Quincy Jones Was a ‘Musician’s Musician’ Who Was Uniquely Beloved in the Cutthroat Music Industry
A Smithsonian curator reflects back on the artistic legend, a “Renaissance man” with 28 Grammys to his name, who died Sunday at 91 years old
November 4, 2024
(Sascha Steinbach, Getty Images)
The cultural influence and importance of Quincy Delight Jones Jr. cannot be overstated. As one of the most significant artists in any discipline of the last century, Jones, who died Sunday at 91, had been involved in American culture for more than seven decades, as a musician, music producer, film and television producer, and activist.
He produced Michael Jackson’s albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, giving the world the songs and sounds that would go on to shape music history. He also produced and composed music for The Wiz and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” a show he also served as an executive producer on. His fingerprints are on so much pop culture. The list of luminaries he collaborated with is long and legendary: Jackson, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and many, many more. Later this month, Jones was set to receive an honorary Academy Award for his contributions to film.
“A creative genius, Quincy Jones shaped American culture as we know it today,” Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III said in a statement on Monday. “A longtime supporter and council member of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Quincy organized a concert to celebrate the museum, an amazing evening that lifted spirits. It was my privilege to call him a mentor and friend. Quincy and I shared long conversations about museums and music. His joy for life was infectious.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Dwandalyn R. Reece, the museum’s curator of music and performing arts and associate director of curatorial affairs, discussed Jones’ towering legacy.
How would you begin if you were called upon to summarize Quincy Jones’ importance to the last century of American culture?
I like to say he’s a Renaissance figure, but he was a figure not only in music, but in the culture and what he stood for and what he knew. He started out as a trumpeter, but he was a musician, a composer and an arranger who trained and studied with the best of all genres of music. And then he moved into film and television and scoring and producing. But what I liked and appreciated most about Quincy Jones was that he was also very grounded. He understood what music meant to people and how music affected people.
I can’t say enough about his own creativity, but he also understood the history of music, and that groundedness made him a wonderful advocate for culture, for African American history, for creativity, and really following your own muse. In many ways, Quincy Jones, like some artists, managed to stay current—even at 91 years, he managed to move with the times.
He started out in jazz, he studied with Nadia Boulanger, he’s worked in every genre of music. He’s worked with Michael Jackson, hip-hop artists. He didn’t pooh-pooh anything. He embraced it and really respected what creativity has to offer the world.
Why do you think that’s such a rare quality? Why do we have so few people at that high level of success who have that same kind of openness and curiosity and eagerness to learn new things and share their knowledge?
It is a rare quality and all the more rarer. It could be a little bit of people knowing where they came from and having an appreciation that goes beyond just creating music. Being a music historian, [my colleagues and I] talk a lot about that in African American music, no genre is completely new. Musicians borrow from the antecedents of people who have created and struggled, and that’s just being fed into new genres and reinterpreted into new ways of listening and enjoying music.
Having that root in history, I enjoy talking to people who really have that grounding. There’s just something that they’re bringing to their musicianship, and Quincy Jones has always been one of those people. I had the pleasure to interview him in, I don’t know, maybe 2017, onstage here at our museum and just talk about his career, the people he knew, the stories and what they meant to him. And he always struck me as someone who’s very wise and has a lot of wisdom and understands what it’s all about.
Do you have any personal recollections about that interview?
I remember one quote, because I was asking him about African American music, and he said, “Its salient point is that it’s the music of life. That through music you tell the African American story.” And that just hints at the centrality of why music for Black people everywhere is so central in that identity and exposure and communicating with the world.
And to have him say that validated the work that I was trying to do and the messages we try to get across in telling the story and history of music.
So many times, when we have new musical styles, [we see] intergenerational tensions and things like that, but people listened to Quincy. He talked to them in a way that they can see themselves and see their own value and their own musical creativity and their own sense of self.
