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      When Quincy Jones Worked With Michael Jackson, ‘We Had No Limitations’

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      Their work on “Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Bad” set records for commercial success and defined the sound of the 1980s.Quincy Jones first met Michael Jackson in the early 1970s at Sammy Davis Jr.’s house in Los Angeles, when the 12-year-old was still a bubble-gum soul singer leading his brothers in the Jackson 5.Jones and Jackson’s second meeting, at the end of that decade, proved the more pivotal, both for them and for the future of pop music. Jackson landed a role as Scarecrow in “The Wiz”; Jones had been hired as the music supervisor for the film.What came next cemented one of the most celebrated musical relationships of all time. The pairing of Jones, a noted composer, arranger and producer for jazz and R&B acts, and Jackson, the child star looking for a breakout sound, over three albums remains a career-defining arc that transformed pop music in the 1980s.Jones, who died Sunday at 91, spoke extensively about his working relationship with Jackson, telling The New York Times in a 2012 interview, “You’re looking at one of the most talented kids in the history of show business. Michael was very observant and detail-oriented. You put that together with my background of big-band arranging and composing, we had no limitations.”From left, Jackson, Diana Ross and Jones worked together on the 1978 film “The Wiz.”CBS, via Getty ImagesWith “Off the Wall,” Jackson’s solo debut released in 1979, Jones called on his wide-ranging network of studio musicians and collaborators, notably recruiting Rod Temperton from the band Heatwave to write songs for the album, including “Rock With You,” and “Burn This Disco Out.” “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” the single that established the album’s polished disco grooves, won Jackson his first solo Grammy for best male R&B vocal performance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Quincy Jones Brought Pop’s Greats to the Studio: Eddie Van Halen, Bob Dylan and More

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      For decades, he had many of the pop world’s best players on call — and knew how to coax out their sharpest performances.“Quincy called me.”That is the opening line of the best stories told by some of the best musicians in the world over the last half-century or so, as they recount being recruited for recording sessions by Quincy Jones, the super-producer whose work was often as much a matter of casting as of capturing sounds on tape.Eddie Van Halen got the call one day in 1982, to add a pyrotechnic guitar solo to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” He declined credit for it, but after Jackson’s death in 2009, Van Halen said that session was one of the “fondest memories in my career.”Greg Phillinganes, the synthesizer virtuoso who began his career with Stevie Wonder, got many such calls as an in-demand session player, working on Jones-helmed albums by Jackson, Donna Summer and James Ingram, among others.“By virtue of getting a call,” Phillinganes recalled this week, “that was the endorsement that you were worthy of being there” — an induction into an elite circle that included both big stars and supremely skilled but lesser-known musicians, each chosen with intention by Jones for what they could bring to a project.Jones, who died on Sunday at 91, was the master of a nearly vanished mode of record-making that relied on groups of talented musicians working under the finely attuned ear of a producer. For decades, he had many of the pop world’s best players on call, and — in what could be a career-making enlistment or just the umpteenth studio gig — would hire them to spice up a track with a guitar lick, or smooth its contours with a synthesizer part, or ground it with just the right beat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Quincy Jones Orchestrated the Sound of America

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      Jones, who died at 91, erased boundaries, connected worlds and embraced delight. As a producer, he coaxed ingenuity from his players and singers.I have this book called “The Complete Quincy Jones,” from 2008. It’s the sort of grand coffee table experience so ephemera loaded that it all but spills out photos and reproductions of letters and sheet music and newspaper clippings and report cards. It’s a book that requires a plan to transport it from a store to your house. Some of this stuff is affixed to the pages, as if Jones, who died on Sunday, had assembled it just for me, even though my name’s nowhere near Oprah Winfrey’s effusive “thank you” note. One of the unglued news items, from a 1989 edition of The International Herald Tribune, has now become a bookmark that reads, inartfully: “Quincy Jones: Black Music’s Bernstein.”It’s a constellatory, celebratory, classy volume, just like the music Jones devoted the majority of his 91 years to. As you make your way through, you realize how ubiquitous this man was. I mean, I knew he was connected. (Maya Angelou writes the preface. The foreword’s by Clint Eastwood, the introduction is by Bono and the afterword belongs to Sidney Poitier.) But not until I sat down with this thing could I truly appreciate something else: what a connector he was, human ligament.That, of course, was also in the music. He played many brasses — sousaphone, trombone, tuba, horns — but settled on the trumpet and quickly became an ace arranger and producer, someone whose brilliance involves having it all figured out. His approach to music involved not simply the erasure of boundaries but an emphasis on confluence, of putting some of this with some of that, and a little of this thing over here. Bossa nova together with jazz, Donna Summer doing Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson. On records, for movies, in concerts, with “We Are the World” and Vibe magazine. Connections.This wasn’t iconoclasm and, officially, it wasn’t civil rights, either. It was vision, curiosity and taste that aligned with civil rights. Jones didn’t want artificial boundaries dictating that vision. So what you hear in all of that music is a little bit of everything — African percussion and R&B rhythm ideas, percolating alongside fur-coat string arrangements and trans-Atlantic flights of falsetto. It sounds like whatever America is supposed to mean. Often, he was orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. It’s worth considering how his music opens one of the most-watched television events ever broadcast (“Roots”) and his production is behind the best-selling album ever recorded (“Thriller”). Two titles that nail the depth and sensation of the Quincy Jones experience.Jones, right, at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993, with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross among the celebrities in attendance.Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis, via VCG, via Getty ImagesBut there’s another, related aspect of that experience, and it’s all over “The Complete Quincy Jones.” In just about every photo, he seems so happy to be wherever he is. Standing next to Hillary Clinton, chatting with Colin Powell, cracking up next to Nelson Mandela, perched beneath a conductor’s podium alongside Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. In one picture he’s got an arm around Sarah Vaughan and the other around Chaka Khan. Elsewhere, he’s planting a kiss on Clarence Avant’s cheek; pressing his cheek into Barbra Streisand’s (she signed that one: “My big ole black butt is sticking out — isn’t it?”; and I’ll just say her dress is dark). A big spread on “The Color Purple,” which he produced and scored, includes a photo of him and Alice Walker, forehead to forehead. Then there’s the intriguing shot of him looking heavenward with Leonard Bernstein at, we’re told, the Sistine Chapel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      14 Essential Quincy Jones Songs

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      As a producer, arranger, composer, bandleader and recording artist, he made a powerful mark on nearly every genre he touched. He died Sunday, at 91.Quincy Jones, who died at 91 on Sunday, was a colossus of American music, leaving a profound influence on nearly every genre he touched, from the 1950s on — jazz, funk, soundtracks, syrupy R&B and chart-topping pop.The scope of his career is so vast, it seems almost impossible that it’s the work of a single person. He cut his teeth as a trumpeter in Lionel Hampton’s touring band in the early ’50s, then studied in Paris under the great classical pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He produced jazz albums for Mercury Records, made fast friends with Frank Sinatra — who called him “Q,” a nickname that stuck — and recorded “It’s My Party,” a No. 1 hit by a teenage Lesley Gore.Then came gorgeously textured movie scores, slithery funk and a fantastically successful partnership with Michael Jackson, whose 1982 LP “Thriller,” produced by Jones, is the biggest seller of all time. And it didn’t end there. In 2018 documentary, “Quincy,” Kendrick Lamar, the reigning rap laureate, is seen bumping fists with Jones and crediting him as the inspiration for “combining hip-hop and jazz.”Here is a sampling of some of Jones’s essential work, as a producer, arranger, composer, bandleader and recording artist in his own right.‘Evening in Paris’ (1957)Jones was a jazz journeyman in the 1950s, playing trumpet with Hampton, working at Mercury and putting together his own albums. This gorgeous ballad, from “This Is How I Feel About Jazz,” his standout early LP, was composed by Jones and features an all-star band including Herbie Mann, Zoot Sims, Hank Jones and Charles Mingus.Ray Charles, ‘One Mint Julep’ (1961)Jones and Ray Charles met as teenagers in Seattle in the 1940s, as dramatized in the 2004 film “Ray.” By the time of his big band LP “Genius + Soul = Jazz,” Charles was a giant who seemed to remake American music with every step. Jones arranged half the tracks on the album, including “One Mint Julep,” a hot and swinging instrumental take on the Clovers’ original that Charles — leading from the organ — made a Top 10 hit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Quincy Jones, Giant of American Music, Dies at 91

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      As a producer, he made the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” He was also a prolific arranger and composer of film music.Quincy Jones, one of the most powerful forces in American popular music for more than half a century, died on Sunday in California. He was 91.His death was confirmed in a statement by his publicist, Arnold Robinson, that did not mention a cause. The statement said that he had died peacefully at his home in Bel Air.Mr. Jones began his career as a jazz trumpeter and was later in great demand as an arranger, writing for the big bands of Count Basie and others; as a composer of film music; and as a record producer. But he may have made his most lasting mark by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of connecting.Beyond his hands-on work with score paper, he organized, charmed, persuaded, hired and validated. Starting in the late 1950s, he took social and professional mobility to a new level in Black popular art, eventually creating the conditions for a great deal of music to flow between styles, outlets and markets. And all of that could be said of him even if he had not produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time.Mr. Jones’s music has been sampled and reused hundreds of times, through all stages of hip-hop and for the theme to the “Austin Powers” films (his “Soul Bossa Nova,” from 1962). He has the third-highest total of Grammy Awards won by a single person — he was nominated 80 times and won 28. (Beyoncé’s 32 wins is the highest total; Georg Solti is second with 31.) He was given honorary degrees by Harvard, Princeton, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, the Berklee School of Music and many other institutions, as well as a National Medal of Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master fellowship.His success — as his colleague in arranging, Benny Carter, is said to have remarked — may have overshadowed his talent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Anitta Mesmerizes the Weeknd, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks from Ethel Cain, the Black Keys featuring Beck, Ilham and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.The Weeknd featuring Anitta, ‘São Paulo’The Weeknd gets top billing on “São Paulo,” but the song is defined by its Brazilian funk-style synthesizer riff and a hook that Anitta borrowed (with credit) from the Brazilian funk singer Tati Quebra Barraco. Anitta chants about her irresistible body (and dominates the version edited for video), while the full song gives the Weeknd ample time to bemoan how thoroughly he’s in her thrall.Champion, Four Tet, Skrillex and Naisha, ‘Talk to Me’Three top producers concocted the sparse beat and boinging riff that accompany a nearly weightless melody from the Indian singer Naisha Bhargabi. She sings and raps in Hindi about solitude and self-sufficiency — “My nights are by myself alone, never lonely.” But she switches to English for the simple invitation to “talk to me.”The Black Keys featuring Beck, ‘I’m With the Band’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Robert Smith of the Cure Became Rock’s Most Dogged Activist

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      At Brighton Electric, a warren of rock rehearsal spaces in an old brick tram depot in this English seaside town, young guitar luggers stream in and out while the thudding jams of baby bands reverberate throughout the building.But a corridor in the back leads to a spacious, gear-crammed private studio occupied by the Cure — the multiplatinum band that defined a gloomy strand of British post-punk, and scored international hits with spiky confections like “Friday I’m in Love.” On a recent Sunday evening, the band was gathered to prepare for promotional gigs supporting “Songs of a Lost World,” its first studio album in 16 years, due Friday.Seated beside his guitar rig was Robert Smith, the group’s leader, explaining his reluctance in recent years do an interview. “I don’t really want my head to be drawn back into this idea that I’m ‘Robert Smith of the Cure,’” he said, raising a blue-shadowed brow. “It just doesn’t suit me anymore.”Robert Smith onstage in 1989. The Cure’s latest release, “Songs of a Lost World,” is its first studio album in 16 years.Pete Still/Redferns, via Getty ImagesYet at 65, he is still unmistakable as Robert Smith of the Cure, dressed all in black, with a smear of lipstick and his signature tangled mop of dark hair, now a shade of ash. At the Cure’s commercial peak in the 1980s and ’90s, he was a dandy prince of the alternative scene, his disheveled haystack inspiring not just a look but also an entire indie-kid personality type — the lovesick goth — while the band charted a path through melancholic angst (“Boys Don’t Cry”), danceable ear candy (“Just Like Heaven”) and an expansive, moody neo-psychedelia (“Pictures of You”) that made it a model for generations of artists.Inducting the Cure into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said that Smith had used his “singular vision to create that rarest of things — a completely self-contained world with its own sound, its own look, its own vibe, its own aesthetic, its own rules.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Their Songs Blew Up on TikTok, So These Musicians Tweaked Their Sets

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      Social media platforms and streaming services are leading younger listeners to new (and old) music. Artists are making sure they feel at home at live shows.DJ Paul, a founder of the Oscar-winning Memphis hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, was enjoying some tequila at a pool party in the Hollywood Hills two years ago when a friend shoved a cellphone in front of him. The rapper was surprised to see TikTok videos uploaded by “young white girls” dancing and rhyming along to one of the coarser moments from “Half on a Sack,” a slightly menacing song the group released 17 years earlier. The lyrics described sex and drug use on a tour bus.“I’m like, ‘Whoa,’” he remembered in an interview, laughing. “And when I do my concerts, you see the same kind of girls out there singing that line. They go crazy.”Paul said that “Half on a Sack” had long been a staple of the group’s live set lists, but the crowd response has been more uproarious in the wake of its viral moment.The rapper Project Pat, who has been touring with Three 6 Mafia this year, said he regularly performed “Life We Live,” his 23-year-old song that’s been used in almost three million TikTok videos. It’s seen a 130 percent increase in Spotify streams, as well.Project Pat has seen “Life We Live,” a song he released in 2001, gain a new life on TikTok.Aaron J. Thornton/FilmMagic, via Getty Images“I always looked at the rap game as a business,” Pat said. “I didn’t never look at it like I’m putting my pain and all that” into the art. “If you gon’ pay for this, I’m gonna tell you what you want to hear,” he added in his distinctive Memphis accent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More