Ravinia 2026 Issue 3

Jones was a talented multi-instru- mentalist in his own right as well, primarily known as a trumpeter, but eventually mastering piano, trombone, French horn, tuba, sousaphone, and various saxophones. He worked with such generational musical talents as “ e Chairman of the Board” (Frank Sinatra), “ e King” (Elvis Presley), “ e First Lady of Song” (Ella Fitzgerald), “Brother Ray” (Ray Charles), “Lady Day” (Billie Holiday), “ e riller” (Michael Jackson), and scores of other legendary and noted singers and musicians. e narrative of his illuminating career unravels as a “Who’s Who” story of a curious and talented youngster, who by age was publicly playing trumpet in a Seattle social club (his family moved to Washington a er World War II) and eventually backing stars like Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstine. Later, Jones attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship, and at age , he traveled with famed jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton on an eye-opening European tour that gave young Quincy new insights on race relations: “It gave me some sense of perspective on past, present, and future. It took the myopic con ict between just Black and white in the United States and put it on another level. Everybody in the world had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these con icts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.” By the mid- s, he accepted a gig working with big band legends Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey as part of an ensem- ble playing during CBS television shows. is led to Jones playing in the backing band for Elvis Presley six times in when the swiveling star made many of his early, groundbreaking appearances on e Ed Sullivan Show . Jones also toured the world with jazz trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie, and in the early s, with Mercury Records, became the rst Black music executive for a major label. He soon came to pop music prominence by producing several major hits for teen star Lesley Gore (including the classic number-one “It’s My Party”), and then, in , his own “Soul Bossa Nova” from Big Band Bossa Nova made its mark, and it’s since become synonymous with the “Swinging ’ s” era. So much so, Mike Myers used Jones’s snazzy, jazzy instrumental as the groovy lm theme for his Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery James Bond spy parody in . But Jones’s music is no rarity around Hollywood. He received a major break and boost in when legendary director Sidney Lumet invited Jones to compose the music for his lauded, Oscar-nominated Holocaust survivor lm e Pawnbroker . His score added sharp tension and emotion to the lm’s charged drama, and Jones would go on to score more than lms, including In Cold Blood and In the Heat of the Night . at same year also tallied his rst collaboration with Frank Sinatra, arranging and conducting Ol’ Blue Eyes’s album with Count Basie, It Might As Well Be Swing , which included the Sinatra staple “Fly Me to the Moon.” ey reteamed in for Jones to conduct and arrange the now-legendary live album Sinatra at e Sands , also featuring Basie and his band. Almost years later, Jones and Sinatra reunited for the studio album L.A. Is My Lady . Jones joked of his working and personal friendship with e Chairman: “Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in . He le me his ring. I never take it o . Now, when I go to Sicily, I don’t need a passport. I just ash my ring.” However, Quincy Jones’s most suc- cessful and in uential collaboration was his trilogy of remarkable albums with Michael Jackson. Jones rst worked with “ e Gloved One” on e Wiz lm in , which led to producing Jackson’s major-hit album O the Wall . It sold more than million copies and anointed both Michael and Quincy as pop impresarios. But even that striking success seems barely a blip in compari- son to the unprecedented in uence and ascendency of the next Jackson-Jones venture: ’s riller . riller rede ned the music busi- ness in the mid-’ s. Jones and Jackson created an album that crossed musical boundaries and broke down long-held racial barriers. Most important, it changed forever how music was experi- enced visually and sonically, with Jack- son’s motion-defying “moonwalk” dance move and his heavily choreographed music videos aggressively jumpstarting the popularity of the emerging video format and its revolutionary cable TV conduit, MTV. With its beat-heavy blend of pop, R&B, post-disco dance music, ballads, and so rock, producer Jones artfully bridged riller over several genres while keenly tailoring each of the album’s songs to a speci c audience and radio format. riller became the biggest selling album of all time (selling mil- lion copies worldwide), an eight-time Grammy winner, and an unparalleled pop culture phenomenon outshining even the “Elvis frenzy” and “Beatle- mania” of previous decades. en, on one night—January , —under the banner of “USA For Africa,” Jones worked with perhaps the world’s greatest assemblage of musical talent (including Jackson) in one room, for one song. He produced and arranged the three-time Grammy-winning, RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 27