The man led an amazing life. Emerging from a broken home and gang life as a kid, he found music and by dint of hard work and amazing talent - as a player, as a composer, as a bandleader, and as a producer - worked with some of the most notable artists of the last century, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra. He would later go on to produce monster hits for the likes of Michael Jackson.
The Rolling Stone obit, linked above, is the most detailed that I've seen. I presume most of us on the BHO prefer our music a bit more country-tinged than that in most of Jones's catalog, but IMO it would be hard to name more than a handful of American musicians who has had equal impact on popular music in the past century.
RIP Quincy
"Jones was famous for searching through hundreds of demos before settling on the right song for an artist, and once the tune was selected, he brought his formidable musical background to the recording sessions. “Normally you put three-part background vocals on the track, and it sounds good,” Stephen Bray, who wrote and produced for Madonna in the Eighties, told Rolling Stone in 2017. “You go with a more-or-less gospel approach: a fifth or a third of a chord singing behind the melody. If you listen to the backgrounds on [Jackson’s] Bad, not only are you getting those, you’re getting sevenths, you’re getting ninths and elevenths. In less experienced hands, it would sound like mud, but they managed to put in five-note chords. They got background vocals that sound like nothing we had ever heard before in that context.”"
Edited by - chuckv97 on 11/04/2024 09:43:59
He was so accomplished and did so much, it's too bad that, for a large chunk of the public, he's only known as Michael Jackson's producer on Thriller.
R.I.P.
quote:
Originally posted by Paul RHe was so accomplished and did so much, it's too bad that, for a large chunk of the public, he's only known as Michael Jackson's producer on Thriller.
R.I.P.
It should be the other way around - Michael Jackson being known as Quincy Jones' production project,,, but hey, that's show business for you.
