He was a boundary-breaking innovator to many and a trend-chasing sellout to a few, but whether you liked his work or not the successes and longevity of Quincy Jones remain undeniable. His work spanned over fifty years of hit songs, and the roster of people or groups he played with, composed or arranged for, or produced is legendary: Billie Holliday, Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, the Count Basie Orchestra, Little Richard, Frank Sinatra, Herbie Hancock, Lalo Schifrin, Lesley Gore, Toots Thielemans, Dave Grusin, the Brothers Johnson, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Barry White, Ice-T, and Big Daddy Kane just to name 25 of them. From 1974 to 1995, he put on his pants just like the rest of us, one leg at a time, except when his pants were on he often made Gold and Platinum records. He was fluent in darn near every genre that was important in his time: jazz, bebop, blues, rock, R&B, soul, gospel, funk, jazz fusion, disco, synth-pop, and even hip-hop and new jack swing near the end. For a lot of people he just was popular music.
He was also a damn fine score composer. He wrote music for over 30 films as well as themes and episodic music for multiple TV shows and miniseries. In his 1964-72 heyday, few others in Hollywood were writing scores that were so sonically ambitious and genre-curious, with Quincy taking the same attitude he took with his other albums about pushing together new combinations of sounds and styles. He was even messing around with unconventional ensembles and samples in the late 1960s, decades before that became a more commonplace way of scoring films, and television audiences were introduced to the Moog synthesizer thanks to him. You can’t talk about the Silver Age of Hollywood without his music, though we often omit him in part because a good portion of his scores remain either unreleased or were only ever issued on LP (and maybe also because he didn’t always get the best assignments).
When I started this project I only intended to cover his film scores, but curiosity about what overlaps might’ve existed with his other albums won me over, and before I knew it this had morphed into a comprehensive listening project of every album involving Q that I could get my hands on. Doing detailed commentary on everything would exhaust me and be a waste of time for most readers here, but I still wanted to cover my thoughts on each of his film and TV scores, perspectives on other major albums he worked on, and any other notable events or trends throughout his career. Most of his albums were thankfully available on digital/streaming services. A few other scores I already had the CD releases of or had to buy in that format. Alas, a number of major albums were released on LP back in their day (including several scores) but have not received reissues in any other formats; some intrepid folks have put rips of some out there for public consumption, but others (at least for now) remain lost to the ages including several records for baritone crooner Billy Eckstine and both albums he produced for Canadian composer Robert Farnon. And several of Quincy’s scores were never released in any format, though I’ll call those out as I go.
I’ll also admit up front that there’s plenty of material Quincy did that never was recorded for any albums, so while this is as complete a survey I could do at the time it is by no means a holistic review of his entire career. And, with a few exceptions, I’m not delving too far into his personal life - kids, marriages, girlfriends, crazy stories, nicknames for everyone, etc. Seek out his well-received autobiography or his daughter’s acclaimed documentary film or any recent obituary if you want more on those subjects.
We can also laugh that I went through this journey across over 120 albums and realized I’d already heard the four best scores he wrote.
The upcoming posting plan, with each new entry dropping on Tuesdays and Thursdays:
Chapter 1 - 1954-61: Jazz origins and the first film
Chapter 2 - 1962-65: Bossa nova + Sidney, Sidney & Sydney
Chapter 3 - 1966-67: The forgotten breakthrough film, Oscar noms, the Moog
Chapter 4 - 1968-74: An Indian surprise, Cockney nonsense, groovy fun
Chapter 5 - 1975-78: Back from the dead, being myopic, a fortuitous encounter
Chapter 6 - 1979-82: Superproducer
Chapter 7 - 1983-87: Once more with Frank, Purplegate, implosion
Chapter 8 - 1988-99: A masterpiece, a flawed follow-up, the best concert album
Chapter 9 - 2000 and beyond: Fiddy, Fantasia, full circle, finality
Chapter 10 - The score and album rankings
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Next time: It begins.
