On ‘Q’: Jules Buckley and the CSO honor legacy of music icon Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones created the soundtrack of a generation. 

His name, without question, stands high on any list of the most innovative, influential, respected and successful musicians, composers and arrangers of the 20th century.

“Q” — as he was known to his closest friends — possessed a rare, versatile mix of talent, drive, ambition and a constant creative spark that spanned several musical genres, including jazz, pop, soul, funk, classical, big band and rock. The New York Times described Quincy Jones as “orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. … 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”).”

The Chicago-born musical great, who died in 2024 at age 91, left a body of work that knew no musical limits, as he wrote, arranged and produced for studio and live recordings, films, television and the stage. His legacy will be centerstage Aug. 13 at Ravinia when Grammy-winning conductor, composer and arranger Jules Buckley guides the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through a seven-decade career tribute in “The Music of Quincy Jones.”

In addition to Buckley and the CSO, the program also highlights two dynamic vocalists — artist and actress Sheléa (a former Jones protégé) and Grammy winner Darrel Walls, the lead vocalist of the gospel performers The Walls Group.

A talented multi-instrumentalist, Quincy Jones was primarily known as a trumpeter, but eventually mastered the piano, trombone, French horn, tuba, sousaphone and saxophones.

He worked with such generational musical talents as “The Chairman of the Board” (Frank Sinatra), “The King” (Elvis Presley), “The First Lady of Song” (Ella Fitzgerald), “Brother Ray” (Ray Charles), “Lady Day” (Billie Holiday), “The Thriller” (Michael Jackson), two Beatles (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) and scores of other legendary singers and musicians.

The narrative of his career unwinds as a “Who’s Who” story of a curious and talented youngster, who, by age 14, was playing trumpet in a Seattle social club (his family moved to the city after World War II) and eventually backing stars like Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstine. Later, Jones attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship. At age 20, he traveled with jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton on a European tour that gave young Quincy new insights on race relations: “It gave me some sense of perspective on past, present and future. It took the myopic conflict between just Black and white in the United States and put it on another level. Everybody in the world had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these conflicts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.”

By the mid-1950s, he accepted a gig working with big band legends Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey as part of an ensemble playing on CBS television shows. This led to Jones being in the backing band for Elvis Presley six times in 1956 when the swiveling star made many of his groundbreaking appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Jones also toured the world with jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, and in the early 1960s, with Mercury Records, became the first Black music executive for a major label. He soon came to pop music prominence by producing several major hits for teen star Lesley Gore (including the No. 1 “It’s My Party”), and then, in 1962, his own hit “Soul Bossa Nova” made its mark, and became synonymous with the “Swinging ’60s” era.

Jones received a major boost in 1964 when director Sidney Lumet invited him to compose the music for his Holocaust survivor-themed film “The Pawnbroker.” His score added sharp tension and emotion to the film’s charged drama. Jones would go on to score more than 50 movies, including "In Cold Blood“ (1967) and ”In the Heat of the Night" (1967).

That year 1964 also brought his first fateful collaboration with Frank Sinatra, arranging and conducting Ol’ Blue Eyes’ album with Count Basie, “It Might As Well Be Swing.” They reteamed in 1966 for Jones to conduct and arrange the live album “Sinatra at the Sands,” also featuring Basie and his band. Almost 20 years later, Jones and Sinatra reunited for the studio album “L.A. Is My Lady.” Jones said his of working and personal friendship with The Chairman: “Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in 1998. He left me his ring. I never take it off.”

However, Jones’ most successful and influential collaboration was his album trilogy with Michael Jackson. Jones first worked with MJ on the film “The Wiz” in 1978, which led to producing Jackson’s hit album “Off the Wall” (1979). It sold more than 20 million copies and anointed both Michael and Quincy as pop impresarios. But even that striking success paled in comparison to the influence of the next Jackson-Jones venture: “Thriller” (1982).

“Thriller” redefined the music business in the mid-’80s, an album that crossed musical boundaries and broke down long-held racial barriers. Most important, it changed forever how music was experienced visually and sonically, with Jackson’s heavily choreographed music videos jump-starting the popularity of the  video format and its revolutionary cable TV conduit, MTV.

With its beat-heavy blend of pop, R&B, post-disco dance music, ballads and soft rock, producer Jones artfully bridged “Thriller” over several genres while keenly tailoring each of the album’s songs to a specific audience and radio format. “Thriller” became the biggest selling album of all time (with 70 million copies sold worldwide), an eight-time Grammy winner and a pop culture phenomenon.

Their final collaboration, “Bad” (1987), became yet another Jackson blockbuster. 

Then on Jan. 28, 1985, under the aegis of “USA for Africa,” Jones worked with perhaps the greatest-ever assemblage of musical talent (including Jackson) in one room, for one song. Jones produced and arranged the anthem “We Are the World,” co-written by Jackson and Lionel Richie, aimed at bringing global attention to the devastating famine in Ethiopia that killed more than a million people between 1983 and ’85.

Besides Jackson and Richie, the recording session at A&M Studios in Los Angeles consisted of Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Smokey Robinson, Bette Midler, Cyndi Lauper, Waylon Jennings, Dionne Warwick, Huey Lewis, James Ingram, Kenny Loggins, Daryl Hall and Steve Perry.

The Emmy-nominated 2024 Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop” chronicles this historic event, during which Jones was racing the clock to get the once-in-a-lifetime performance done in one evening.

As usual, Quincy delivered.

And now it’s Jules Buckley’s turn, with new orchestral takes on Quincy Jones’ musical motherlode with a program curated from firsthand knowledge, respect and friendship.

Buckley worked extensively with Jones for more than 10 years, creating new arrangements for many of Quincy’s best-known compositions and conducting with “Q” himself during a famed BBC Proms program in 2019. Jones described Buckley’s arrangements as retaining the “bounce, the bite and the euphoria” of his original recordings, and Buckley described working with Quincy as “absolutely the highest honor.”

The Ravinia program is slated to include Buckley’s symphonic samples of Jones’ vast palette of jazz, pop and music for screens, from TV’s “Roots,” “Ironside” and “Sanford and Son” and his film music, such as “The Color Purple” and “The Pawnbroker” to Jones’ own “Soul Bossa Nova” and his well-known production work such as Sarah Vaughan’s “Misty,” Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” George Benson’s “Give Me the Night,” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Human Nature.”

In the Grammy-winning 2018 documentary “Quincy,” co-written and co-directed by Jones’ daughter, actress Rashida Jones, the epilogue sums up his acclaimed career and life with simplicity: “Over 2,900 songs recorded, over 300 albums recorded, 51 film and television scores, over 1,000 original compositions, 79 Grammy nominations, 28 Grammys, EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner, the best-selling album of all time (“Thriller”), the best-selling single of all time (“We Are the World”), $63 million raised for famine relief in Africa and seven children.”

This is an excerpt from an article published in the Ravinia magazine. For the complete version, click here. Reprinted with permission.