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It’s hard to hate pop as a genre, and believe me, attempts have been made. There is that one person, or in some cases multiple people, in everyone’s lives who keeps yammering about some obscure band or artist all the time. Now this artist in question is usually not very well known (part of the charm, they say), and for some reason, that is proof that their art and the quality of their product are greater than those raking in millions and billions of dollars through music. But this hatred of mainstream pop music is flawed, because the very people who raise their voice against it keep secret stashes of it, often not on themselves. Because at the end of the day, you need a little bit of Michael Jackson or Justin Bieber in your life. Sometimes, just like Richie from The Bear, you want to belt out the words to ‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift (we all know the lyrics) and not be completely dialled in trying to understand exactly where Shawn Mendes added the fifth harmony. Sometimes you need music to just heal you, and some of the greatest people to ever be able to do that worked with a man who often called himself the ‘Ghetto Gump’, although the world knew him as Quincy Jones.
Go ahead and rifle through our grandparents’ music collection, and Quincy character is everywhere. From the often questionable but prolific crooner Frank Sinatra to the almost always questionable Michael ‘white gloves’ Jackson, Quincy had worked with everyone. If you look at the albums he has been credited for, it seems as if this man didn’t get shut-eye for a second from when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik all the way till Donald Trump bagged the highest office of the US one more time (weird timeline, but I checked the dates). He started his career with Jazz, as he had trained to be a trumpeter and arranger during his childhood. Much like the other Black musicians around him, Jones too had a difficult time as a kid, but his experiences were particularly horrifying. He was stabbed when he was just 7 years old and taken away from his mother, who developed schizophrenia. An abusive stepmother didn’t help at all, but listening to his neighbour play the piano lit a fire under him, and understood that music was his redemption.
Through gigs as a trumpet player, he stumbled into New York just like Timothée Chalamet and soon joined the legendary Dizzy Gillespie in his band as a musician and a music director. Working under bandleaders such as Dizzy and artists like Count Basie and Cannonball Adderley, Jones began taking initiative and started arranging his own big-band compositions. By the mid-60s Quincy was already working as a composer, solo artist, arranger, record executive and film composer. It’s almost unbelievable to think that by then Quincy had already had a career which most people could only dream of and had worked with some of the greatest musicians of all time. But as he checked one great after another from his list, he was yet to work with the biggest star of his career; a collaboration which would unfortunately go on to overshadow all his other works.
The Jackson 5 was the hottest number in town and had been for quite some time with songs like ‘Who’s Loving You’ and ‘Blame it on the Boogie’. One of the Jackson brothers was an overtly ambitious and insanely talented vocalist named Michael, the man who, despite all the controversy that surrounded his life and death, would go on to become the King of Pop. Quincy met Michael during the production of The Wiz, a musical which was an African-American interpretation of The Wizard of Oz. Over the course of three albums, both men would create musical history, one that cannot be imitated, even if someone provided you the blueprint to do it. ‘Off The Wall’ (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987) became Michael’s most successful projects, with Thriller becoming the best-selling album of all time worldwide. Quincy was the two-step groove to Michael’s straight moonwalk, the exclamation mark behind his every grunt, and his knowledge and contacts helped Jackson to go beyond the sky reserved for mortal men.
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There was, however, a legal dispute between the two when Quincy accused Jackson of stealing the iconic bassline from ‘Billie Jean’ from one of his older songs, but nothing really came out of it. The duo never worked together again, and Quincy, who was always “too busy” according to an NME interview from 2007, was devastated when Jackson passed away in 2009. He released a statement which read, “I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news. For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don’t have the words. Divinity brought our souls together on The Wiz and allowed us to do what we were able to throughout the 80s. To this day, the music we created together on ‘Off The Wall’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’ is played in every corner of the world, and the reason for that is because he had it all: talent, grace, professionalism and dedication. He was the consummate entertainer, and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”
Jackson was the star of the yesteryears, and even though his absence hurt Quincy, he looked to music once again and kept on making music with the biggest stars in the world, such as Celine Dion, Amy Winehouse, Jennifer Hudson, Snoop Dogg, and Mary J. Blige. He even appeared in a Travis Scott music video and recorded a short monologue for The Weeknd’s album Dawn FM (he just had to do it all). What’s interesting is that before MJ happened, Quincy almost died due to a severe brain aneurysm. His condition was, in fact, so poor that his family was sure that he wasn’t going to survive and had even arranged for a memorial service. When Quincy survived, he attended the service, and people like Richard Pryor and Marvin Gaye even performed. What people don’t realise is that memorial wasn’t for Quincy, at least that’s not what I think. It was to mourn the death of his very first skill as a musician, the trumpet. The surgery that saved Quincy rendered him unable to play the instrument, as the plate inserted in his head would come loose if he put too much pressure. He tried once, almost went out with the performance, but I think he knew. He knew while making that last attempt, he knew while sitting at that memorial service, that his first vehicle of tone and tune was gone.
Jones lived on for exactly half a decade more than his skill as a trumpeter and passed away due to pancreatic cancer on November 3, 2024.
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