He snagged his first win three years later for arranging Count Basie’s rendition of “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” From there, the Grammys could not get enough Jones. The Grammys Awards first recognized Jones in 1961, when his album The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones was nominated for Best Jazz Performance Large Group. Photo credit: Frank Sinatra Enterprises/Netflix Is My Lady album, which Jones also released on his label Qwest Records.įrank Sinatra and Quincy Jones. But he also forged a bond with Ol’ Blue Eyes that would resurface in the ’80s, when Jones produced Sinatra’s L.A. In doing so, the young Jones joined a legendary line of Sinatra arranger-conductors that included Nelson Riddle and Billy May.
Jones scored a huge coup when Frank Sinatra tapped him for various arranging and conducting gigs, both live and on record, in the Fifties and Sixties.
He wound up spending much of the Fifties on the road overseas, and the experience helped Jones realize that his ambitions should be global rather than just local - a goal that helped him become one of the most successful producers on the planet. It was an eye-opening experience regarding the racism in his home country, and when Jones toured Europe with Dizzy Gillespie in 1957, it broadened his horizons even further. The world first became Jones’ oyster in 1952, when the wet-behind-the-ears trumpeter joined Lionel Hampton’s band for a tour of Europe. It began a warm association that lasted many years, as Jones ascended the ranks of the Gillespie organization, eventually producing albums for his boss such as 1963’s New Wave! and ultimately inviting Gillespie to make a spirited guest appearance on Back on the Block. After he grew to fame, he cofounded the annual Black Arts Festival, currently held at Columbia College in Chicago’s South Loop.Ī huge fan of Dizzy Gillespie since he was a kid, Jones first got to work with his hero in 1956 as a trumpeter and musical director of Gillespie’s big band. It was there, in his family’s South Side home, that he fell in love with music as a boy, thanks to his mother’s love of gospel and his neighbor’s piano. But his birthplace of Chicago has always remained closest to his heart. Jones’ career has taken him across the globe, and he spent his formative teenage years in Seattle. Bracing and joyous, the album proved that the 56-year-old Jones still had plenty of juice left in him. Back on the Block, Jones’ album from that year, drew together R&B, pop, jazz and rap with the help of a myriad of top-tier guest vocalists and musicians, from Miles Davis to Chaka Khan. Instead, he returned to releasing his own music - but not alone. By 1989, Jones could have rested on the laurels he’d earned by catapulting and cementing the legacy of Michael Jackson.
0 kommentar(er)
