Producer’s Cut: Quincy Jones

By Aki Sanjay

The release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1982 marked the advent of a new phase of musical development, ushering in an era of blockbuster pop, cinematic music videos, and superstardom. Although the album solidified Jackson as a global wonder, the record was heavily shaped and influenced by one of the leading producers in musical history. Quincy Jones, forty-two at the time of the record’s release, was a longtime collaborator of Jackson, responsible not only for Jackson’s bestselling records, but also for a plethora of film scores, musical hits, and Motown numbers.

Born on Chicago’s South Side and raised in the suburbs of Seattle, Jones fostered an early love for music. After trying a variety of instruments, Jones settled on the trumpet, forming a duet with  local singer-pianist Ray Charles in his teens. The two performed frequently at weddings and town clubs until Jones was offered a scholarship to Berklee College of Music; however, he soon dropped out to tour with bandleader Lionel Hampton. Jones eventually moved to New York, where he worked as a freelance arranger, partnering with a number of jazz legends including Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderley, and Count Basie.

Jones’ career as musician and arranger continued through the 1950s; he toured with Dizzy Gillespie, recorded his first album as a bandleader, and reunited with his childhood friend Charles, who by then had settled in the city as well. In 1957, Jones moved to Paris to study composition, but soon restarted touring as the musical director of Harold Arlen’s jazz musical Free and Easy. Jones even attempted starting his own big band following the Arlen tour, but the project soon dissolved due to high costs, leaving Jones deeply in debt and unsure where to turn.

Production offered a solution. After Mercury Records’ head, Irving Green, helped Jones resolve his financial struggles, Jones joined the record as musical director. In 1963, he produced Lesley Gore’s ‘It’s My Party’, which released as a number one hit. The tune is widely regarded as Jones’ first foray into musical production, a path which soon led him to Los Angeles, where he spent several years composing and producing film scores, until a sudden aneurysm in 1974 placed him in hospital for nearly six months.

It was after this near-fatal incident that Jones’s career as a producer truly began. 1979 saw the first studio collaboration between Jones and Jackson with the release of Jackon’s first record Off the Wall. The two had worked together briefly the year before on the film adaptation of The Wiz, created by Motown Productions; Jones had been chosen as musical supervisor and music producer, and Jackson had joined the cast as the Scarecrow. Jackson had already cut his teeth in the music industry with the Jackson 5, but his work with Jones marked the beginning of both his solo career and Jones’s production legacy.

As a producer, Jones carried his years of experience as a performer, arranger, composer, and bandleader. He adopted a genre-fluid approach, blending techniques from hip-hop, R&B, pop, jazz, funk, and classical scoring to form a rich sonic palette. Jones, discussing the process behind Jackson’s 1987 record Bad, describes himself as an emotional architect. “I come from an orchestrator background,” he says to Rolling Stone, “[...] I’m an orchestration junkie. You see what’s missing.” Whether adding one-bar drum hits or crafting layered harmonic turns, Jones was constructive in his creation, drawing on his versatile background to construct records from the ground up. He later described his work with Jackson as a “combination of all [his] experience”: the culmination of a truly monumental career.

Culture was a bedrock for Jones. Through his career, he has prioritised an appreciation of African American music and history, forming the Institute for Black American Music (IBAM) to establish a national library of African American art and music. Additionally, Jones was one of the founders of Chicago’s annual Black Arts Festival, and co-produced television specials honouring artists such as Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, and Count Basie, several of whom were Jones’s early collaborators. 

Jones passed away in 2024 at age ninety-one, sixty years after the beginning of his production career. The last decades of his life were far from empty: 1990 saw the release of feature documentary Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones, and in 2001, Jones published his own autobiography, followed by an illustrated volume of personal reflections. Still, his greatest legacy lies in music. Jones is undoubtedly the inspiration for most modern musicians, having established techniques of arranging, orchestration, and production which have defined the industry. 

If you’re interested in checking out some of Jones’s work, check out ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson, ‘Soul Bossa Nova’ from Austin Powers, and ‘It’s My Party’ by Lesley Gore.