Grrr. Monday again, and to make the mood even more sombre than usual we are greeted by sad news - the genius that was Quincy Jones has departed (at the venerable age of 91) for that great Montreux Festival in the sky.
He worked with just about everybody in the business in a career that spanned 70 years, from Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, to Anita O'Day, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughan and Lena Horne, to Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Patti Austin, James Ingram, Diana Ross, Brothers Johnson, George Benson and even Amy Winehouse.
His collaborations with Frank Sinatra and Count Basie were regarded as the pinnacle of their recording careers, not least for this:
A masterclass in how to arrange a song around a singer - his complete revision of Noël Coward's classic paean to unrequited love; a gift for the diva Dinah Washington:
His work in the Disco era and beyond (that made him such a fortune, courtesy of Michael Jackson's massive-selling Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad albums) also saw Quincy step out from behind the scenes to gain a few hits of his own, including this one:
A few decades later, and a certain toothy 1960s spy gave Mr Jones's very first single back in 1962 a new lease of life, to huge success:
And finally, no - I haven't forgotten that it's a Tacky Music Monday, nor the (surprising) fact that one of Mr Jones's earliest ventures into the big time was as the producer of the archetypal purveyor of tearful teen ballads, Miss Lesley Gore!
RIP, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (14th March 1933 – 3rd November 2024)
