Jones added that “Rappers are the most creative people I’ve worked with since Beboppers.” His history of working and conversing with everyone from Queen Latifah to Chingy to Dr. Dre gave his praise greater weight.
Comparison with Bebop is also one of the highest compliments Jones can give to any genre—as he made his musical bones under the shadow of Beboppers and has a reverence bordering on the religious for icons like Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Perhaps because of Jones’ strong appreciation for the talent of contemporary rappers, he vehemently denies the rumors of Hip-Hop’s impending and inevitable demise. After one particularly declaratory comment, Jones responded, “Hip-Hop is dead? That’s what Michael [Jackson] told me in 1987. It’s not true, you just have to change. I’ve seen 60 years of groups go by and it’s all adding up to something more.”
THE MAKING OF AMERICAN MUSIC
Quincy Jones is able to persuasively chart the flow of 20th century music, as his talent and strong personality has kept him on top. Talking about the theme to Sanford and Son, a TV show starring his old friend Red Foxx, Jones says that, “I wrote that as a musical impression of Red Fox’s personality.” The statement is accurate and astute, and his work often exhibits a psychological perceptiveness and depth.
Jones’ modesty and talent was particularly evident when he discussed the process of producing other musicians. He said, “It’s pretty easy, because they have their dynamics already laid out, and you just have to know the artist well; it’s all about love.”
At the Brattle Theatre talk, many of the audience’s questions also focused on Jones’ legendary career in film scoring, which broke down the boundaries against African-American composers. “I’ve wanted to do films since I was 15,” he said. The great thing about scoring, Jones insisted, is that, “you can let your imagination run wild.”
Jones also noted a danger of the film business. In his experience, “as a musician you get stereotyped pretty quick.” As soon as “you do hits all the colors fade away” and you become typecast as only being able to create one genre of film score. Sensing this early, he constantly reiterated, motivated his constant drive “to keep moving. Once they say, ‘oh, yeah, Quincy, he does thrillers real good,’ I go do some comedies.”
Jones’ ability to inventively vary his technique without compromising quality quickly vaulted him to the top of the world of Hollywood composers. “When scoring, you can either use representative music or you can have a chasm between what’s on screen and the music. I think it’s more interesting to do both,” he said. He also knows that “in order to write a good score you have to stay away from the dialogue.”
Appreciation of Jones’ ability spread so quickly that by 1967, only four years after he began to score American features, acclaimed director Richard Brooks got him to score In Cold Blood even before he cast the movie. Brooks got an even better than usual performance from Jones, which he readily admitted: “When a director calls you before the actors, you give it 10 times the effort.”
Today, In Cold Blood is clearly dated and tainted by the irony of Robert Blake playing a cold-hearted killer, but Jones’ music holds up. It is clear what Jones meant when he said that “music paints the psyche of a film; it gives it a pace, a contour.”
The music allows the movie to move as though the audience already knows the characters, because the personalities of both the villains and victims are clearly introduced. These people’s history come to life because of the imagery and personality the score invokes.
Near the end of his interview, ‘Skip’ Gates broached the topic of Michael Jackson, who owes much of his solo career success to Jones’ producing talents. As Gates put it, “What happened to that cute little colored boy?”
Jones replied that Michael’s problems is that he “grew from a poor black child into an old white woman.” He moved on to giving his implicit and more damaging criticism, that, “You have to approach your alter of creativity with humility and grace. You have to live your life from the inside-out and not the outside-in.” He went on to name Oprah and Will Smith as celebrities who have managed to keep their good nature and integrity in the face of fame.
The night’s other highlight came when the audience got a chance to see Jones listening to his own music in the theatre. Jones closed his eyes, and began to shake his foot to the beat, with his pleasure in the music rising in him. He then looked up to see his mostly middle-aged and seated audience’s intense enjoyment of the same music, evident by the universal clapping to Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
His was the relief a true artist can feel when he knows his art is safely enshrined by posterity.
—Staff writer Scoop A. Wasserstein can be reached at wasserst@fas.harvard.edu