Monday, April 14, 2008
Serious Chill: An Evening with Quincy Jones
The life, music and career of Quincy Jones has been packaged several times during the years. There have been numerous greatest hits collections. Listen Up! was a definitive 1990 documentary connected to the Back onthe Block album that featured interviews with just about everyone in Q's life and career and lots of jiggly Hi8 (probably) camera work. Ten years later a full American Masters documentary for PBS was created about the same time his Autobiography was released. And this last year, many PBS stations broadcast An Evening with Quincy Jones. Q's life, story, and musical canvas is a far stretching one and, at least for me, there is always something of interest to take notice of each time it is reviewed or celebrated.
An Evening with Quincy Jones was a televised interview and concert event where well-heeled folks spent thousands to be a part of the audience. In 2001, we attended an interview with Quincy Jones facilitated by Elvis Mitchell at the Experience Music Project in conjunction with his book tour in an auditorium that was filled with Goretex clad fans and old musician types with Mitch Miller go-tees. Cutaways in this show revealed a much different audience. My favorite was the guy who was probably a record exec with two very "escort service" looking young blonds in the front row.
And in this show, Gwen Iflil from the PBS News Hour tries an act that comes off somewhere between Oprah and Ralph Edwards and This is Your Life that became pretty annoying after a while, especially when she feigns hot flashes when James Ingram sings. Yuck.
Still, it is hard to screw up an evening with the Q. His recollections and his stories are so rich. "Music was more than an escape. It was a mother." At 13, he was playing at juke joints in Seattle and at 14 Ray Charles became a role model. "Not one drop of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me." were words that Ray and Quincy lived by in those formidable years. The tales he tells of boppers, breaking into the film industry, and collaborating with the greatest entertainers and artists in the world never fail to entertain and enlighten.
He makes for a great audience. I remember years ago on a Bravo tribute to Count Basie where Q stood in the wings and was practically doing the pogo for joy when Stevie Wonder played Do, I do with the Basie band. In this telecast, Bebe Winans did an astounding version of Everything Must Change that made the big music man weep.
Almost every interview I have seen with Quincy Jones has him stating that everything he has done came from his development of gaining a core skill in composition and arranging. He always finds a way to give Nadia Boulanger credit and emphasizing how his studying with her in Paris changed everything for him. "Everyone has a different talent." Quincy can't drive a car and is miserable in business. But it his relationship with music has made a great impact in our world. It is great fortune that he played everything from juke joints to bar mitzvahs in Seattle in those formidable years. Having no boundaries, an exceptionally wide bandwidth and being true to ones soul will always be the major lesson I will take away when his work is retrospected and re-examined. And being fearless about it. "You can not get an A, if you are afraid to get an F" says the Q. Have Mercy.
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:49 AM
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