By Bernie Brink

This month, we mourn the passing of a giant of American music, Quincy Jones.  Today, he is best known as a major record producer, the mastermind behind countless hit albums by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Donny Hathaway, Michael Jackson, and more.  But many do not realize that Quincy Jones began his career as a jazz musician, and his meteoric rise and major successes at the dawn of his career opened astounding opportunities.

Born in 1933, Quincy Jones fell in love with music early in life, approaching nearly all of the instruments available to him in the school band before ultimately settling on the trumpet as his instrument.  Having grown up around Seattle, Jones was not embroiled in the hot crucible of jazz music and innovation found in some other cities.  But he appreciated that fact about his environment, saying later that the less competitive scene enabled him to experiment with all kinds of music.

While still in secondary school, Quincy Jones had an opportunity to meet Lionel Hampton, pioneering vibraphonist and one of the preeminent bandleaders of the Swing era.  Jones took that opportunity to submit one of his original compositions to Hampton, who promptly offered him a job in Hampton’s band.  Though he was just 15 years old, Jones jumped at the chance and walked right onto Hampton’s tour bus.  As the rest of the band came aboard, so did Gladys Hampton (Lionel’s wife), who took one look at the young Quincy Jones and ordered him off the bus, insisting that he finish his schooling first.

A few years later, Jones got his break.  While in his first year at the esteemed Berklee College of Music, he again got the call to join Lionel Hampton’s band.  In 1952, Jones launched his auspicious career touring Europe with one of the nation’s foremost jazz orchestras.  By the mid-1950s, Jones was arranging and recording for some premiere artists Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Count Basie, and Dinah Washington.  With writing and arranging becoming his bread and butter, Jones spent time in Paris studying with legendary composer and tutor Nadia Boulanger, placing him in a long line of her esteemed pupils like Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Astor Piazzolla.

Jones’ star continued to soar through the 1960s, contributing to classic recordings like Ray Charles’ “In the Heat of the Night,” the album Ella and Basie!, and It Might as Well Be Swing and Sinatra at the Sands joining Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie Orchestra.  Some of Sinatra’s most beloved recordings, like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “The Best is Yet to Come,” were penned by Quincy Jones, setting the bar for the crooner sound of that era.

Today, Quincy Jones’ influence can be heard in music across all genres as artists continue to draw from his ideas heard on Sinatra at the Sands, The Wiz, Give Me the Night (George Benson), Thriller (Michael Jackson), and countless others.  From a young trumpet player who got his start as a section player in the Lionel Hampton big band, it’s a monumental legacy.