Filmtracks: The Quincy Jones Saga #1 - 1954-61: Jazz origins and the first film

• Posted by: JBlough <Send E-Mail>
• Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025, at 4:55 a.m.
• IP Address: c-76-141-151-147.hsd1.il.comcast.net

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Despite challenging origins - including growing up in Chicago in the 1930s (“my father was a carpenter for the most notorious Black gangsters”) and having a schizophrenic mother institutionalized when he was seven (“she thought that jazz music is for the devil”) - Quincy Jones had already led a charmed musical life by his early 20s. He’d received trumpet lessons from Clark Terry, got to know Ray Charles and Count Basie, backed up Billie Holliday and Billy Eckstine, and toured the world with Lionel Hampton. By 1953 he was back in New York, first arranging for Count Basie and saxophonist James Moody before getting regular gigs arranging for Mercury Records. He quickly became a go-to guy for making musicians sound good on early albums, the most notable of those being The Great Ray Charles which included Charles’ hit cover of Doodlin’ and Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley which mixed original compositions with Quincy’s arrangements of jazz standards including a rollicking take on Art Hickman’s Rose Room.

More on his upbringing here - https://youtu.be/56C80JZtIhs

Quincy also played trumpet on two Dizzy Gillespie albums whilst serving as the music director for Dizzy’s 1956 international tours that doubled as cultural diplomacy organized by the U.S. State Department. “Some of these people had never seen Western instruments before.” Pianist Billy Taylor had Quincy arrange the songs from a recent Tony-winning smash hit musical on the delightful My Fair Lady Loves Jazz. In the prime of her career singer Dinah Washington asked Quincy to arrange her sublime album For Those in Love (Quincy in 2007: “My baby…she got me in the record business”). And in only a few years he had the cache to be the bandleader on his own album: 1957’s slinky smooth This Is How I Feel About Jazz, where the snaps and claps Quincy added to Adderley’s Sermonette served as a preview of the unconventional percussion ensembles he’d use on several films.

1958 was a lighter release year with just two albums, but his life was no less busy as the prior year he’d moved to Paris, not only to work for Eddie and Nicole Barclay’s eponymous record company (alongside Michel Legrand) but also - believing that the U.S. wouldn’t offer opportunities for a Black man to learn to write for strings - to study composition under Nadia Boulanger, who had been recommended by Lalo Schifrin when Quincy ran into him on his 1956 global tour. There was also a benefit concert Grace Kelly commissioned in Monaco where Quincy (conducting the 55-person Barclay Records house band) had the good fortune to meet Frank Sinatra. Sinatra became one of Quincy’s best friends, with the singer later breaking down racial barriers for him in Las Vegas and gifting him a ring with his family crest from Sicily. But at this point Sinatra was still working extensively with arranger Nelson Riddle and wouldn’t record with Quincy until the mid-60s when he was consciously trying to adjust his style.

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If 1958 was an album respite, 1959-1961 was an onslaught. Quincy toured around the world with bands. An abundance of big band albums appeared, the best of those being the exciting The Birth of a Band! and the boisterous Around the World. And there were two more Ray Charles albums: 1959’s The Genius of Ray Charles had two tracks arranged by Quincy and won four Grammy awards, while 1961’s Genius + Soul = Jazz had Quincy split arranging duties with Ralph Burns (future Oscar winner for the film adaptation of Cabaret) and now stands as one of the truly essential Ray Charles albums assuming you don’t mind the frequent sound of an electric organ. Quincy’s orchestral training also started to pay off quickly. There were the shimmering, idyllic sounds accompanying the voice of Sarah Vaughan in Vaughan and Violins, with Misty a notable highlight. He conducted the orchestra for Under Paris Skies, singer Andy Williams’ knockout final album for Cadence Records. And there was the expansive sound on If You Go for Peggy Lee, one of America’s biggest singing stars of the 1940s and 50s.

1960 appearance on Swiss TV - https://youtu.be/8uy13yCrMHw
1961 appearance on Belgian TV - https://youtu.be/ce63rmIIRxg

There was also The King of the Gospel Singers with rocker - and occasionally fervent born-again Christian - Richard Penniman, known professionally as Little Richard. Quincy’s orchestra performed alongside Richard and a gospel choir, and Quincy co-wrote some of the tracks, but this is better known as the first album where Quincy’s main role was that of a producer. “Being on the other side of the glass is a very funny position. You’re the traffic director of another person’s soul.” The album was a big success and has lost none of its potency today. Richard credited it for (sorry) resurrecting his career, and Quincy later commented that Richard had the most impressive voice of anyone he ever worked with.

Quincy also started putting out concert albums. Free and Easy: Live at Sweden 1960 is for completists only thanks to inconsistent volume levels. A nightclub performance recorded At Basin Street East - on a night Duke Ellington was in the audience! - plays much better on album by comparison, though be advised it focuses on featured vocalist Billy Eckstine. You can’t go wrong with The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones Live (in Zurich!) or Newport ‘61, the latter a kind of greatest hits concert covering tunes from five prior Quincy albums - with one notable exception to be mentioned later. Alas, Quincy’s touring band spent much more than it took in, and “it ended with my band and I being stranded in Paris, completely broke.” Deep in debt, he found rescue via Mercury Records boss Irving Green, who gave Quincy a personal loan - reportedly close to $1M in 2024 dollars - and a talent development role that two years later became a Vice President job at the label, making Quincy the first Black executive of a major New York music company (Quincy also sold the publishing rights to his earlier works, rights he bought back decades later). Whether because he was trying to pay off that debt or because he already worked almost nonstop, Quincy would maintain a torrid pace for the next 13 years. It almost killed him.

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Buried in the Newport album was The Boy in the Tree (Belly Roll on later albums). It revealed, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone back in America, that Quincy had scored his first film.

Swedish director Arne Sucksdorff’s daughter, a fan of Quincy‘s music, tracked him down at a restaurant while he was on tour and asked him to write the score for her father’s film The Boy in the Tree about a troubled teen who gets caught up with some poachers. Quincy had dreamed of being a film composer as a kid and thus needed no convincing to say yes. Fellow Barclay Records resident composer Michel Legrand gave him some advice as he worked on it. While a big band dominated the main titles, the rest of the score went in more intriguing directions. Quincy added a wordless female vocal that floated elegantly yet hauntingly over the ensemble, halfway between Quincy’s arrangement of Je Voudrais from his 1960 instrumental record Twilight Time and something Ennio Morricone might’ve written. What Quincy called a crucifixion march blended in relentless percussion hits and wild flute sounds, turning into a deranged bolero. And brawnier material suggested Quincy was familiar with the jazz-adjacent scores Alex North and Elmer Bernstein wrote for Hollywood in the 1950s.

It was a solid film debut, and the only thing wrong with it was that there wasn’t more of it. Quincy released 11 minutes on an EP credited to him “and his Swedish Orchestra,” and it’s unclear if the film even required more music than that as the movie appears to have no digital / streaming presence, with a quick search on my part only turning an expensive foreign 6-DVD set of Sucksdorff films. Quincy even expressed amazement a few years ago on Facebook that his team was able to find a copy of the movie.

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Next time: Bossa nova, a star is born, and three guys with the same name.

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Done for record producer Eddie Barclay
Et Voilà! https://open.spotify.com/album/1EqYPbltAoA6GXQNHXAwC3
Confetti https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mgfTktGDaQVlixIaJrFMoWLTlzKEW5J18
Twilight Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K69vT1q-VlQ

Done for Ray Charles
The Great Ray Charles https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0dNo07hfdR3IkIhRJt813D
The Genius of Ray Charles https://open.spotify.com/album/4GFWnwli2cVOBp2G1zqhV1

Done for Art Farmer
Work of Art / The Art Farmer Septet https://open.spotify.com/album/59HssLevdeB3hEV2IofxqU
Last Night When We Were Young: title track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPLDPatd_U

Done for Milt Jackson
Plenty, Plenty Soul https://open.spotify.com/album/3VyJ1CdUiAp5Fblq1InswX
The Ballad Artistry of Milt Jackson https://open.spotify.com/album/1tBeqO4IDXxU7zTV4Jpaec

Done for Sarah Vaughan
Vaughan and Violins https://open.spotify.com/album/2AF2R3VOH6dSunwgKXdnHl

Done for Dinah Washington
The Swingin’ Miss “D” https://open.spotify.com/album/3bcMIa3cWyX0MQij43hrru

Done for Peggy Lee
If You Go https://open.spotify.com/album/1rrPlmDh3nNWzLTOgdm0zp

Done for Billy Eckstine
At Basin Street East https://open.spotify.com/album/31eoUIw6IzTglygfXxRAdn

Done for the Count Basie Orchestra
Basie One More Time https://open.spotify.com/album/0zv2tLhBQo1Gna1pXppT7A

Done for others
Moods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sD9c-abXEM
Clark Terry https://open.spotify.com/album/4eKLvhbYEZ5BsbvUbk4oAi
Introducing Jimmy Cleveland and His All Stars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kbwFUHX8BM
Helen Merrill https://open.spotify.com/album/5ilzjsH4ER5ZaytJwnmn3C
Sonny Stitt Plays Arrangements from the Pen of Quincy Jones https://open.spotify.com/album/5DDLqs1JsR7ZfnuoqLL5dB
Quincy - Here We Come https://open.spotify.com/album/5ioLlvIO3CZOmxvsQmGRZ4
The Double Six Meet Quincy Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvqO2T37q5w

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