![]() “I always did all kinds of music,” he says. In 1956, he served as Gillespie’s arranger and musical director on a State Department mission to Paris, and then returned on his own in 1957 to study with the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger, developing a respect for all genres of music. Jones was a music prodigy - someone who processed music as colors (“I see music before I hear it”) and, even as a kid, could go to the movies and immediately determine, from merely the sound of a score, which studio was behind a film - and he got to grow his skills even further in his 20s when he began to spend time in Europe. As he puts it, “Orchestration, to me, is like Heaven.” Then, after touring with Hampton for a while, he moved to New York and began arranging music for others, employing his knowledge of instruments to craft beautiful ways of bringing songs to life. At 15, he was recruited to join Hampton’s band, but wasn’t permitted to do so until the age of 18, by which time he had completed his college education at the Berklee College of Music, which gave him a scholarship. At 14, he met and became best friends with Ray Charles, who was four years older, and began to play trumpet behind the likes of Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstine when they came through town. At 12, he discovered jazz and began to study with the master Clark Terry, who also taught Davis. “I’d have been dead or in prison if I hadn’t done that.”Īt 10, Jones relocated with his family to Seattle, where his involvement with music exploded. What saved him, Jones says, was his discovery of music, which came through a series of events - hearing his mother singing, listening in to a neighbor practicing on her piano and ultimately breaking into a social hall and experimenting on its piano. The grandson of a former slave, he recalls a “nightmare” of a childhood set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, gang violence and poverty. Jones was born in Chicago in 1933 to a carpenter father and a mentally disturbed mother who was taken away in a straitjacket when he was just 7. Abrams, Kris Jenner, Jimmy Fallon, Rachel Brosnahan, Michael Moore, Elisabeth Moss, RuPaul, Margot Robbie, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lady Gaga, Bill Maher, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks, Judi Dench & Aziz Ansari. LISTEN: You can hear the entire interview below, following a conversation between host Scott Feinberg and Quincy directors Al Hicks and Rashida Jones about the making of the film and its enigmatic subject.Ĭlick here to access our past episodes, including conversations with Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Meryl Streep, Justin Timberlake, Gal Gadot, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lawrence, Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Snoop Dogg, Jessica Chastain, Stephen Colbert, Kate Winslet, Aaron Sorkin, Carol Burnett, Ryan Reynolds, Helen Mirren, Denzel Washington, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ryan Murphy, Natalie Portman, Jimmy Kimmel, Nicole Kidman, Chadwick Boseman, Reese Witherspoon, Ricky Gervais, Amy Schumer, Eddie Murphy, Jane Fonda, Tyler Perry, Emma Stone, Jerry Seinfeld, Emilia Clarke, J.J. ![]() He’s also a 2013 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and recipient of its lifetime achievement award.īut who is Quincy Jones, and what exactly makes him special? Those are the questions addressed in Quincy, a new documentary feature on Netflix that was co-directed by one of Jones’ seven children, daughter Rashida Jones, and Australian jazz musician-turned-filmmaker Al Hicks. And the list, quite literally, goes on, as he continues to be a major force in his ninth decade of life.Īlong the way, Jones also became one of only 21 EGOTs in history, if you count not only competitive awards like his 27 Grammys (tied for most among the living, and second most overall), one Emmy and one Tony, and non-competitive awards, like the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award that the film Academy presented him in 1995, his two special Grammys, 1989’s Trustees Award and 1992’s Legend Award. He was on set in 1984 for the filming of the most famous music video of all time, Michael Jackson‘s “Thriller.” He brought together dozens of the biggest artists in music history to record the charity single “We Are the World” in 1985. He scored the biggest TV miniseries of the 1970s, or any decade for that matter, 1977’s Roots. In 1969, “Fly Me to the Moon,” which he arranged for Frank Sinatra, became the first song ever played on the moon. He was standing by the piano with John Coltrane when Miles Davis recorded what many regard as the greatest jazz album ever, Kind of Blue, in 1959. During the 1950s and 1960s, he played with the big bands of Lionel Hampton, Dizzie Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. The 85-year-old has been near the center of the music world for decades. How Dual Roles in 'Queen Charlotte,' 'Tiny Beautiful Things' and More Mirror the Past As Well As the Present
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