding his salvation in music when he joined Lionel Hampton’s big band as a trumpeter at age 18.
In just over two hours, “Quincy” pays homage to seven decades of Jones’ achievements: 27 Grammy Awards and 79 nominations; producing tracks for Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra; mentoring a young Michael Jackson, rocketing Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith to superstardom; producing USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” for famine relief; and three marriages and seven children.
“Our intention was to simulate the experience of what it’s like to be in his world and to hang with him,” says his daughter, Rashida. “Most people tell us after seeing the film that it makes them feel lazy. You’d think it would be satisfying watching that as your own life. But his reaction the first time he saw it was, ‘I wish I could live forever.’
Jones also admitted he was driven to tears the first time and every time he’s seen the film. He knows he won’t live forever, but the message of his life comes through in the movie. Family, love, and keeping perspective.
“Don’t ever give up, and also keep the humility with the creativity. And grace with the success,” says Jones. “Because just because you’re behind a No. 1 record does not make you better than anybody.”
Jones, with a career spanning 60 years, is one of the most respected names in music history. He is one of only 15 people in history to take home an EGOT- an Emmy, an Academy Award and a Tony to his name. He was honored with a Grammy Legend Award, and is responsible for producing one of the top-selling albums of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller; launching the careers of A-list celebrities like Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith. He is the first African American in history to be nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar (for “The Eyes of Love” from the 1967 film Banning), as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for the film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year; the first to conduct the Academy Awards’ orchestra; the first to receive the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and has tied sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second-most Oscar-nominated African American in history. Also, he is the first African American to become VP of a major record label, Mercury Records. Additionally, he received the John F. Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, an honorary doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music, London in 2015 and in 2013. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Quincy Delight Jones Jr. hasn’t just lived through history, he is history.
‘Quincy’ is an incredible journey into who Jones is, and how he got there. The film explores where it all began, on the cold, mean streets of South Side Depression-era Chicago. His mother, Sarah Jones, a schizophrenic with dementia, was taken away in a straightjacket when he was 7. His father, Quincy Delight Jones, was a carpenter for the notorious Jones Boys. “We were street rats,” he recalls. “We’d see dead bodies every day, Tommy guns, stogies and piles of money in back rooms. When you’re young, you want to do what you see, and what I could see was gangsters.”
His father moved Jones and his brother to Seattle, where he discovered his love of music by breaking into an armory and toying around with an old upright piano he found there. After that one moment of tinkling, he swears he knew music was his destiny. He tried percussion, trombone, sousaphone, B-flat baritone horn and the French horn before falling for the trumpet. “Just that idea of seeing black men that were dignified and proud, I thought, ‘That’s what I wanted to be,’” he notes. He had a stint working with the late great Frank Sinatra as an arranger and composer for his band. The two remained close friends for life. From there, he went on to films. He scored Mirage and The Slender Thread in 1965, then began scoring countless other movies. For seven years, he was in constant demand as a composer. His film credits included The Italian Job, The Out-Of-Towners, They Call Me Mister Tibbs! and The Getaway. In addition, he composed “The Streetbeater,” which became familiar as the theme music for the television sitcom Sanford and Son, and the themes for other TV shows including Ironside, Banacek, The Bill Cosby Show and the opening episode of Roots.
He began the next phase of his career, when he moved back to New York to be the music supervisor for The Wiz, a fantasy film starring Michael Jackson. While working on the 1978 release, Jones also decided to produce Jackson’s solo album, Off the Wall. That album sold more than 20 million copies and also solidified Jones as the most powerful record producer in the industry at that time. “When Michael and I first worked together on The Wiz, I saw his work ethic. He knew everybody’s songs and lines from the movie. I knew he had more inside of him artistically than he’d given us with The Jackson Five,” Jones recalls. He not only went on to produce Jackson’s Thriller, which sold 110 million copies and became the highest-selling album of all time (at the time) as well as the accompanying music video for Thriller—another unprecedented Jones concept, a 14-minute mini-film that contributed to the rise of music videos as promotional tools for album sales. Next was the 1987 album, Bad, which went on to sell 45 million copies.
Jones is also credited with discovering Oprah Winfrey. He cast her in his 1985 film, The Color Purple, and the rest is history. When I first found Oprah, it was amazing. I told her that her future was so bright that it would burn my eyes. She never stops growing. She got $35,000 for The Color Purple, and she’s worth $3.5 billion today” he says.
Quincy Jones won seven Grammys under his own name for his 1989 album, Back on the Block. He joined forces with Timer Warner, Inc. in 1990 to create Quincy Jones Entertainment (QJE), where he was responsible for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and the discovery of megastar Will Smith. “Will had never acted before Fresh Prince, but I knew it would work. After a 15-minute read through, there was no doubt he was our guy. I can’t drive a car, but what I can do is see the talent in a person… or not,” he says with a laugh.
If there’s anything that Quincy has captured, it’s that for this iconic music man, life is always beautiful. “I’ve been fortunate to have lived a very full life,” he admits. “When I was in [Washington] D.C. for the concert to celebrate the first Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday in 1985, a family approached me, and the grandmother had a copy of Sinatra at the Sands, the mother had a copy of The Dude and the daughter had a copy of Thriller. It was a really gratifying moment. Different generations know me for different things, so perhaps each generation will learn a little more about my entire body of work. Someone once called me the ‘Ghetto Forrest Gump’ that has spanned seven decades in music… I’ve been around for a long time… I’m very happy being alive and being vertical and having the experiences I’ve had…but they promised me 30 more years, so I’ve got time. Honey, what a life it is—and I’m not done yet.”
‘Quincy’ is currently streaming on Netflix. Be sure to check it out…It’s definitely a must see.
Darryl Rembert
