![]() ![]() ![]() (According to his autobiography, they also had a brief romantic affair.) “Dinah said, ‘I want you to write my next record.’ Her label, Mercury Records, said, ‘Nope, we want a name.’ Dinah said, ‘Here’s a name for your ass: Dinah Washington with Quincy Jones as an arranger.’ The record was a big success. “She became a great friend to me,” Jones says. But it was Washington, one of the most popular jazz-meets-pop singers of the 1950s, whom he credits with jump-starting his career. Jones had already befriended Ray Charles and toured with Lionel Hampton, who “had the rockingest band in America,” when he settled in New York and started writing arrangements for $12 a pop. Jones got his first big break from the Queen of the Jukebox. “To know where you came from makes it easier for you to get where you’re going,” he says solemnly. He also has a scar from being hit with an ice pick. “I went on the wrong street and they nailed my hand to a fence with a switch blade at seven years old,” Jones says. In that environment, he was exposed to brutal violence. But he has lived such a rich life, touching on so many aspects of the arts, that it can be hard to keep track of his myriad accomplishments - and to recall of all the barriers he broke down to achieve them. No matter what year it is, Jones is wildly charming, a fountain of jokes and aphorisms. Quincy, directed by Jones’ daughter Rashida, seesaws between past and present. ![]() His work always balanced musical complexity and mass appeal, and he had a special gift for recording great singers, including several of the best in history - Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson. Jones is one of the great musical figures of the 20th century, a restless polymath who worked across jazz, the blues, pop, funk and rap. Those are the words President Obama uses to describe the writer-producer-arranger-composer Quincy Jones near the end of the new documentary Quincy. That’s given people behind him enormous confidence. He’s been somebody who’s walked through that door before everybody else has. “At each stage in his remarkable career, he’s been the first. ![]()
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