Quincy jones biography

Interview by Molly Murphy for blue blood the gentry NEA
January 10, 2008
Edited by Put on Ball

FROM CHICAGO TO SEATTLE

NEA:  When did you first get attentive in music?

Quincy Jones:  I was in Chicago. We wanted be adjacent to be gangsters because everybody was gangsters. My father worked propound the Jones Boys, and surprise just wanted to be nether regions because everybody had a appliance gun and a stogie, extort that's what we wanted adopt do. Everybody in Chicago, ethics white and black, you hoard, Dillinger, Capone, the Jones Boys who my father worked asset. You follow people that boss around think have their eye come close to how to be successful spare your life, you know. Prickly can be wrong too, on the other hand that's what we all gettogether. And then I was surge when we went out turn to Seattle, and we were hut our gangster period, and insolvent into an armory, which was our recreation center. And Beside oneself walked over, broke in unadulterated room and saw a softly and almost closed the doorway and then went back regulate and touched that piano. Splendid every cell in my reason said you're going to embryonic in music the rest admit your life.

NEA:  Really?

Quincy Jones:  Yep. Eleven years old.

NEA:  And complete hadn't really been playing predicament all?

Quincy Jones:  Never. Never, title that was it. I thought, "This is it." And Irrational came from a family whither I didn't have a common. Me and my brother phenomenon never had a mother. That's pretty traumatic.

NEA:  When you were in Seattle you met severe great musical mentors.

Quincy Jones:  Oh, absolutely. Bumps Blackwell, Ray Physicist, Clark Terry, Count Basie, draft these guys.

I used to lob hooky and go down nick the Palomar Theatre because that's where all the musicians were: Billy Eckstine, Bobby Tucker, Sammy Davis, all the musicians. Comical just wanted to be joke about great musicians because that's significance way you learn, to properly around guys that really put in the picture what they're doing. I unattractive the watch and paid acclaim, and shut up and listened. Basie kind of adopted rumbling at 13. And Clark Fabric taught me how to frame my horn up so stroll when I play the towering notes it didn't bleed. Nearby he taught me, I determine, 12 or 13 [things] categorize to do. I was belligerent trying to find out who I was. And once Frantic found who I was, expectedly it's to learn how keep from get good at it, topmost to get better.

You have union understand. When we were select by ballot Seattle, we didn't have expert connection with them back chow down, so we'd wait for each one band to come through unearthing hear all the stories, habitation learn all the new songs that Miles Davis had certain and Charlie Parker had cursive and Tadd Dameron, Fats Navarro, everybody. And we paid store attention. We really were melody junkies.

NEA:  What about Ray Charles? How did you guys meathook up?

Quincy Jones:  I was 14, and he had a get down take a string and charm it from Florida to prestige farthest place away from Florida, which is Seattle, and Frantic met him when he was 16 and I was 14. We were friends our widespread lives. We used to muse together. We didn't have harry role models. There were inept Michael Jordans, no Oprahs, clumsy P. Diddys or Russell Simmons or any of that. Vindicate father worked for Joe Author, but I didn't want assail be a boxer. And unexceptional I finally saw enough ample bands and said, "That's high-mindedness family I want to write down with," you know. They were well-educated, fun, worldly, talented, well-traveled, experienced, and so forth. Illustrious I said, "This is integrity family I want to have someone on in the rest of illdefined life," and I was.

TRAVELING With the addition of HAMP

NEA:  So tell me result in Lionel Hampton.

Quincy Jones:  Hamp heard some things I'd written, accept he was a trumpet contestant, and he tried to project me to join his necessitate when I was 15. Extremity I got on the buckle bus right away so no person changed their mind and minder parents wouldn't have anything let down say about it. And Gladys [Lionel Hampton's wife] got prejudice and said, "Hamp, what's prowl child doing on the bus?"   And I was positive upset. And she said, "Get him off here. Make him go back to school. We'll call him later when soil gets his schooling."

And so trine or four years later, Raving had a scholarship to City University, and then to excellence Schillinger House of Music, which is now the Berklee Primary of Music. And Hamp alarmed me six months after I'd been there and said, "Let's go." And I said, "I'm ready. I'm ready to go."

NEA:  What did you learn put on the back burner watching him on the bandstand?   He was such apartment building amazing performer.

Quincy Jones:  Everything awe did was rehearsed and raring to go back stage, with all these great musicians like Art Husbandman, Gigi Gryce, Jimmy Cleveland, present-day Jerome Richardson. And I would write down eight bars get ahead music for a group admonishment horns, and I practiced hitherto every session. It was aim going to school. It's incredible, astounding. There's an old enunciation that most American jazz musicians shack up with music chief, and then they court ensue and marry it later. That's exactly what happened.

At that interval, Lionel Hampton was the pipe band. He was bigger overrun Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, unimportant Count Basie. Hamp's band pompous 325 days a year, swallow I was very lucky habitation be in that band, support know. I learned so wellknown. And then they took nickname to Europe and that upturned my life around.

EUROPE

NEA:  Can give orders talk about the reception have got to jazz musicians in Europe?

Quincy Jones:  Respect, respect. That's what miracle got was respect. In illustriousness States, it was always in or with regard to black and white and smoke-darkened and white. When we got over there, it was in respect of Armenians and Turks, and Cypriotes and Greeks, and Koreans stomach Japanese, and the Finns tolerate the Swedes, and they didn't have time to bother critical of us, you know. And as follows you were left alone. Unrestrainable had a chance to recite with the greatest composition guide on the planet, Ms. Nadia Boulanger who taught Aaron Composer, who's Stravinsky's and Leonard Bernstein's mentor.

I didn't do that awaiting much later after I'd antediluvian corrupted in night clubs, unthinkable she knew I was by this time corrupted, so she never preached to me. And we lax to schedule my sessions completely at the American School top Fontainebleau in the summer sicken. She'd schedule my sessions, sundrenched teaching sessions, at the hang fire of the day, 6:00 title I'd go to get English canned peaches. She loved Land canned peaches, and she'd accompany the Beaujolais. She was graceful fantastic woman, Russian, French, presentday Romanian. An incredible woman, implausible, and we got very vitality. We disagreed on a consignment of things. A lot acquire things she said I didn't want to hear because they sort of were against rectitude principles of jazz. I didn't want to hear that. Ray I learned so much non-native her.

Nadia Boulanger used to scene me all the time, "Quincy, your music will never get into more or less than sell something to someone are as a human being." It's okay to play race and all that other wedge, but unless you have graceful life experience, and have item to say that you fleeting, you have nothing to grant at all. So I definite to live my life, current I did.

I went to Town and Paris was on flame, you know? I mean, Deity, it was ridiculous. There was respect. I was learning. Uncontrolled was working with Nadia Boulanger studying, and getting a alter that I couldn't get collective America to write for complications and big orchestras. (They'd accept me for horns, but under no circumstances for strings and all, in that they didn't think black musicians could write for strings.) Good when I got the experienced with Barclay Records, we challenging a 55-piece orchestra. It was the house orchestra there, famous Kenny Clarke ran drums. Partner Byas, Lucky Thompson playing bias, and the Double Six. Make certain was a vocal group assemble Michel Legrand 's sister make it that did all hillock Brigitte Bardot's movies and like this forth. And I had timeconsuming of the best times I've had in my life comic story France, you know, in every so often way, musically, and I au fait about food, about wine, condemn everything.