A look at the life of the singular Quincy Jones

Summary

Consider This from NPR: A Look at the Life of the Singular Quincy Jones

NPR’s “Consider This” delves into the extraordinary life and legacy of Quincy Jones, a towering figure in the world of music and entertainment. This detailed summary captures the essence of the episode, highlighting key discussions, insights, and memorable quotes from Quincy Jones himself.

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1. Introduction: Celebrating a Legend

The episode opens with Mary Louise Kelly announcing the passing of Quincy Delight Jones Jr. at the age of 91. Jones's illustrious career left an indelible mark on popular entertainment, making him a central figure in the history of music. NPR’s Walter Ray Watson sets the stage by emphasizing Jones's unparalleled contributions and his collaborations with iconic artists like Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra.

Notable Quote:

“Only one man has worked with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra.”
— Mary Louise Kelly [00:01]

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2. Early Life: From Chicago to Seattle

Quincy Jones was born into a challenging environment in Chicago during the Great Depression. His father, a carpenter, and his mother, a housewife who sang church songs at home, provided a nurturing yet tough upbringing. At age ten, the family relocated to Seattle to escape gang violence and the hardships of the Great Depression.

Notable Quote:

“Gangsters. Nothing but gangsters. Back in the 30s, it was all I ever saw were machine guns and stogies and big piles of money on the lights.”
— Quincy Jones [10:20]

Jones recounts a harrowing childhood incident where he was threatened with a switchblade for being on the wrong street, an experience that left a lasting impression.

Notable Quote:

“They pinned my hand to a wooden fence with a switchblade when I was seven years old. What are you doing? They is being on the wrong block.”
— Quincy Jones [10:36]

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3. The Musical Awakening: Discovering His Passion

Music became Quincy’s sanctuary. Inspired by a 2001 NPR interview, he shared how an encounter with a piano in a rec center changed his life. Despite a mischievous youth, Quincy found solace and purpose in music, leading him to pick up the trumpet in high school and form a lifelong friendship with the blind pianist Ray Charles.

Notable Quote:

“I felt the goosebumps and everything. That changed my life.”
— Quincy Jones [05:24]

Under Ray Charles’s mentorship, Quincy learned to read music in braille, fostering his deep understanding of music theory and arrangement.

Notable Quote:

“From the very first moment I understood the concept that four trombones and four trumpets, separately or collectively syncopations without the same notes. It just. Something about it just fascinated me and I knew that's where I wanted to live the rest of my life.”
— Quincy Jones [05:56]

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4. Career Highlights: Shaping the Sound of an Era

Quincy Jones's career took off in the 1950s when he was hired by the legendary bandleader Lionel Hampton. Despite facing initial setbacks, including being thrown off the bus, Jones's talent was undeniable. He arranged music for prominent artists like Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan, earning the nickname "Q."

Notable Quote:

“If they asked me, I could write a book about the way you walk.”
— Quincy Jones [06:23]

In 1963, Jones produced the hit single "It's My Party" for Leslie Gore, marking his entry into mainstream pop music. His collaboration with Frank Sinatra revitalized Sinatra’s songbook, showcasing Jones’s versatility and innovative approach.

Notable Quote:

“Let me swing up there with those stars.”
— Quincy Jones [07:45]

Jones expanded his repertoire by composing memorable TV themes, including those for "Ironside" and "Sanford and Son." His groundbreaking work culminated in the production of "We Are the World" in 1985, a charity single that brought together over 50 artists to address global famine.

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5. Personal Insights: Reflections and Philosophy

Beyond his professional achievements, Quincy Jones was known for his vibrant personality and profound wisdom. He emphasized the importance of making positive choices daily, advocating for love over fear.

Notable Quote:

“Always choose love. Always choose love.”
— Quincy Jones [09:42]

In a 2008 interview, Jones reflected on his upbringing and the lessons learned from overcoming adversity. His friendship with Ray Charles and his dedication to honing his craft at the Schillinger House of Music (now Berklee College of Music) exemplify his commitment to excellence.

Notable Quote:

“I spent 28 years to hone my craft so I could write any kind of music.”
— Quincy Jones [13:51]

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6. Legacy and Impact: A Lasting Influence

Quincy Jones's influence transcends decades and genres. He amassed over two dozen Grammy Awards, published Vibe magazine, and served as the executive producer for the hit sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." As a mentor and tastemaker, Jones shaped the careers of countless artists and left an enduring legacy in both music and television.

His ability to bridge genres and generations made him a beloved figure, respected not only for his technical prowess but also for his unfiltered opinions and genuine personality.

Notable Quote:

“It is my party.”
— Ira Glass [07:17]

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7. Conclusion: A Tribute to Quincy Jones

The episode concludes by honoring Quincy Jones’s remarkable journey from a tumultuous childhood to becoming one of the most influential figures in music history. His story is a testament to resilience, passion, and the transformative power of music.

Final Reflection:

“The world will always welcome love.”
— Mary Louise Kelly [15:13]

NPR’s "Consider This" beautifully encapsulates Quincy Jones’s life, offering listeners an in-depth appreciation of his contributions and the indelible mark he left on the world of entertainment.

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Produced by:
Mark Rivers and Noah Caldwell
Edited by Courtney Dorning and Patrick Jaron Wadanana
Executive Producer: Sami Yenigun

Additional Resources:
Listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the “Consider This” newsletter for more stories and insights from the NPR team.

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This summary provides a comprehensive overview of the “Consider This” episode on Quincy Jones, ensuring that those who haven’t listened can fully grasp the depth and breadth of his extraordinary life and career.

Transcript

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Hi, it's Mary Louise Kelly. Real quick before the show. It has been a wild election season and in the home stretch, as you continue to follow every development here on Consider this, we want you to know there are two other ways to make sure you do not miss any developments. There's NPR's Morning News podcast. Up first. It is recorded before dawn. It is out by 7am Eastern each weekday. Later in the day, you can find a new episode of the NPR Politics Podcast with context and analysis on the big stories whenever they happen. So you get an alert. Big breaking news. You can look for the NPR Politics Podcast a few hours later. So again, you've got up first in the morning. Consider this in the evening and the NPR Politics Podcast anytime big stuff happens. An around the clock election news survival kit. Thank you for listening. Here's the show. Only one man has worked with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra.

[Quincy Jones]

Still, it's a real good bet. The best is yet to come.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And Richarls it had to be you.

[Quincy Jones]

It had to be you.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

That man was Quincy Delight Jones, who died on Sunday at the age of 91. The legacy he left behind has few peers in the history of popular entertainment. Consider can't tell the history of popular music without mentioning Quincy Jones. Coming up, we look back at his legendary career and hear from the man himself in a 2008 interview from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

[Ira Glass]

This is Ira Glass of this American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right, I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast. Chances are you know our show. So instead I'm going to tell you we've just been on a run of really good shows lately, some big, epic, emotional stories and some weird, funny stuff, too. Download us this American Life. This message comes from NPR sponsor Saatva, maker of quality handcrafted mattresses. Founder and CEO Ron Rutzen shares one of their core values. At Saatva, we believe sleep does unlock a superpower. When you wake up and you're totally refreshed, you go after things more. And it all starts with being on the right mattress. And that's what Saatva has been inspired.

[Quincy Jones]

By from the day that we started.

[Ira Glass]

To learn more, go to.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Joe Biden's.

[Ira Glass]

On his way out, Donald Trump's on his way back. Want to know what's happening as the presidential transition is underway, The NPR Politics Podcast has you covered with the latest news and analysis.

[Quincy Jones]

Listen.

[Ira Glass]

The NPR Politics Podcast.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

It's Consider this From npr. Quincy Jones, the famed music producer who helped artists dominate popular music for half a century, has died. His publicist says he passed away peacefully at his home in California. Jones career spanned the second half of the 20th century and stretched into the 21st. He wrote and produced everything from pop singles to high concept albums to TV film scores and more. NPR's Walter Ray Watson has this appreciation of a one of a kind artist.

[Ira Glass]

Quincy Jones. Music hooked ears, warmed hearts and moved feet to dance. Along with Michael Jackson, he broke open the pop music world with songs like these, all produced by Quincy Jones. More than a hundred million records sold, including that's right, Thriller, the best selling album of all time. Hard to imagine now, but record execs doubted whether Quincy Jones was the right fit to produce Michael Jackson's debut as a solo adult artist. Jones career started back in the 1950s. Arranging, performing, producing. He made so many records with so many bands, it's possible you've heard lots of his tunes never knowing they were his. Born quincy Delight Jones Jr. He was the son of a Chicago carpenter and a housewife mother who sang church songs at home. Jones faced gang violence as a child of the Great Depression and at age 10 his family moved to Seattle where his dad joined the war effort working in a shipyard.

[Quincy Jones]

Most of the days he was gone at 6:30 or 7:00 and so we were left to our own devices.

[Ira Glass]

Jones on NPR in 2001. As a kid he was a ringleader of mischief and one day with a bunch of boys, he targeted a roomful of freshly baked pies at a rec center. They broke in, ate all the pies. Then Jones opened the door and I.

[Quincy Jones]

Saw in the shadows, I saw a piano there and I almost closed the door and then something deep inside me said open the door again. And I went back into the room and slowly went over to that piano and I felt the goosebumps and everything.

[Ira Glass]

That changed my life, he said. By high school, Jones picked up the trumpet. Soon after, he gained a lifelong friend in a blind 16 year old pianist.

[Quincy Jones]

Ray was very generous with me and teaching me how to read music in braille.

[Ira Glass]

Ray Charles also taught Jones the basics.

[Quincy Jones]

From the very first moment I understood the concept that four trombones and four trumpets, separately or collectively syncopations without the same notes. It just. Something about it just fascinated me and I knew that's where I wanted to live the rest of my life.

[Ira Glass]

Quincy Jones was still a teenager when he was hired by legendary vibist and band leader Lionel Hampton. His talents opened the door. His Skills took him everywhere.

[Quincy Jones]

If they asked me, I could write a book about the way you walk.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And whisper and look.

[Ira Glass]

In the mid-1950s, singer Dinah Washington decided she needed a more mainstream, wider audience. She demanded Jones arrange her music. He made lush prestige albums for her and singers like Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan. Mercury Records promoted Quincy Jones as an executive, a major first for a black man at a major record label. In 2001 on WHYY's Fresh Air, Jones said the labels president told him straight up, we need help with the bottom line.

[Quincy Jones]

I was a little presumptuous and said, well, I don't think it's such a big deal to make a pop hit. He says, well, why don't you start making something then?

[Ira Glass]

It's my party. In 1963, Jones struck gold with an unknown 16 year old sing Leslie Gore. It's My Party was a smash hit. Like many of the other 18 singles Jones produced with Gore during the early to mid-1960s. That's when Frank Sinatra nicknamed him Q. Fly me to the moon.

[Quincy Jones]

Let me swing up there with those stars.

[Ira Glass]

Together they recorded an album that revived Sinatra's songbook. Quincy Jones seemed to have musical superpowers. In 1967, he got two Oscar nominations for his soundtracks, becoming the first black composer ever nominated for In Cold Blood.

[Quincy Jones]

And In the Heat of the Night.

[Ira Glass]

And he wrote many memorable TV themes too, like for the police drama Ironside and the sitcom Sanford and Son. He was just incredibly revolutionary. Dan Freeman is a bassist, sound designer and college professor. Quincy Jones actually was really kind of.

[Quincy Jones]

Blowing beyond, I guess, the frontiers of.

[Ira Glass]

Pop music and really kind of on the edge of things both I think, musically and technologically during those years. After 1975, a decade later, at the peak of the music video era, Jones produced We Are the world with USA for Africa. The groundbreaking charity album assembled some 50 pop stars and raised millions of dollars to address famine in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Quincy Jones was a tastemaker of new and established artists. He won more than two dozen Grammys, was the publisher of Vibe magazine, the executive producer of the hit sitcom the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and father of seven children. He was beloved for his vibrant personality and sometimes unfiltered opinions. Dan Freeman remembers the advice Jones gave to his graduating class at Harvard University in 1997. He said something very simple, which was that every day you had to make a choice.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

And the choice was between love and fear.

[Ira Glass]

And he said as much as you could. Always choose love. Always choose love. Words and music by Quincy Jones.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

That was NPR's Walter Ray Watson. In 2008, Jones published a book about his career, the Complete Quincy Jones. And he spoke about his life and career with then All Things Considered host Michelle Norris. They began with Jones reflecting on growing up in Chicago in what he called the heart of the ghetto.

[Quincy Jones]

Gangsters. Nothing but gangsters. Back in the 30s, it was all I ever saw were machine guns and stogies and big piles of money on the lights.

[Ira Glass]

You saw all this?

[Quincy Jones]

That's all as a kid, that's all I saw. I wanted to be a gangster till I was 11. Are you kidding?

[Ira Glass]

In your book, you tell this story. You say that they pinned my hand to a wooden fence with a switchblade when I was 7 years old. Who was they?

[Quincy Jones]

What are you doing? What they is being on the wrong block. If you went on the wrong street and didn't have the right call, you get a switchblade through your hand. I was seven years old.

[Ira Glass]

And they literally pinned your hand to a fence.

[Quincy Jones]

Yeah, and with a switchblade. Now also. Ice pick in my temple. That's real fun.

[Ira Glass]

They held it to your temple or.

[Quincy Jones]

Did they stuck it in my temple.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Oh, my goodness.

[Quincy Jones]

Oh, yeah. I got the scar right. But my medals to prove it. Here.

[Ira Glass]

How did you get out of Chicago?

[Quincy Jones]

Capone ran the Jones boys out because they didn't know they were making so much money. And they ran into Mexico. And my dad came and got my brother and I at the barbershop the next day and took us on a Trailway bus, no toys, and went straight to the Northwest. He went to Bremerton Navy Yard during the World War II. And then we went to Seattle two years later.

[Ira Glass]

Now that's where you met up with Ray Charles.

[Quincy Jones]

That's right. Exactly. Exactly. You got your homework done, you know.

[Ira Glass]

I did my homework.

[Quincy Jones]

You sure did.

[Ira Glass]

I knew who I was going to be talking to.

[Quincy Jones]

I met ray Charles at 14. He was 16, but he was like 100 years older than me. Quincy, my buddy. My buddy. Quite so true.

[Ira Glass]

How'd you meet?

[Quincy Jones]

We met. It wasn't like the film. We met up at the Elks Club. The Elks Club was where we all went after all of the paying jobs, whatever they were, whenever they came, that's where we went. To just play bebop for jam all night for free.

[Ira Glass]

Musically speaking, you've bridged so many genres and generations. Also, I understand that Lionel Hampton was the person who gave you your big break. I want you to tell me not just about Lionel Hampton, but also about Gladys Hampton, because I understand she stayed on top of you.

[Quincy Jones]

She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I was very upset, though, when I got thrown off the bus because I really wanted to go on the road. That's all I cared.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

Thrown off the bus?

[Quincy Jones]

Honey, honey, what's that child doing on here? Lionel, honey, get off of this bus and go back to school. We'll talk later. And I sat on the bus for four hours so they wouldn't change their mind. And, boy, it didn't happen.

[Ira Glass]

Tell me the story.

[Quincy Jones]

At 15 years old, he saw a piece of music I'd written called Sweet for the Four Winds. I didn't know what I was doing. He wanted to hire me as a trumpet playing arranger and I just jumped on the bus. I didn't want to tell my parents or anybody. I didn't want anybody to change because it had been my dream to be a member of a big band. And Lionel Hampton at that time was bigger than Duke Ellington, Basie, and Louis Armstrong. They all worked with Joe Claser, the associated booking, and he was the number one band. He worked 300 days a year, you know, and it was the most exciting educational learning experience I've had in my life.

[Ira Glass]

So you went back to Berklee to study music? It wasn't called Berkeley at the time.

[Quincy Jones]

It was the Schillinger House of Music. That was a Russian mathematician. My teacher said, you're going to learn everything everybody ever did with the 12 notes, from Stravinsky to Alvin Berg to Duke Ellington, Everybody. I spent 28 years to hone my craft so I could write any kind of music. And I learned so much by working as a conductor and arranger for Billy Eckstein and Ray Charles and Peggy Lee with no pressure on me. And those days, we didn't care about money or fame. We couldn't care less.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

That was Quincy Jones speaking with Michelle Norris back in 2008. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers and Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Patrick Jaron Wadanana. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. And one more thing before we go. You can now enjoy the Consider this newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day and you will also get to know our producers and hosts. And some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign [e-mail] considerthisnewsletter. It's Consider this from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. The world will always welcome love.

[Ira Glass]

Okay, so does this sound like you? You love NPR's podcasts? You wish you could get more of all your favorite shows and you want.

[Mary Louise Kelly]

To support NPR's mission to create a more informed public.

[Ira Glass]

If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR plus bundle. Learn more at plus.NPR.org the code switch team spent Election Day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them. It's a time capsule of people's hopes and fears before they knew the results. One way or another, there's a change coming.

[Quincy Jones]

I wanted to vote for Trump, but I voted for her.

[Ira Glass]

Gays for Trump. I cried this morning.

[Quincy Jones]

I've been crying on and off. I'm terrified.

[Ira Glass]

Listen to Code Switch, the podcast about race and identity, from NPR.