Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Folks. Today is Friday, November fifteen, twenty twenty four, and
coming up on Rolling Unfiltered streaming live on the Black
Start Network. The next two hours, we'll pay tribute to
one of the greatest artists America has ever seen, Quincy Jones,
who passed away last week the age of ninety one,
left a mark that is simply unmatched. Not just a
(00:43):
musician but a composer. I mean movies and televisions, you
name it. He's done it all, and we will pay
tribute to an enormous life. The man everyone called Q.
We remember him right here on Unfiltered on the Black
Start Network.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
He's got whatever the bass, he's on it, whatever it is.
He's got the school, the fact, the fine and wait
to place. He's right on top and it's rolling. Best
believe he's going.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Put it down from his lost news to politics with entertainment.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Just bookcase.
Speaker 5 (01:20):
He's going, it's uncle y'all, it's.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Rolling, button Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Roll with.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
He's bookcase breast.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
She's real the question though, he's rolling Monte Morte.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Years ago. This photo here was taken at Oprah's Legends
Ball in Santa Barbara, California. This, of course, I saw
Quincy on the red carpet and we took this photo.
It was always great to see him. He always had
a great smile, always had great stories to tell. Quincy
(02:49):
Jones passed away on last Monday at the age of
ninety one, and of course, with the election taking place,
there were so many things that were going on we
did not have We normally that day would pay tribute,
so we decided to hold off and decided to focus
on that today. Again, an extraordinary, extraordinary man who led
(03:10):
an extraordinary life. And I said this the other day
and I meant every word. Quincy Jones may have died
age of ninety one, but this is somebody who I
dare say, I always say, packed two hundred years of
life into ninety one years. When you look at the
(03:31):
things that he did, When you look at when he
had an aneurysm, almost died, and he had a whole
second life, then a third life, then a fourth life.
We can go on and on and on the type
of life that he led. We now know that Quincy
passed away from paint cread to cancer. Don't know how
long he was he had, how he was diagnosed with it.
(03:53):
But again, folks, remember you know so much about him
when you think about his story, not only people talk
about the Grammys. They talk about, of course working with
Michael Jackson, but we talked about Frank Sinatra. We talk
about what he did in movies and television and how
he had just this enormous impact on so many aspects
(04:15):
of music. We'll be getting into that over the next
couple of hours, and so right now I want to
bring in Michael Beard, and Michael Beard and of course musician, director,
you name it, can do all of that, and there's
so much we could talk about it. So Michael, let's
start off with you, because again when we talk about
(04:35):
Quincy Jones, we talk about his influence. I don't know
of anyone in the second half of the twentieth century
and then of course of the twenty first century whose
impact can be close to Quincy. I would probably say,
is you had two legendary figures, it would be Quincy
(04:56):
Jones and Duke Ellington. Michael, Yes, Sir, I said, again,
as I said, when you think about again the role
he played, the two legendary figures, I will compare the person.
I will compare Quincy Jones to will be a Duke Ellington.
So what Duke Ellington did in the first first half
(05:21):
of the twentieth century, I think Quincy Jones in the
second half of the twentieth century in the twenty first century.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Yeah, I would not disagree with that. And also Quincy
tells the story that Duke kind of tasked him with,
you know, being the person to decate garage music, if
you will. So Duke was definitely a fan of Quincy
(05:46):
and saw the future in him.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
So yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't disagree with that statement.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Again, his impact, I think that it's important for people
to understand that it just crossed so many areas. Yeah,
and that was no one genre. Frankly, Uh that where
you can actually talk about Quincy Jones.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
No, that that's absolutely right, and that's that's what he
was about. Uh, you know, he was he was a
blueprint for many. I just I don't I don't claim to.
Speaker 7 (06:25):
Be the only one.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
But he was definitely the blueprint for me being, you know,
from the South side of Chicago, as he was, as
I am. Then he moved to New York. I moved
to New York. He moved to LA I moved to
La But you know, in his early career, he had
you know, so many his not only just his his
jazz things. But you know, it's my party and I'll
(06:48):
cry if I want to, Leslie like he was a
producer of that song.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
And so I remember having a conversation with him one
time because after he started finding success in the pop
genre and other genres, you know, people that he came
up with, and you know, I won't name names, but
people were calling him a sellout and all these kinds
of things.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
So I was talking to.
Speaker 6 (07:10):
Him about that because you know a lot of my
early part of my career was jazz.
Speaker 7 (07:15):
Uh as my friend Gerald, all right, I could tell you.
Speaker 8 (07:18):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
And so I was talking to him one day about
that and people calling me a sellout and all that
kind of thing. And he told me, he said, you
know what you tell him? And I said, what's that
cue He said, well, you tell him you want to
sell out every.
Speaker 7 (07:30):
Record in the bend. And that was that was his
his thing about that.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So so folks, so folks were calling Quincy Jones a
sellout because he wasn't solely focused on jazz as opposed
to but here was somebody who was a music composer
a music producer, and so I saw a clip I
was looking at earlier. I saw a clip where he
was being interviewed in Brazil, and he started naming all
these Brazilian musicians that he loved. Yea, when you were
(07:59):
a when you a music kind of soul or renaissance person,
you're not focused on one genre or one part of
the country. You literally understand that music is worldwide.
Speaker 7 (08:11):
No, absolutely right.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
And from where we grew up, especially in Chicago, back
when I'm sure when Quincy was growing up, but when
I grow up too, music wasn't as segregated on the
radio as it's ad it becomes. So you know, when
I was a kid, I was listening to you know,
you know James Brown, Jason five Creates, Clearwater Revival, Jim
(08:36):
Crochey led Zeppelint, you know.
Speaker 7 (08:39):
Like all these things.
Speaker 6 (08:40):
You know, Ohio players, like all these things just blended together.
We didn't know that you weren't supposed to like a
certain type of music. So when it when it came
to Quincy, you know, he was a world traveler, so
you know, you studied with Nail Bolijia and so you know,
the famous famous composer who taught a lot of composers,
(09:01):
So when he was in Powis, he was, you know,
exposed to all kinds of music.
Speaker 7 (09:06):
And when you're a world traveler as a.
Speaker 6 (09:07):
Musician, you hang with the musicians in the culture, and
so you learn the culture and you you absorb all
the music that's being played around the world. So you
don't just think in an homogeneous type of way. You
think globally and you know, you know, you know, in
a stew uh uh you know what am I trying
(09:30):
to say? Just a palette of just of everything that
you really wanted to express musically, and so it.
Speaker 7 (09:37):
Should not be one thing.
Speaker 6 (09:38):
And so when any anybody expressed that he was a
seller or anything like that, but it.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Just showed more about them than it did about Quincy.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
One of the things that when he were gonna show
little a little bit later when he the History Makers interview,
it was quite interesting. Michael. He talked about Frankly, his
dad being a numbers runner and they would run out
of Chicago by the folks and they were, let's just say,
involving some underhand activities in Seattle and then they were
ribbing the place and he actually saw this trumpet and
(10:11):
fell in love with it, and that's what changed his
whole perspective when it came to choosing not to be
a street criminal and then going into music.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Yeah, I've read that in his book, his autobiography, and
he talked about that a lot of interviews as you
as you say, and back then, especially for Quincy, you know,
on the South side of Chicago, just it was gangs,
that's you know, it was that way when I was
growing up. So you know a lot of times the
(10:40):
kids just got involved in that activity, and he just
felt that he didn't want to do that anymore. And
so see for him to just see the trumpet and
just take to it was a blessing for all of us,
for the world, because had he.
Speaker 7 (10:54):
Gone down the game route, there would not be a
Quincy Jones.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
What was it like to to sit and talk to
him about music. It had to feel as if you
were having a conversation with doctor King and the Pope
about religion.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
Yeah, that was That's such a great questions. As I
said earlier, I don't claim to just have to be
the only one to have access to I mean, he
was a mentor to many of us, so many musicians,
and he was.
Speaker 7 (11:29):
So generous with his time and his wisdom.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
So to sit with him in his house and just
have him, you know, you get asked him any question
and he would answer it, and just to have him.
I remember one time I was doing a show with
him in Washington, d C.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
We were doing a thing at the Kennedy Center. It
was for jazz.
Speaker 6 (11:50):
I think it was the first time jazz had been
you know, prime time televised in thirty years or something
like that, and it was a big concert with all
these jazz Natalie Cole was on it, and the orchestra
was a big you know, who's who of jazz. And
then I was fortunate enough to be in an orchestra.
And we were riding on in the van going to
(12:11):
somewhere I think like the Vice President's house or something
like that, and I hear him and Percy Heath and
all these you know, the older school cats talking, and Quincy.
Speaker 7 (12:22):
Was just like, yeah, you remember you went to this
place down the street right here.
Speaker 6 (12:25):
Yeah, you.
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Me and Bird we were going over there, and I'm
just sitting.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
Next to him like like you're talking about Charlie Parker Bert,
like he was just a walking history book of everything,
and he was saying it matter of factly, because that
was his life. That's who he grew up around. That's
who we came up with.
Speaker 7 (12:43):
And you know, yeah, you, me and Miles went over
We ate at this place over here. Then we went
to this club.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Like it was.
Speaker 7 (12:50):
It was like probably sitting and talking.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
I didn't get the chance, but talking to doctor King
about things I did. I did have a friendship with
Harry Belafonte, so it was like that. It was like
talking to you know, historians, people who lived this and
could tell you verbade him what happened flat out.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
And I just think that again because he wasn't in well,
actually i'll rephrase that. What's interesting is that Quincy Jones
was in front of in the front of the camera
and behind the microphone. He did both, and so he
wasn't a singer. But it was so when you think
(13:30):
about artists and producers, quits was like it is a
whole separate category where he was. He was as as
an even bigger star than Frankly a lot of the
a lot of the folks he was producing.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
No, that's right, And I think it was just because
his personality was so big and so giving and and
so generous.
Speaker 7 (13:51):
His light just shine all the way through that.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
Like he he was just confident when he came in
the room and not trying to be so and that
that's just how he was, and so people just were attracted.
Speaker 7 (14:04):
To him in that manner.
Speaker 6 (14:07):
And yeah, he was.
Speaker 7 (14:10):
He was just as famous, if not more famous, than
the artists that he produced and worked with.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yes, a lot of things you can remember in those conversations.
What's that one thing that stands out?
Speaker 9 (14:22):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (14:23):
Wow, I remember, So there's so many Roland. But I
remember one time I did the ASCAT Awards and they
were honoring Quincy and I was the music director for
the show, and I, you know, put together his music
and did this whole thing. And so afterwards I sat
with him, and Sidney Poitier was there sitting with him,
(14:45):
and I sat with.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
Q and I asked him how was it? And he
said it brought me to tears.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
And I said, and I'm so self deprecating sometimes, I
was like.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
It was that bad.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
He said, no, it was that beautiful. And we sat
down and we just talked for a while. You know,
mister Poidier left and it was just me and Quincy
and everybody was coming around him, and I would, you know,
because I'm from Chicago and I revered him so much,
you know, I would still talking to him as one
of my heroes, which he was and still is, and
(15:17):
you know, I was praising him and doing all these
things that he said, boy, stop all of that, and
I was like, what do you mean you He said,
you have now become the people that you look up to,
So now you have to pour into others what you
know you've got from me and and others that you
like and continue the cycle that way. And I'll and
(15:38):
that's the thing that I'll remember. I'll never forget that,
because in one breath, you know, he.
Speaker 7 (15:45):
Knew who he was and he knew that I.
Speaker 6 (15:47):
Revered him and all that, But he also knew that
once you get to a certain level, like I was
the music director for for something that I just did
for him, and I was able to get, you know,
that knowledge and wisdom through things that he's done in
his career, and his thing was like, that's great. Now
it's time for you to pay it forward. So that's
(16:09):
one of the many things that I absolutely remember from Q.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
All Right, Michael beard Man, I always appreciate you share
your thoughts reflections with us. We appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (16:17):
Thank you so much for having me. Roland You know
I love you, Matt.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So I thank you, brother. Thanks a lot. Folks, gonna
go to a break. We come back. We're gonna chat
with saxophonist Gerald Alright to share his thoughts reflections about
the late great Quincy Jones. Right here, Roland Mark unfiltered
on the Blackslide Network.
Speaker 10 (17:06):
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teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is
consistently on your shoulders. We'll let me tell you. Living
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black Star Network for a Balance Life with Doctor Jackie.
We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer
(17:26):
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Tuesday on a Black Star Network, a Balance Life.
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With Doctor Jackiey.
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Black Star Network.
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Are real old revolution there right now.
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I thank you for me and the voice of Black America.
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Almomn.
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We have now we have to keep this going. The
video look phenomenal.
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Between Black Star Network and Black owned Media and something
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Speaker 1 (18:05):
You dig.
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Now that Roland Martin is rolling to give me the blueprint,
hasty rise, I need to go to Tyler Perr and
get another blueprint because I need some green money.
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The only way I can do what I'm doing.
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I need to make your money.
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So you'll see me working with Roland.
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Matter of fact, it's the Roland Martin and Shawl London show.
What should be the show show at Roland show? Well,
whatever show it's gonna be, it's gonna be good.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Folks. Quincy Jones ninety one years old. When you look
at the folks who this man work with, I mean
it is a shocking and stunning You're talking about Lionel Hampton,
Dizney Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie. Then you go, you
know director Sydney Lumett, when you talk about playing in
the bed behind Elvis Presley. Also when you look at
(19:29):
Michael Jackson, when you look at I mean, when you
just start just naming all of the folks, I mean absolutely,
from the age of twenty till he passed away, there
was no one who he you know, seemingly didn't seem
to work with and so we're paying tribute to him
tonight on the Blackstar Network. Joining us right now, it's
saxophonist Gerald Albright Fret, glad to have you on the show.
(19:52):
And I don't say this lightly. And you know, when
Michael was Michael Beard was just talking. He was talking
about seeing Quincy in a conversation with Sidney Poitier. And
when I think about the greats, when I think about,
you know, being in rooms with certain people, I mean
(20:14):
when you saw when you saw Harry Belafonte, when you
saw Sidney Poitier, when you saw Quincy Jones, I mean
you did approach them with reverence because they are not
only American royalty, but they're absolutely Black royalty.
Speaker 15 (20:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 8 (20:33):
But at the same time, the irony of that rolling
and by the way, happy but lated birthday, my frad
brother appreciate it. The irony behind that is that he
was just Quincy. Even though he was roalty both musically
and an ambassador for the United States, he was you forget,
you know, what he really was because he was so
down to earth and so approachable.
Speaker 15 (20:56):
And that's what I loved about him.
Speaker 8 (20:57):
I kind of called him my industry dad, because you
could talk to him at any time.
Speaker 15 (21:02):
If you called him, he'll answer the phone.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
You know.
Speaker 8 (21:04):
He was that guy and I appreciate him and a
wholeheartedly missing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I said this to Michael as well. I mean, the
man's musical knowledge was just utterly ridiculous.
Speaker 8 (21:19):
Absolutely, there was a time in my career back in
I was going to say the late eighties where I
was recording the Back on the Block album with him,
and I prefaced that recording session by saying, Hey, Q,
you know, when we take a break, I'd like to
go into the lobby of the recording studio and just
talk to you about career oriented stuff. And absolutely, man
(21:43):
and we sat on the couch, and it is the
point in my career where I wasn't really happy with
the things that were happening in my career and I
wanted to figure out the best way to optimize that.
And he gave me some great golden nuggets in terms
of what to do and what not to do in
the recording industry, things that I used to this day.
And to have somebody take the time to sit down
(22:04):
with you a man's at work as a producer and songwriter.
It just meant so much to me, and I'm going
to miss those times that I talked to him.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You talk about those things, and again, to have a
conversation with somebody who not only is an artist himself,
but also that musical knowledge journey is just ridiculous. Again
starting at the age of twenty and again when you
start saying, Okay, wait a minute, count Basie, Lionel Hampton,
(22:40):
and you just start going down all of these artists
and band leaders or whatever. People say this, but it's
a little hard to say. I think I can get
one over on Quincy because he did see and hear
at all.
Speaker 8 (22:57):
Yes, absolutely, Quincy always had the finger on the pulse.
I tell the story all the time that me and
my wife went to a concert in the late eighties
UH at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles and there
was a couple of groups performing and it was intermission time.
The lights came on and I discovered that three rolls
(23:19):
down from me, h Quincy Jones was sitting And I
nudged my wife and said, Hey, that's Quincy.
Speaker 15 (23:24):
Jones, and she said, go see I do him. I'm like,
I'm not gonna go. And you know, I don't want
to bug Quincy, you know.
Speaker 8 (23:30):
Finally, long story short, I got enough nerve to go
and say hi to Quincy and I kind of tapped
him on the shoulder. I said, mister Jones, and he
was like, hey, Gerald Albright, he already knew me, and
to the point of, hey, man, I liked that that
record on Your on Your on your new album, which
at the time was my very first album as a
(23:50):
recording artist, just between us.
Speaker 16 (23:53):
Uh.
Speaker 8 (23:53):
It was a song called King Boulevard that I dedicated
to Martin Luther King Junior, and he actually sung the
melody in real time at me, which wow, you know, yeah,
that that messed me up.
Speaker 15 (24:06):
I was cool for the whole night.
Speaker 9 (24:07):
Man.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I'm sure you should have gone hold on, wait a minute, holdo,
holo love. I got a new album and Quincy not
only has he heard it, but he's singing it back
to me. But but that, But that shows you this
dude listened to it all. He he loved.
Speaker 8 (24:25):
Music, he truly did, and all styles of music. But
as you said so eloquently, Roland, his history starting from
age twenty, I mean he's done every genre of music
known to man, unimaginable and he was quite the chameleon.
Speaker 15 (24:42):
He was great at all of it.
Speaker 8 (24:44):
And again for him to sit there and actually sing
the melody to one of my songs, man, that's the
greatest compliment. I mean, it doesn't get better than that Roland,
you know well.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
And I think that. And when I talk about again
appreciate of the craft, what I often say to people, uh,
is that that really what sets apart greats from others,
where where they are just sort of just locked into
their own little space. Uh. They are listening and seeing
(25:16):
and studying, experimenting and going all over uh and and
and get and gaining and gaining inspiration from so many
different sounds. And I just think that I always I
joke with people all the time because they go, man,
like you listen to all that stuff, I said, but
(25:37):
you don't understand. I said, if it sounds interesting and
the appealing, I want to hear more of it. We
don't have to be so locked into just this one style,
this one genre. You gotta go broad and beyond. And
that was Quincy, which made him the one person you
wanted on speed dial.
Speaker 8 (25:55):
Absolutely absolutely, and he inspired me so much in my
own person Snow production in songwriting. I myself, due to Quincy,
listen to different genres of music to help inspire what
I'm doing. And you never know what's going to really
hit home and really inspire you in a way to
make a hit record. So you got to listen to everything,
(26:16):
and he was one of those guys that just really
pushed that point. You know, you have to be broad
in terms of your approach to the music because it's
powerful and it's vast, and so I thank Quincy wholeheartedly
for that.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
There are so many things that he did. And again,
when you look at seventy nine Grammy nominations, winning twenty eight,
the record was broken by Beyonce, But it's not really
even just the Grammy Awards. I just think how Quincy
Jones was received across the world.
Speaker 8 (26:52):
Yes, he again, he was the true ambassador in a
non musical sense. The one talent that he had was
making everybody around him comfortable. You couldn't say no to Quincy. Again,
he's like an industry dad. When he called you, you
would drop everything and go and do whatever he asked
(27:12):
you to do. And he just had those type of relationships.
But he he made you feel like you were part
of his family and whenever he did something, he did
something huge. I remember we went and did the Montro
Jazz Festival in Montro, Switzerland some years ago, and it
was Quincy Jones night, and we had a big band.
Speaker 15 (27:31):
And a who's who.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
Can't I can't give you the list of the who's
who that was on that stage, but I was blessed
to be there myself. And as I looked around, I'm like, Wow,
this guy is truly loved. And you know, as he
was getting to the work of making that show what
it needed to be, he was still like dad showing up.
You know, he's he just showing up at home, and
(27:53):
you know, we're just we're playing in his living room.
Speaker 15 (27:56):
You know. It was that type of vibe.
Speaker 8 (27:58):
It was very comfortable, and I'm going to miss those
moments with him, man, but I'm glad I have the
moments that I have to remember, you know, between he
and I.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Indeed, indeed, Jerald Albright was certainly appreciated it. Fret, keep
up the great work.
Speaker 9 (28:13):
Six.
Speaker 15 (28:14):
You're very welcome man.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
All right, absolutely, folks. As I said, Quincy Jones sat
down for an interview that was taped here in Washington,
d c but by the history Makers, and it was
great to be there. I had an opportunity to witness
this conversation and end the conversation. There were a lot
of things that were talked about, a lot of things
that we talked about. But one of the things he
(28:35):
talked about was going to moving to Washington State, moving
to Seattle, and that was a significant, significant part of
his life. This is Quincy Jones being interviewed by the
late Gwen Eiffel here in the Nation's Capital for the
history Makers conversation.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
After all these decades, six decades almost.
Speaker 9 (28:59):
Of doing that, it's pitiful, it is.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
It's not pitifull, it's fabulous.
Speaker 9 (29:03):
But everything.
Speaker 17 (29:04):
I have one thing though, and we say, we don't
play that, mister Hancock, mister Jones stuff.
Speaker 12 (29:09):
Can I call you Q?
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah, So tell me Q.
Speaker 9 (29:13):
What drives you life? Life and love in much order? Well,
love naturally.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
But there was nothing in your childhood to suggest that
you would be doing what you're doing today. In fact,
there were so many things in your childhood which argued
against this.
Speaker 17 (29:34):
Absolutely, we wanted to be the great gangsters because that's
what Chicago was best. At Chicago, they groomed the best Gangsters,
black white, green or blue whatever, oh Jerr Como Capone.
And my father, ironically was a master carpenter and he
worked for the Jones boys.
Speaker 9 (29:51):
You talk about Oh J's, these are the triple o js.
Speaker 17 (29:55):
Smart, beautiful, organized, structured, elegant guys. And I remember the
biggest whipping I ever had was when I was at
a birthday party when I was seven and Eddie Jones,
the boss of the Gangsters, his daughter Harriet, was five
years old. She asked me to cut her hair a
little bit, and I cut all of it off.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
But you spent most of your time, your real growing
up time in Seattle, which people do not think naturally
as being a well spring of American jazz.
Speaker 9 (30:28):
It was about half and half. I spent ten years
in Chicago.
Speaker 17 (30:32):
We left right after the Jones was were politely asked
to go to Mexico. My daddy came by the barber
shop and pick my brother and I up and said, no,
you don't have time to go home and get your toys.
We're getting straight on the trailway bus and we went
to the Northwales. Because he was a Jones but he
wasn't at gangster. But that's all we saw that's all
(30:53):
we wanted, all we knew, and I said, we wanted
to be My stepbrother was pitiful.
Speaker 9 (31:00):
It was a servius gangster.
Speaker 17 (31:02):
And then we went to this unclaimed territory in Birmerton,
Washington and Bremerton Shipyards. I said, man, we don't waste
this place because you know, we're eleven years old, the
ten years old, and we have seen all these professional
gangsters working all this time. I said, we could tear
this place up because they don't know what's going on.
I remember the first, our first big job. Do you
(31:25):
want to call it? Clos say likes to call a businessman?
Speaker 9 (31:29):
Please?
Speaker 17 (31:32):
We stole the carton of honey, bottles of honey and
went out in the woods and drank all that honey.
Speaker 9 (31:38):
And I'll never touched honey again for twenty years.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
Tell me about lemon meringue pie and juke joints.
Speaker 17 (31:45):
Right across the street from my house was the army
camp with the barbed wire, fifty caliber machine guns, and
there was a big armory next door that was our
recreation hall for all of the whole community. And we
had inside tracks on everything. You know, I'm telling you,
we we got our stuff together, and we heard that
(32:07):
there was some living meringue pies being shipped in on
Monday and some chocolate under the ice creams. So we
were ready on arrival and we broke in there and
ate as much as we could, and we.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
Had pie fights.
Speaker 17 (32:20):
And I went and broke open the superintendent's office and
so I don't spin a piano over in the corner,
and we're getting ready to close the door to said
it didn't look valuable to me. You know, I didn't
know people played them. And some bodies said, fool, go back.
God Sis said go back in that room now, And
(32:43):
I went back and in I slowly went over to
that piano and touched it with my fingers, and every
cell in my body said, this is what you would
do the rest of your life, and that that one
move changed everything in my whole life.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
You know, folks are fantastic Common Station. We'll share more
of that. We come back, going to a break right now.
We come back with chat with singer Howard Hewitt about
the late great Quincy Jones right here on roland Mark
Unfiltered on the Black Start Network. When we talk about
(33:48):
blackness and what happens in black culture covering these things
that matters us, us speaking to our issues and concerns.
Speaker 12 (33:57):
This is a genuine people power, a lot of.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Stuff that we're not getting.
Speaker 9 (34:02):
You get it and you spread the word.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
We wish to plead our own cause to long have
others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story
if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us.
Invest in black on media. Your dollars matter. We don't
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support us in what we do. Folks, we want to
(34:24):
hit two thousand people fifty dollars. This month waits one
hundred thousand dollars. We're behind one hundred thousand, so we
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Speaker 18 (34:32):
Check some money in order to go to peelbox file
set the one ninety six Washington DC TUESA Resero three
seven dash zero one nine six kytailers are Martin Unfiltered,
venmo is r m unfilters, Zeiler's Roland app Rolandsmartin dot com.
Speaker 19 (34:50):
You're doing my Man of Luck kerrt and you're watching
Roland Martin unfiltered.
Speaker 13 (34:56):
Deep into it like pasteurized milk without the two percent
we're getting beeped.
Speaker 19 (35:01):
You want to turn that shit off. We're doing an interview, folks.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
To understand Quincy Jones and how much he was involved
with I think about this interview that he did in
two thousand and seven. He was asked a question, would
he work with Michael Jackson again? He said, man, please,
we already did that. I have talked to him about
working with him again. But I've got too much to do.
I've got nine hundred project I'm seventy four years old.
(36:03):
Quincy Jones was doing music, he was doing movies, he
was doing television shows, he was doing all sorts of things.
And folks, just think what just told you this was
He was seventy four years old. He lives another he
lives another seventeen years, and he was still doing things
up until the last few months of his life. Howard
(36:26):
Hewitt joneses right now, and how we're glad to have
you here. Man. I just I just think again, the
output of this man is just sick.
Speaker 11 (36:39):
Man, Man, Quincy Quincy. You can't be.
Speaker 20 (36:43):
Sad about Quincy, you know today, because Quincy lived the
life that every.
Speaker 11 (36:51):
Musician wants to live.
Speaker 19 (36:52):
You know, I say every.
Speaker 20 (36:54):
Musician, every want to be producer, every every every vocalist,
whole thing.
Speaker 11 (37:00):
I first, when I first met.
Speaker 20 (37:02):
Quincy Man, I was like I was, I was kind
of branching off because I had gotten with the group,
I gotten with Shalamar, and I was kind of and
I worked with Leon Silver's you know, and checked him
out as a producer the way that he did his thing,
and I worked with the Then I kind of branched out.
I started working with Stanley Clark, started working with George
(37:26):
Duke of course, and then my big brother, James Ingram,
I met James James and we're from the same hometown
from acron, Ohio. So James was always like I met
James when I was fifteen, So when he came to
LA a couple of years later, I went to LA,
then we connected and we stayed connected and stuff, and
then he brought me.
Speaker 11 (37:47):
He brought me into the whole situation because he wrote.
Speaker 20 (37:50):
A song called p yt Right and it got placed
on the on the Thriller album, and so that he
wanted me to come in and work with him on
the background. So that's when I first met Quincy. And
like man, going working with Quincy, it was like it
was like going to school.
Speaker 11 (38:09):
It was like going.
Speaker 20 (38:10):
Into the into the classroom, the professors in there. He
would come up, he and bruce Wood Dean would sit there.
He would he would, you know, bring out his his
briefcase and his folder, and man, it was like going
to school. And we after that, we worked on We
worked on a bunch of stuff. We worked on Barbara
Streisang project, We worked on Down a Summer, Ernie Watts album,
(38:37):
about a bunch of stuff through the years. But it
was always like going to going to school. When not
going in the studio with Quincy, we just have fun
and it was amazing.
Speaker 11 (38:49):
It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
You talked about that partnership with James Ingram. Of course,
so many hits came out of that relationship. In fact,
when when that History Makers conversation took place was recorded
here in d C. James Ingram actually performed on that broadcast.
That was actually the first time I got a chance
to meet James Ingland that night. And you talk about
(39:12):
that vast musical knowledge, I mean, it was essential. I
would just say, if you were around Quincy Jones working
on music, that was like going to college every single.
Speaker 11 (39:22):
Day, every day, every day, you know, and it was beautiful.
It was like and his whole Yeah.
Speaker 20 (39:28):
You know, because as a producer you have to you
have to develop like like a doctor, you know, bedside manner,
you know, because you got to be able to bring
the best out of your artists. You know, you got
to make that artist comfortable. You got to make you
You got to you have to know and seem like
you know and know that you know what you're doing.
(39:50):
You know, as an artist, if I'm sitting there and
with a producer and the producer doesn't really know what
he's doing, that doesn't make me, you know, that that
comfortable as an artist. Then we're both in there, you know,
looking around and and and and figuring out which way
we're gonna go. Now, he let an artist be He
(40:10):
let an artist be an artist, that's for sure, you
know what I'm saying. It's not like he just controlled
the whole situation. But you know, he did make it
comfortable enough. He made it comfortable enough for you to
put your best foot forward. But he also had it everything.
You knew that he had everything under control.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Well, I love this story He tells of Michael Jackson
calling telling him to take the violins off the beginning
of the song, qust was like, oh no, He's like,
you don't tell me what to do exactly.
Speaker 20 (40:46):
And as from that story, you realize that's one of
the most identifiable parts of that song. And so like
as a producer, he knows what he's doing. He knew
what he was doing, and you had the confidence, you
had full confidence in that when you went into the
studio with him.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, I think what I think? What also people need
to learn You have amazing artists Michael Jackson or Prince
who are musical geniuses, but you can't also deny that
there's a musical genius of the producer as well.
Speaker 11 (41:20):
You can't deny and say that again, I'm sorry I said.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I said that the artists we talked about, Michael Jackson
or Prince and how they are musical genius is, but
you also can't deny the musical genius of a producer
like Quincy.
Speaker 11 (41:31):
Jones definitely, definitely is.
Speaker 20 (41:35):
Like I said, Quincy when he would come in he
would have every have everything worked out, and he knew
how to balance the whole situation between what he had
worked out and as and and leave room for spontaneity
for the and the artists to put their identifiable situation
on it as well. But findity is very important in
(41:57):
the studio as well, and he realized that, so, you know,
and as a producer you have to know you have
to have a good balance between the two.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
You know, absolutely absolutely, When when you think about the
so many of the different artists, does it also impress
you that he was able just to move from not
only decades but genress but also musical tastes and styles
(42:28):
from fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousand, twenty twenty.
He was like he was like a chameleion of music.
Speaker 15 (42:39):
I mean, he.
Speaker 20 (42:42):
Be brought over all, he went over all genres of music,
you know what I'm saying. And like back we worked,
I worked on the back back on the Block project
with him as well. And to see him go from
you know, the Patty Pattie Austin to uh Big Daddy
(43:04):
Kane too, you know, jumping back then to Ray Charles
and Shaka, and I mean he jumped out.
Speaker 11 (43:12):
It was amazing.
Speaker 20 (43:13):
Watching him work on that project was really really an amazing,
an amazing process that that he went through.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Share little more about that because most people don't understand
how albums come together. It's not like everybody is operating
in the same space in the same time. And so
how much time did you spend with him?
Speaker 15 (43:37):
We spent on the.
Speaker 20 (43:38):
Back on the Black back back on the Black album.
It was like I went in and did we worked
on I worked on about maybe three or four tracks
on that album with him and James, Me and James
and a couple other people. Then he some of the
(44:00):
you know, some of the coorus type of situations where
you had a bunch of people, you know, a bunch
of artists that were that were like a choir type
of situation, you know, and and everything when you when
you when you think about a project, especially a project
like that, to keep everything it's a chore to keep
everything in order, you know what I mean, Because because
(44:23):
he was going back and forth from one genre of
music to the to the other, from one artist to
the other. So you know, it was like he had
as a producer, he had to keep everything in order,
you know what I'm saying. So so there wouldn't be
total complete just chaos, you know, because in a in
(44:44):
a in a production like that, it's easy to get
to fall into a bunch of chaos because you know,
everybody's going to have an opinion about that.
Speaker 11 (44:55):
Everybody's going to have an opinion about this.
Speaker 20 (44:57):
Is going to be you know, uh, this type of thing.
That's so as the producer, you're the one that has
to be able to listen, but then keep everything on
track as well, so that you keep you stay on
the stay on the on the schedule that you that
you set for the you know, for the.
Speaker 11 (45:17):
Completion of the album. Keep you got to keep everything
on track.
Speaker 20 (45:21):
So that was like man that that in itself and
a big part of of Quincy's team was Bruce Swideen,
the engineer and man with his with his uh with
Quincy's guidance and Bruce Bruce's ear and Quincy's ear along
(45:42):
with Bruce's ear and keeping everything like uh uh. Pinpointed,
as far as the sound that you want, the you know,
the type of vocals that you want in there, what
you want to what you what you want to project,
as far as you know, the mood of a song
and back and the back on the Black album, there
(46:05):
were so many different moods that were happening. So to
keep all that stuff man and intact and keep it
on track and keep.
Speaker 9 (46:13):
It, man.
Speaker 11 (46:13):
It was it was the times on the tracks that
I worked on. I forget what tracks it was.
Speaker 20 (46:18):
Back on the block, and I forget the name of
it's so much, so long ago.
Speaker 11 (46:23):
But man, to keep everything, keep everything on track. Man.
That that was a feat all in itself.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Did you ever watching the process, wonder how he gonna
pull all this together?
Speaker 20 (46:37):
You know, it's like but then but you might say that,
but then you look up there and you see, oh,
this is Quincy Jones.
Speaker 15 (46:46):
You know what I'm saying. It's like.
Speaker 20 (46:48):
Then then all all speculation, all questions and everything go
out the window, because you know he's gonna pull off.
Before we did that project, well, like I said, we're
working on a bunch of other stuff before that, And
by that time I had really gotten gotten to know
his style. And that's what my whole thing was at
(47:10):
the time. Like I said, I started working with when
I first came into the business, into the recording business,
anyway I started, I was working with Leon Silver's so
Leon and Quincy. Even Leon, even though Leon is prolific
in his own and amazing in his own right, they
(47:30):
were two They were two completely different ways of producing
sometimes I would look at Sometimes I would look at
Leon and say, and something that we were working on,
and how he gonna pull this off. He's gonna pull
this off, you know. But but with Quincy, you asked
that you might have a you might have a shot
(47:53):
in your head with that thought. But then that goes
out the window, you know, immediately when you look up
there and you say, you see this is Quincy Jones,
so you know what to deal.
Speaker 11 (48:04):
You know what's gonna be cold blood.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Indeed, indeed, Howard always glad to see you in chat
with you. Good Tuincy Jones was a unique brother and
in the beauty of music, it will always be with
us even when folks move on to come ancestors.
Speaker 11 (48:21):
Yeah, man, he was, he was.
Speaker 20 (48:23):
He was a mentor like it, like he was for
probably thousands and thousands of other music artists and musicians
through the years.
Speaker 11 (48:32):
Man he was. He will be missed.
Speaker 20 (48:34):
But like I said, you cannot be mad, You can't
be you can't be sad because he lived the life.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Oh yeah, well, I say at the top of the show,
I said, Quincy Jones dies at ninety one. He packed
two hundred years of life into ninety one.
Speaker 11 (48:48):
Years, and that's what he used to tell me.
Speaker 20 (48:51):
Man, he said, how we He said, Man, I've been
talking to some doctors in Stockholm. Man, I'm gonna freeze
this stuff. I ain't gonna get a you know. And
we sat.
Speaker 11 (49:03):
I remember, I remember one time I saw him.
Speaker 20 (49:04):
Out, man, and we just sat and we talked, and
he talked about that whole uh what do they call it,
cry cryogenics.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Crowd crowdgenics, Yeah, and all.
Speaker 11 (49:15):
That kind of stuff. I said, cute, man, Come on, man,
come on man.
Speaker 20 (49:19):
He said, no, no, baby boy, I'm a good I'm
living forever.
Speaker 11 (49:23):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 20 (49:24):
He was an amazing, amazing cat and we will miss him.
Speaker 11 (49:29):
But we ain't crying for him right now.
Speaker 9 (49:32):
No.
Speaker 20 (49:33):
I send, I send, I send a lot of love
out to the family. That's one thing that he was
he was heavy heavy on was his girls and his
son and and and and the kids. And I send
about my thoughts and my prayers and God bless all
of them. And man, thank you for letting me come
on here and just just talk about my man for
(49:54):
for a minute.
Speaker 11 (49:54):
Man, It's it's very special.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
I think the only thing that he loved close I
will probably say number three to music. And his family
was women, which produces family, so.
Speaker 20 (50:05):
Well, you know that that was one of the main
reasons for the Chrigenic situation. And I and again and
again Roland, I ain't mad at him. I ain't mad
at any boy because he has some fine women on
his arm.
Speaker 9 (50:24):
You know.
Speaker 20 (50:24):
That was Q oh Man, that was Q and and
like if you look at you know, I would I
would suggest to everybody to watch that uh Netflix special.
Absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing. It's amazing and it goes
and it goes all it goes all the way back
I am beginning.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Oh yeah document Donaldum. I tell you if there's one thing, uh,
it still drives me crazy. When I was at TV one, uh,
and you talk about Chris had been approachable because I
would often call him at his house, uh and we
we would chat, not long task me with chat, and
he actually agreed to do a sit down interview and
(51:06):
something happened and the folks at TV one production we
put it off and it never made it happen. I'm like, like,
that pissed me off. To this day, it pisses me off,
which is one of the reasons why I tell people
by me owning and controlling it. Now, I ain't got
nobody who can tell me no, you can't gonna do it.
So I still hate the fact and I'm talking about Quincy.
(51:30):
He said yes, we're gonna do it at his house.
This was prior to the documentary and everything. And man,
I'm still sitting here. Matter of fact, I may try
to find an email to cust out the person who
said no, because we never got a chance to do
that conversation.
Speaker 20 (51:44):
So I did it, not because up, but I did
an interview one time over in England, over in the UK, right,
and they were talking about talking about a lot of
different stuff.
Speaker 11 (51:55):
People I worked with talked about Quincy.
Speaker 20 (51:57):
I worked on a Shaka shock of project also, and
like you know, I said something.
Speaker 11 (52:03):
I can't remember what exactly.
Speaker 20 (52:04):
What it was, but it was misconscrewed, you know, once
it came by the time it came out in print,
this cat was saying.
Speaker 11 (52:11):
Howard says this.
Speaker 20 (52:12):
And that about Quincy, blah blah blah blah blah. Right,
And I read it when I was on a plane
coming I was coming back home from the UK, and man,
as soon as I got off the plane, because my
flight got in like earlier, early afternoon or early morning whatever.
And as soon as I got off the plane, I
went to west Lake west Lake Studios and took the
(52:33):
took the article there, and I said, cute.
Speaker 11 (52:36):
I did not say this.
Speaker 20 (52:38):
I didn't say this blah blah blah blah, and man,
and and that's when he that's when that's one of
the big lessons that he taught me that he told
me right then, he taught me that. He said, Howard,
you have to learn how to guide the interview that
you're doing. You don't don't let people guide you in
the interview. You figure out how the guide that interview,
(53:02):
the way that you with the information that you want
to put out that you want to include in that
in that article or or or radio interview or whatever
it would be. And that was one of the because
because you know, that was early, that was early in
my career. So like you know, I'm still I'm still
you know, feeling my way somewhat around.
Speaker 11 (53:24):
Interviews and stuff. And a lot of times, man, you.
Speaker 20 (53:27):
Be in an interview, man and like you know, somebody
says something, you go off on a whole other situation
that you shouldn't go off on, and then they take
it and then they got So that was one of
the one of the mentoring situations.
Speaker 11 (53:41):
That was very, very dear to me when he told
me that.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Absolutely well, how we appreciate.
Speaker 11 (53:45):
That, man, Thanks a bunch, Thank you man, God blessed.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Appreciate it. Folks. Quincy Jones talked about and that used
to make his interview how music was his escape. Here
is that conversation.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
Music for you was an escape, It was your form
of rebellion.
Speaker 17 (54:04):
But music was more than an escape, it was a mother.
I started out in Seattle and you had to play
a white tennis club, dinner with white cardigan jackets, and
played dance music.
Speaker 9 (54:21):
And so forth.
Speaker 17 (54:21):
Then we changed our uniforms and go to the black clubs,
the Rocking Chair and and Washington Educational and Social Club.
What a joke, And the propriety was Reverend Silas, girls
please bring your own bottles, and played for strippers. And
we do comedy acts. Man, We do the work, steal
all the comics who come through it. We steal all
the material. At seventeen to do all these nasty jokes.
(54:44):
And we weren't supposed to.
Speaker 9 (54:45):
Be in clubs.
Speaker 17 (54:45):
I was thirteen, you know, Yeah, so we pretended like
we were smoking and everything so we could get in
the clubs.
Speaker 9 (54:52):
And I was just lucky that the teachers didn't.
Speaker 17 (54:56):
I had one teacher, Parker Cook, that saved my life
because she said, you're doing just supposed to be doing.
Because I didn't get finished playing till five thirty in
the morning, and I could Garfield High Schools right across
the street. You know, that's Jimmy Hendricks went too, and
I couldn't get there till eleven sometimes, you know, but he.
Speaker 9 (55:13):
He supported me though the fact I saw I thought
I saw him up.
Speaker 17 (55:19):
There one of those joints a couple of times.
Speaker 4 (55:23):
Did it ever occur to you that you were in
the middle of something revolutionary?
Speaker 17 (55:27):
No way, we were just a gray childs came to town.
I was fourteen, I was. I couldn't believe him, you know,
he came in and he was sixteen or seventeen, but
it was like a hundred years older than me because
I was still staying at home with eight kids, you know,
two parents, and ragged his stepmother. And he had two suits,
(55:51):
his own record player, two girlfriends.
Speaker 9 (55:56):
Everything. I mean, I couldn't believe it. And I was
looking around him all.
Speaker 17 (55:59):
I didn't do it like a Lurine stated, I wasn't
like that at all, and I wrote the dialogue for that,
but I wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 9 (56:06):
The movies they have to make up stuff, you know.
Speaker 17 (56:10):
This little captain was loud and cocky and talked. I
didn't never talk at all when I was doing I
set up and listened because I was around guys who
knew they were talking about, like Basie and Clark Terry.
And there's one thing that Dray and I used to
say every day to keep from being affected by the
climate in this country at that time, and that not
one drop of my self worth depends on your acceptance
(56:32):
of me, because you never wanted, you never wanted an
external force to decide what your identity was about. And
we were really, really, really really cognizant of that, and
we stuck to it till Dray was a strong boy.
He says, I'm gonna have three of my own planes.
(56:52):
In twenty years nineteen sixty eight, he had three planes,
and Ray went he man. He knew how to deal
with money every thing, because in the beginning we didn't
think about money of hame. We didn't like today the
bling Blaine.
Speaker 4 (57:07):
Forget that there was no money.
Speaker 9 (57:09):
There was no blink Blain.
Speaker 17 (57:11):
The biggest joke on Broadway when we were out there
starving to death was in front of the Brill Building.
Speaker 9 (57:16):
Was you'd see somebody being held by.
Speaker 17 (57:18):
Their their ankles out of a thirty three story window
and the overcoat hanging all over his head.
Speaker 9 (57:25):
And they say, what's that going on up there?
Speaker 17 (57:27):
They said, it's Jackie Wilson renegotiating his contract. All of
the booking agencies, the nightclubs, record.
Speaker 9 (57:39):
Company, everything was all owned by the Anxious.
Speaker 17 (57:42):
Everything, the Copo Cabana, the shape of red horse faced
liquabol and fishings up and boy between them, Chicago and
so not.
Speaker 9 (57:49):
For I met all of them.
Speaker 4 (57:50):
Tell us the story. The first time you met Charlie Parker.
Speaker 17 (57:53):
Oh almost had a heart attack, And it was the
bird was never aware anybody was around because he was
Unfortunately what happened.
Speaker 9 (58:04):
He came from.
Speaker 17 (58:05):
Jamie Shan's band, Dizzy came from Bomb Calloway's band, and
they had this new idea. But they did not want
to be entertainers anymore. They didn't want to have to
roll their eyes or dance, or entertain and dance to
anybody anymore. Louis had to do it, and I'll defend
Louis to death. To Lloyd do what he had to do.
It wouldn't for Louis, we wouldn't be here. Everybody did
(58:29):
what they.
Speaker 9 (58:30):
Did, and it's a sociological music.
Speaker 17 (58:32):
That's what I try to tell my little brothers all
the time. Man, you can't say to throw throw jazz
and blues away just for hip hop, because it's all
part of millions of people's sociological experience. A terrible one
and for the fifties and sixties, black artists got wasted.
Speaker 9 (58:50):
I'm telling you cannot believe what I record.
Speaker 17 (58:52):
When Verne Baker had sent an arrangement over to the
other side of the town, George Gibson Copyer a Fats
Domino would do his tomb. Pat Boone was taking on
another side, and it was split. The markets were split
in the black and white markets. And so now please
get what what JESSU make Now.
Speaker 1 (59:12):
Alright, folks gotta go to break, we come back. We'll
chat with the Great Patty Austin right here as we
continue to pay tribute. Two Quincy Jones on roland markin
Unfiltered on the Blackstar.
Speaker 21 (59:25):
Network Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene white nationalists
(01:00:03):
rally that descended into deadly violence.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Well, white people are losing their their minds.
Speaker 22 (01:00:12):
As an angry pro Trump mod storms the US capital
the ship, We're about to see.
Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
The lies where I call white minority resistance.
Speaker 23 (01:00:20):
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tolerate black folks voting.
Speaker 22 (01:00:26):
I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of
violent denial.
Speaker 5 (01:00:31):
This is part of American history.
Speaker 22 (01:00:32):
Every time that people of color have made progress, whether
real or symbolic, there has been but Carold Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a backlash.
Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
This is the right of the proud boys and the
Boogaaloo boys America. There's going to be more of this.
Speaker 24 (01:00:49):
This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and
its attitudes because of the fear of white people.
Speaker 18 (01:00:57):
The fee that they're taking our job to with our resources,
they're taking our women.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
This is white Field.
Speaker 13 (01:01:18):
Pull up a chair, take your seat. The Black Tape
with me, Doctor Greg car here on the Black Star Network.
Every week we'll take a deeper dive into the world
we're living in joined the conversation only on the black
Star Network.
Speaker 25 (01:01:37):
This is Samplo Man and this is David Mann, and
you're watching roland Mark on Filtered.
Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Foggs. Welcome back to our tribute to Quincy Jones, who
of course passed away Monday before last at the age
of ninety one. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that
later came out. He's since been beard funeral. The family
had a private funeral service for Quincy Jones. And you know,
of course, with this passing happened the day before the election,
(01:02:39):
was so much focus on that, and so we wanted
to definitely pay our tribute to him. And of course
we talked about James Ingram being one of the folks
who worked a lot with Quincy Jones. Well, when you
say James Ingram, you can't help us, say Patty Austin,
and she joins us right now, Patty doing.
Speaker 12 (01:03:03):
Fair to Midland.
Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Well, it's always good to see you have a chat again,
have a chatter in a while. Let's let's talk about
q I just again. When you when you hear the
words legend, iconic, goat all this sort of stuff. But
this man an absolutely an absolutely musical genius.
Speaker 16 (01:03:27):
Most definitely, it's uh, you know, to keep talking about
Quincy's genius is a little bit redundant. That's kind of
a given for anybody that had the opportunity to make
music with him.
Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
But for the people who, for the folks who who
only who on the receiving end, take us inside of
that process? What was it like?
Speaker 9 (01:03:54):
Uh? What?
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
What? What made him so different and unique?
Speaker 16 (01:04:00):
Oh? Lord, I guess the best way to explain working
with Quincy It was kind of like.
Speaker 12 (01:04:12):
Joining the circus.
Speaker 16 (01:04:17):
And you weren't allowed in the room unless you had
equal musical expertise to his level of musical expertise, because
he wasn't the kind of producer that dictated a lot
about what you were going to play. It was usually
in front of you, or maybe you'd hear a demo
(01:04:39):
of what you were going to do, and then his
sense of orchestration, his sense of chemistry played into how
the music ended up. But there was never a sad moment.
(01:05:00):
There was always happiness. There was always insane levels of silliness.
Speaker 9 (01:05:07):
Uh.
Speaker 16 (01:05:08):
And if you did a four hour session with Quincy,
at least three hours of it would be laughing.
Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Well, and we're actually flower.
Speaker 12 (01:05:16):
Would be getting down to business.
Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
We're actually playing a video as you're speaking, and that's
literally what we see. We see the toll y'all cracking up,
laughing to y'all cracking up laughing. Uh And but but
was that part of the secret in that his desire
was to make you as comfortable as possible in order
(01:05:37):
to get the best out of you.
Speaker 16 (01:05:39):
I don't know that it was about comfort as much
as for anybody, as much as it was just his
sense of silliness, you know.
Speaker 12 (01:05:48):
I mean I met Quincy when.
Speaker 16 (01:05:49):
I was four years old, and by the time he passed,
I was probably with him longer than even his children,
as old as daughter is about three younger.
Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
So he member at four years old. When was it?
How did y'all meet?
Speaker 12 (01:06:05):
Nineteen fifty four?
Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Wow?
Speaker 16 (01:06:07):
He had and there was an He had a two
year old in a high chair and a basement apartment,
married to a white woman in nineteen fifty four in
New York City, an a basement apartment and writing arrangements
and playing trumpet. And one of the people he was
writing arrangements for was a lady named Dinah Washington who
(01:06:29):
proclaimed herself to be my godmother. After daring me to
perform on the stage of the Apollo Theater. So I
did that, and she decided that we needed to work together,
and if we were going to work together.
Speaker 12 (01:06:42):
We were going to need arrangements.
Speaker 16 (01:06:44):
And the way that we were going to get those
arrangements was to go and meet with this guy, this
trumpet player slash arranger guy that she was working with
and making recordings with. So we went to his apartment.
I went into his music and sang for him. And
he looked at Dinah and said, she's a midget, right,
(01:07:06):
and and Dinah said, no, this is my goddaughter. And
he said, well, if she's your goddaughter, then she's my
goddaughter too.
Speaker 12 (01:07:17):
And that's how I met Quincy.
Speaker 7 (01:07:19):
And so.
Speaker 11 (01:07:22):
We've literally come up together.
Speaker 12 (01:07:24):
And the older that he got and the older that
I got when he.
Speaker 16 (01:07:28):
Hit his nineties and I hit my seventies, I'm seventy
four now, he kept saying to me, you're catching up
with me, you know, don't get cute over there, because you're.
Speaker 12 (01:07:35):
Catching up with me. So he was always hilarious. When
I was a little girl.
Speaker 16 (01:07:41):
I just found him to be just fun, just so
fun to be around. He always had this incredible, youthful,
wonderful spirit. But he spent his life in the company
of people like Dizzy Gillespie, who was just so silly.
I can't even explain to you how silly Dizzy was,
and Ray Charles and all these people, all of these
musicians from that genre, from that jazz, which is work.
Speaker 12 (01:08:05):
Once he was at that particular time in his life musically,
that's where he was working, Let's put it that way.
Speaker 16 (01:08:11):
His musical taste was always tremendously eglectic all over the place.
He listened to everything, which was why when he became
the president of Mercury Records, he knew what to do
because he listened to everything. So when Bob Dylan came
across his desk, he knew what to do with it.
You know, when the cast album of West Side Story
(01:08:32):
came across his desk, he knew what to do with
it because he had technical training, but he also had
a lot of soul and a lot of funk going
on around him with amazing people who pretty much invented.
Speaker 12 (01:08:44):
Whatever it is that we're doing now, or whatever it.
Speaker 16 (01:08:47):
Is we think we're doing now is really kind of
an invention of the musicians that came up at that time,
and Quincy was sitting right in the middle of that
pod of silliness, this wonderfulness, progressiveness, and ability to improvise,
an ability to sit in a room full of strangers
(01:09:08):
and make magnificent music. So that's where that was his
Petrie dish. So by the time we got to him,
he was he was fully fully.
Speaker 12 (01:09:17):
Formed, right right, and knew how.
Speaker 16 (01:09:20):
To make musicians make the best music they could make.
A lot of times when we were working on stuff
with Michael or when we were working on the Dude album,
he would just, you know, play the track that we
were going to develop, and then he'd leave the room
and he'd come back, like an hour later and go, Okay,
you know, put some grease on this and take that
(01:09:41):
now a little bit. And maybe Patty's saying that again,
you know, because it was really horrible, So do that again,
you know what? And he whatever he had to say
to you, he's there wasn't a lot of now maybe
you can try it.
Speaker 12 (01:09:53):
No no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 16 (01:09:56):
Limited dialogue, because you wouldn't.
Speaker 12 (01:09:59):
Be there the less you were. Can I say this
wherever the hell we're broadcasting too?
Speaker 9 (01:10:04):
Oh?
Speaker 12 (01:10:04):
Yeah, he was. He was a badass.
Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Yeah. First of all, that's why the show is called
roland Mark Unfiltered. Trust me, Uh, I ain't got no
problem cut. That's that's the only way I roll. That's
the only way I roll. Only that. But one of
the things that I think is also interesting is that listen,
for all your greatness, there could be hits and missus
I was reading. I was reading a book on Aretha
(01:10:27):
Franklin and he produced an album for her that that
that didn't do well, and some of that they were like,
he was so and when I was in what they
laid out was that he was so busy and he
was doing so many things, and and and and and
and when you read these stories and you watch these interviews,
(01:10:47):
I mean you sit here and go, my god, how
in the world did he keep up with all of
that because he was doing everything?
Speaker 16 (01:10:57):
Yeah, at one point he did absolutely everything. But again
he you know, he knew how to delegate everything so
that he didn't have to do everything right.
Speaker 12 (01:11:09):
And to me, that was his talent because he was.
Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
A cosd.
Speaker 12 (01:11:14):
Exactly. That's why I'm saying.
Speaker 16 (01:11:16):
The roots are so you know, how that sausage got
made is so important and what was happening historically when
his sausage got made. The countries that he was in
where he learned his technique, in Paris, not in the States.
Speaker 12 (01:11:30):
In Paris. He comes back, he works with Ray Charles.
Speaker 16 (01:11:33):
Andy Williams, Dave Gruson, Henry Mancini. He starts doing movie scores,
he starts doing TV themes.
Speaker 12 (01:11:41):
He's doing everything, but all.
Speaker 16 (01:11:44):
Of it within the realm of music, and all of
it coming from that amazing space when black musicians were
creating a culture, not just as they've done with hip hop.
You know, we do this all. This is what we do,
you know. And he came up at a time when
this was this was the time of creation that everything
(01:12:08):
else has from from him, And so he got to
sit in that, he got to marinate in that, and
was able to shift anyway the music business went because
he'd seen it all, he'd played it all. He knew
what it all was supposed to be, and what even
more important, not what it was supposed to be, but
what it could continue to become, because music constantly evolves as.
Speaker 12 (01:12:33):
It should, you know, it's our gift from the maker.
Speaker 16 (01:12:37):
And he understood that. So it was just about making
a joyful noise with him. And also he loved to
challenge you. If he thought you were a badass too,
then you're going to be challenged. I'm going to assign
you some weird stuff that no one else would even
(01:12:57):
I remember he called me up one day, was working
on score for Roots, and he wanted me to top
a sound that exists with an African tribe. It's a
yodel in their alphabet. It's like CD. And I had
to sit for hours listening to recordings of that so
(01:13:19):
I could sing like about eight bars of whatever that
became underscore. I don't even know if they finally used
it in Roots, but you know, this is the.
Speaker 12 (01:13:28):
Kind of stuff that he that he would do. And
it was great though, because it made you grow.
Speaker 11 (01:13:34):
You know, you didn't.
Speaker 12 (01:13:35):
You didn't just sit in his garden and look cute
when the sun. You got to grow. You know, you
better grow or else you're not there anymore.
Speaker 16 (01:13:44):
So that's that was the formula. I always called him
the Pearlmesta of producers. Pearlmesta was a lady for anybody
that's not one hundred years old like me. She was
a lady that gave society so called society parties in
New York City when that was the thing to do.
And she used to invite the garbage collector and you know,
(01:14:04):
like the highest hoity toitius woman in America at that time,
put him in a room together and let him jam
and they always did somehow. She always had the right
chemistry of people in the studio, which was another thing
that Quincy was very aware of, who's going to work
best in this environment.
Speaker 12 (01:14:22):
In this situation.
Speaker 16 (01:14:24):
He might know somebody that's going to play their booty off,
but they're going to be an equal pain in the ass.
Speaker 12 (01:14:32):
They're not going to be on the session.
Speaker 16 (01:14:34):
And this was something I learned from watching him work.
When I became a contractor for singers, I would always
keep those kinds of things in mind because I saw
how he would put bands together. He learned a lot
from putting his first band together. He got stranded in Europe,
they had no money. He learned everything the hard way
(01:14:55):
everything and was very good at remembering what he'd learned
and not trying to do it more than more than twice,
maybe twice.
Speaker 12 (01:15:05):
But Thaird time wasn't gonna happen.
Speaker 16 (01:15:07):
So when he gets in the studio, He's not even
thinking about any of that anymore. He's already put bands together,
had him break up, had him go broke, had him love.
Speaker 12 (01:15:17):
Him for one week.
Speaker 16 (01:15:17):
And then when you decided to leave that world and
score movies, the guys left behind were just like.
Speaker 12 (01:15:24):
What are you doing this?
Speaker 16 (01:15:26):
We're the last We are literally the last band standing
playing this genre of music.
Speaker 12 (01:15:32):
And he said, well, you're gonna be standing standing without me.
Speaker 16 (01:15:37):
Because I'm going to California and the rest is history.
Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
So you said you met him in fifty four. Twenty
years later. He has an aneurysm and two brain operations.
Speaker 12 (01:15:53):
Yeah, two aneurysms.
Speaker 16 (01:15:54):
Actually they went and got the first one out, but
it was it would be too traumatic to the body
to remove them both at the same time, so he
had they had to close him up, he had to heal,
They had to cross their fingers that the second one
would not burst. And you know that's that's like the
first two bullets he ducked.
Speaker 12 (01:16:12):
He was a bullet duck and.
Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Man, right, I mean, first of all, I'm reading as
a cow where they thought he wasn't gonna make it,
so they plan memorial service, and he attended the memorial
service yeah.
Speaker 16 (01:16:26):
I mean, you know, listen, this last time, we had
gotten to a point, at least let me speak for
my speak for myself. I'd gotten to the point where
I had seen him when he was really this is
this is it? You know, you go through this when
you have seniors in your life. Right, My grandmother went
through this, My mom went through this. I took care
of my mom for five years. I know what all
(01:16:47):
this looks like. So it's like, Okay, this is it.
He's just gotten out of the hospital. He's frail. I
don't know if he's gonna make it. I go to
see him.
Speaker 12 (01:16:57):
I'm very worried about him. But we had we.
Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
Oh I'm not sure what happened, folks. We're gonna get
Patty Austin on. Hold on, Patty, Patty you there. Yeah,
the phone blacked out there. So you said what we
heard it was he was frail?
Speaker 16 (01:17:17):
Yes, when I not this time, And I said, well,
actually that's another story, but I'll get into that.
Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
In a second. Go ahead.
Speaker 16 (01:17:23):
I went to see him when he was very, very frail,
and I was warned. You know, he's very very friend.
I said, look, I know what frale looks like. I'm
I'm damn there frail myself, okay, so America tell me
what Frele looks like. So I went to see him,
and we had this thing between us. When Quincy was
working with Leslie Gore, he invited me and my parents
to see the recording session and she went on a
(01:17:46):
break and he said, I'm going to let you go
in the booth and sing so you can see how
you sound, you know, so you can hear how you
sound on tape. And he said sing And I said, well,
what you know, like maybe eleven, twelve years old? What
should I say? He said, whatever you feel like singing.
So of course I'm like eleven, I'm twelve years old.
So I sing my favorite song, which is great green
gobs of greasy grimey go forgots, mutilated monkey meat, little
(01:18:10):
dirty birdies feet, one court jar of all purpose, porpoise,
puss floating in my pink lemonade.
Speaker 12 (01:18:17):
And me without a spoon. So Quincy used to sing
that to me whenever he'd see me.
Speaker 16 (01:18:24):
We wouldn't see each other for I don't know, three
or four months, or maybe even a year.
Speaker 12 (01:18:28):
He sing that to me.
Speaker 16 (01:18:29):
So I go to see him when he is bent
over in frailness and the nurses saying, this is your goddaughter,
She's here to see you. He barely lifts his head,
he looks at me, and he sings the entire song.
Speaker 15 (01:18:43):
Okay Wow.
Speaker 16 (01:18:45):
Then I had a conversation with him about the band,
about his original band. I said, you know, Poppy, I
called him Poppy Poppy. I was listening to the to
the old stuff the other day. God, that band was
so great because I worked with that band when I
was a kid. I did a show with Quincy called
Free Andy's that we rehearsed in Europe, and the plan
was to bring it to Broadway, but they lost all
(01:19:05):
their money.
Speaker 12 (01:19:05):
Was it was a mess.
Speaker 16 (01:19:07):
But anyway, So spent pretty much a year, almost a
year in Europe working on the show with him.
Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Huh, go ahead, go ahead?
Speaker 12 (01:19:17):
Oh no.
Speaker 16 (01:19:17):
So I spent almost a year on the road in
Utecht first, which was where we rehearsed at the World's Fairgrounds,
remember when the US had World's Fairs and the building
we were rehearsing and they were going to tear it
down as soon as we finished rehearsing, which they did,
and we moved the production to Paris.
Speaker 12 (01:19:35):
At that point so I.
Speaker 16 (01:19:37):
Had this whole background going with Quincy in those days
of his working with the big band stuff. So I
knew all the guys. They were all in the Free
and Easy band. My dad was in the Free and
Easy band, and so I talked to him about those musicians.
I named two of them. I guess there were maybe
heard at least ten, maybe thirteen members all together. He
(01:19:58):
named everyone, every last one of them and said that
was the best band I ever had. And then about
three weeks later, I think it was last Thanksgiving, I
went to the house and he was sitting straight up
in a chair like a potentate. And I went over
(01:20:21):
to kiss him and he said, baby, I like that dress.
And I said, okay, you're fine.
Speaker 12 (01:20:29):
I don't know how you're fine.
Speaker 16 (01:20:30):
The last time I saw you you were singing Great
Green Gods to me and with your head hanging what
And we were all all of the kids and I
were standing around him going what happened?
Speaker 12 (01:20:40):
How are you here like this?
Speaker 16 (01:20:42):
So after that one I was like, look, he's he's
going to be here at least another twenty thirty years.
Speaker 12 (01:20:48):
He's just he'says going to be sitting on top of earth.
Speaker 16 (01:20:51):
It's going to be ashes and points, He's going to
be sitting on top. So by the time that he
finally did pass I'm telling you, it's just catching up
with me now because I'm just in this state of
you know, I just don't believe it. I had a
very similar thing with Luther when he passed that because
we never saw each other regularly.
Speaker 12 (01:21:12):
Sometimes we wouldn't see each other for a year or
a year and a half.
Speaker 16 (01:21:14):
Then we'd get together for three days and put our
pajamas on and watch all the silly stuff he wanted
to see.
Speaker 12 (01:21:19):
Amos and Andy and world wrestling. Those were there's favorite things.
Speaker 16 (01:21:25):
To watch, and I'd watch it with him, and we
go out to dinner and we'd talk, and we'd go
to a movie and we'd talk some more, and then
we wouldn't see each other forever. So I always to
this day wait to hear from him again.
Speaker 12 (01:21:35):
And I know I'm going to go through this with
Quincy even worse.
Speaker 16 (01:21:38):
Because I saw the first time I laid eyes on him,
I was a child.
Speaker 12 (01:21:42):
You know, when you have that kind.
Speaker 16 (01:21:43):
Of a relationship with somebody, it changes all the dynamics
of what you see. And we did business together and
we did father daughter stuff together.
Speaker 12 (01:21:52):
And when my dad, my.
Speaker 16 (01:21:54):
Biological and beautiful, one wonderful papa, died.
Speaker 12 (01:21:58):
Quincy was there. He just said, you know, I'm the
I'm the understudy, I'm filling in, and he did.
Speaker 16 (01:22:03):
You know, he helped me to get through that when
my mom passed away, the same thing because we were
our families were close very early on when I was
a child, so the relationship was very unique.
Speaker 12 (01:22:16):
And I got to see him, you know, almost dietly
was twenty different.
Speaker 16 (01:22:24):
I know, it's ridiculous, it's gallows humor to laugh at this,
but we were.
Speaker 12 (01:22:27):
We all got to go.
Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
But he would laugh at it. I mean he wouldn't.
Speaker 12 (01:22:31):
He would he would.
Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
He wouldn't make light of it.
Speaker 16 (01:22:34):
No, he would crack the joke first, come on, and
then it would build, you know, it would build excrementally
from there with everybody in the room. But you know,
it's just it's just the vibe that was around him,
and it just didn't matter how horrible it.
Speaker 12 (01:22:48):
Would get, and it got horrible sometimes. He just always
found he always had this.
Speaker 16 (01:22:53):
Reserve to pick hisself up and dust hisself off and
start all over again and do whatever he.
Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Had to do you know, well, if there is a lesson,
there's a lesson for a lot of people who are
watching or listening to this, or a lesson they can
take away from Quincy Jones' life is that. And again
the reason I specic I mentioned the aneurysm is that
if you look at the output of his life after
(01:23:24):
about that, it's just I think people just need to
under think. What happens a lot is that people go
through things and they also believe that, well, I've reached
a certain age and then you know what, that's there's
nothing more. But the reality is all of these things
that happen after he was forty after I mean, these
(01:23:47):
things happen. And so what it's what it means is
as long as there's still breath in your body, you
can keep you can keep moving, you can keep aspiring,
you can keep you can keep going, you can keep
You don't know when God's gonna call, you know, gonna
call you home, So you know, you use every single
ounce of talent that you've been given and then you
(01:24:08):
say I'm gonna go grab some more. So when God
comes home and you're like, listen, you gave me these talent.
Man I'm bringing back thirty extra ones.
Speaker 12 (01:24:17):
Oh yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 16 (01:24:20):
It's funny you should say that, Roland, because I've started
teaching masterclasses with a little bit of regularity, and I
love doing it because I learned from the absolute best.
Speaker 12 (01:24:32):
I learned from the innovators. People like to call me
an innovator, and I just go no, no, no, no, no no.
I'm an imitator. Imitator. You know, there's a whole bunch.
Speaker 16 (01:24:42):
Of ladies that came before me, and men and musicians
of every elk that made what I'm doing possible. You know,
I've ended up being more in the world of jazz than.
Speaker 12 (01:24:54):
In the pop world because it matures better.
Speaker 16 (01:24:58):
I think after a while, if you're doing, you know,
certain kinds of music at a certain age. If you
notice most pop artists, when they get a certain age,
they start recording the Great American Songbook.
Speaker 12 (01:25:10):
There's a reason for it.
Speaker 16 (01:25:11):
You know, it's sophisticated. It reaches a different audience. You're
trying to say different things in your life at that
particular point. But I always tell my students to keep
something in your back pocket, you know, which is what
I learned. I learned so much stuff from Quincy about
what you do in your perform I'm jumping all over
(01:25:31):
the place, but.
Speaker 11 (01:25:32):
As all good of stuff.
Speaker 16 (01:25:35):
We went to the Newport Jazz Festival with Quincy and
the band. Again, we being my family, Mom and dad
and I, Quincy.
Speaker 12 (01:25:43):
The band, and it was.
Speaker 16 (01:25:49):
Newport Jazz Festival, and Ray Charles was performing at the
Jazz Festival that day. And as a matter of fact,
there's a scene in the Ray Charles movie where he
is talking to Quincy in the pen. Ye okay, so
we were there. We were at that and Judy Garland
was on the bill, and Quincy said to me before
(01:26:11):
he got out of the bus and went to the tent,
he said, and came over to me and pointed to
put his fingers in my face and said, I want
you to see Judy Garland. I was already performing, I
was doing TV, I was doing theater, I was doing everything, and.
Speaker 12 (01:26:25):
He said, I want you to see. I said, I
don't know. You know, I'm listening to like.
Speaker 16 (01:26:29):
Led Zeppelin and I'm listening to Motown and I'm listening
to everything, but what he's talking about, I said, in
Judy Garland, she's come. She was pretty much a hot
mess at that time, personal her personal life was just
a mess, and her chops were bad, and I'm like,
he said, I want you to see her, and I said.
Speaker 12 (01:26:48):
Okay, okay, I'll he here.
Speaker 16 (01:26:50):
Well I saw her, and her chops were bad, and
it was maybe one of the most magnificent performances I'd
ever seen anybody do, because she was a brilliant actress
and she knew how to sell whatever it was she
was selling in a song with or without a voice,
she made you believe whatever she was singing about. When
(01:27:14):
she did Over the Rainbow, which of course was obligatory,
it is.
Speaker 12 (01:27:17):
Like the biggest hit she ever had in.
Speaker 16 (01:27:18):
Her li so she comes out to do she I
think she ended the show with Over the Rainbow, or
I think it was the end of the first half
of the show, and people you could see people lifting
their butts off their seats when she'd go for the
song where it was like, you know, is she gonna
make that way?
Speaker 12 (01:27:35):
And it was not quite some way.
Speaker 16 (01:27:38):
She's sliding up to it, and everybody's like, come on, Judy,
come on, baby. Was like watching a horse race with
a horse that wasn't quite gonna make it, but they'd
make it.
Speaker 12 (01:27:47):
Eventually, but it.
Speaker 16 (01:27:49):
Just didn't matter. And I'd never seen anybody perform like
that before because that really didn't have anything to do
with the tradition of jazz or the age azz female
vocalists performed. They were very non dramatic, very stoic, and
Olena Horne just supposed and looked magnificent.
Speaker 12 (01:28:07):
And sang her butt off and that was enough.
Speaker 16 (01:28:10):
I had never seen anybody be theatrical when they say
or sell a song. From that point of view, Quincy
knew me well enough that I was a drama queen
and that I that if I saw that, I would
reinterpret that for myself. So I'm always telling my students
find those things because if you want to have longevity,
(01:28:32):
and as you said, this is in life in general,
but more so, you know, if you're a stevedore or
a dancer or any of those things that were an athlete,
you know, forty five, you're not gonna be doing that anymore.
So you have to have other things that you that
you're fabulous at. But you can hang in there a
very long time as a comedian doing what you do,
(01:28:53):
you gremlin, You're gonna be there for one hundred years
to what you're doing singing.
Speaker 12 (01:28:58):
You can hang in there a good long time if
you take care of yourself.
Speaker 16 (01:29:03):
And so I think it's always great to have something
that you don't expose right away about your talents.
Speaker 12 (01:29:10):
Don't show all of your talents.
Speaker 16 (01:29:11):
Again, this was from hanging out with Quincy and these
old folks in the business who knew every trick.
Speaker 12 (01:29:16):
In the book.
Speaker 16 (01:29:17):
You know, don't go out there, and if you can
hit the highest note in the world, don't hit the
highest note in the world in the first act. Close
the second act with that highest note. Save these things
as you go along. And if you plan on doing
this a long time, yep, save really save up some stuff.
Speaker 12 (01:29:33):
It's like, oh yeah, well wait a minute, I can
whistle too.
Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
You know, whatever, whatever that may be, you hold on.
Speaker 12 (01:29:39):
To that, You keep that, and you save that as.
Speaker 16 (01:29:42):
A gift to yourself to keep you going and to
keep your audience interested.
Speaker 15 (01:29:47):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
I remember line. It was one year at Essenson. Janet
Jackson performed the night before and Gladys Knight was the
next night. I think in Janet's show she may have
changed like six eight times. And so the next night
Gladys comes out, uh, and it's it's a it's a stool,
it's a towel on the stool, a bottle of water,
(01:30:08):
and it is the is the it's the microphone staying
and Gladys says, all right, I'm gonna sing my hits
from the fifties, then I'm see my hits from the sixties.
Then I'm gonna seeing my hits from the seventies. Then
I'm gonna sing my hits from the eighties at nine.
So right, So so I go backstage, I go backstay
after the show, and so I go go speak to
I tell us, like I said, Janey, change like six
(01:30:30):
eight ties this like she said. She said, I'm walking
on that one damn dress. I ain't got time to
do all that change And she said, we just gonna
stand there and sing. So it was so it was
just hilarius as you as you would talk. I just
immediately thought about that in terms of, uh, speaking of that.
So we were playing a cliff from it from that
two thousand and seven conversation with the History Makers with
(01:30:51):
Quincy Jones, and the reason when every time I see it,
I laugh because it was actually the first and the
only time I met James in group. But I had
previously met his daughter in New Orleans at Essence Fest
and we were we were in the restaurant and I
can't remember if I told you the story before. So
I woke up to James and I and so good
(01:31:13):
to meet you. Tell him how I met your daughter
and he was like, yeah, she told me that. Because
I told I made her crack up laughing, and I said,
please tell your dad. How is it that he never
got the woman? I think only one of his songs
he finally got the woman?
Speaker 12 (01:31:26):
And I had a bad.
Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
So oh no, so right, So that night, after the
Quincy Jones thing, I said, James, seriously, bruh, I said,
I think you got the woman one time? I said,
could you at you at least gotten a sister two
or three times? And he just busted out laughing. I
know he did. He's like, I cannot believe you just
he said, I cannot believe you said that. I said,
(01:31:49):
bru I said, I was listening to like ten or
twelve year old songs once and I was like, damn,
did he lose a woman in every song?
Speaker 5 (01:31:59):
Once?
Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
What about me?
Speaker 16 (01:32:04):
I used to tease him about that title all the time.
I used to imitate James's voice. Sometimes I would have
to do gigs without him, and so as a spoof,
I would imitate his voice.
Speaker 9 (01:32:13):
I did.
Speaker 12 (01:32:14):
I did a pretty good imitation of James, And James
used to say to me, do you do me better
than I do me? Then we just look at each
other and hit the floor. It's like, I don't know
how to take that.
Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
Man.
Speaker 16 (01:32:24):
You just you know, you take that wherever you want
want to, But no, James was also again silly, another silly, wonderful,
crazy person. You just I think Quincy had some kind
of magic magic dust that he brought with him out
of the womb and and he kind of hit it
maybe in his armpit, and saved it up for the future.
(01:32:47):
Because it's really difficult. It's so difficult. This is gonna
sound weird. It's so difficult for me to grieve him,
to have, you know, to have real grief about him,
because the very thought of him brings back the laughter
and silliness and joy and happiness. And I have to
(01:33:09):
go like carve through the joy to get to the
pain of the fact that I've lost him. That, you know,
which I consider to be kind of selfish, that I
know he's in a better place. As a matter of fact,
we were all talking about the folks that he's with now.
Uh you know, I mean there's a show going on
up there.
Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
There's a jam session, baby.
Speaker 16 (01:33:33):
And somebody said we need a dancer. So you know,
we got my Lady Jamison the other day. Uh so
now they got somebody dancing doing six o'clock kicks and
being fabulous.
Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
And he's up there with so Roy Barnes.
Speaker 16 (01:33:51):
Come on, come on, and you don't need a singer yet.
Speaker 12 (01:33:59):
No, I mean, come on, but but no, it's it's uh,
it's it's hard.
Speaker 16 (01:34:04):
You know. There was Quincy knew a guy named Babs Gonzalez,
and Babs created his own kind of language. This was
during the beboch era, and and he would always come
and visit Quincy. And he came to visit Quincy one
day and he said, Quincy said, so, man, you know,
how's how's work and everything? He said, Man, it's hard
to get exotic when the gigs are so spasmodic. And
(01:34:28):
you know, this is this is the environment that Quincy
was in all the time, with these these kind of cats,
you know, just talking silliness, making the most wonderful things
out of absolutely nothing, you know, just crafting amazing music,
crafting incredible lives. Uh. It was just it was a
(01:34:50):
magnificent time to grow up in the music business, and
it was a magnificent time to know him. And the
other thing that that that I really learned from from Quincy.
One day, an old friend of his came up to
him and said, man, oh, you look great, well and
(01:35:11):
how's everything going.
Speaker 12 (01:35:12):
And Quincy talked to him a little bit. He said, man,
you haven't.
Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
Changed a bit.
Speaker 12 (01:35:15):
And Quincy got really mad. He said, what do you
I haven't seen you in like ten years and I
haven't changed a bit. What an insult. And he carried
that through his whole life.
Speaker 16 (01:35:30):
It didn't mean he was never going to make a
mistake or do anything.
Speaker 12 (01:35:33):
Stupid, but he would.
Speaker 16 (01:35:36):
I mean, in his eighties, you know, he had a
drinking issue. I'm not telling anything out of school. Watch
the documentary you'll see all about it. And when he
was going to do something, no matter how destructive or constructive,
you could not stop him.
Speaker 12 (01:35:52):
That was going to happen, whether you thought it was
a good idea for him to.
Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
Do or not.
Speaker 12 (01:35:57):
If he thought it was a good idea for him.
Speaker 11 (01:35:59):
He was going to do it.
Speaker 16 (01:36:00):
So getting him to stop drinking was was an effort.
And I was doing quite a bit of drinking at
that time, my damnself. But he just as they say
down South, he just up and stopped. He just said,
that's it. I've hit whatever my rock bottom is.
Speaker 12 (01:36:19):
I'm not doing this anymore. And he didn't. And I
saw him be able.
Speaker 16 (01:36:23):
I don't know too many people in that age bracket
that have that kind of an issue who can even
begin to address it, never mind stop it, you know.
Speaker 12 (01:36:32):
And that's what he did. And I saw him do
that all the time.
Speaker 16 (01:36:35):
And the biggest compliment I ever received from him was
about a year ago. We were having one of our
god daughter god daughter of Godfather conversations and he said,
don't you ever change?
Speaker 12 (01:36:49):
And I said, ooh, I want that in writing. This
is from the.
Speaker 16 (01:36:53):
Man that says you must constantly change an evolve.
Speaker 12 (01:36:56):
He said, I said, are you telling me? I'm there?
I can like stop now, He said, you can stop now.
I said, I wanted in writing.
Speaker 16 (01:37:02):
Quincay, I never got into writing, damn it, but no,
it's it's to me. That was That was the other
great talent that he had as as a human being,
that he was able to eventually dig hisself and dig
hisself out of whatever he had dug his self into.
Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
Well, it's a whole lot of that for the man
folks effectually called Q Patty Austin Wild appreciate the where
you based.
Speaker 12 (01:37:32):
I live in Panama.
Speaker 16 (01:37:34):
I got out out three years ago that the movie
and all of us were teasing that Quincy left when
he did because he was not about to see our
enemy number one, public enemy number.
Speaker 12 (01:37:48):
One from the president.
Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
Right. So actually, actually, actually somebody, somebody hit me on Wednesday.
They like, yeah, Q left on money because he didn't
want to see this ship. So that's that was literally
what somebody.
Speaker 12 (01:38:00):
Trading right stops orchestrating.
Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
As that what someone said right on out the door. Well, Patty,
when you when when you're back in the States, or
if I find myself in Panama, let's be sure to connect.
Speaker 16 (01:38:13):
Please please please, then I'm back and forth all the time. Actually,
all right, nobody wants to let me retire. People, I've
been doing this for seventy years, do you hear me?
Speaker 12 (01:38:21):
Cannot stop now?
Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Please? Hey, as long as the director posits still goes
through I'm good. Patty Austin, I appreciate it. Thank you
so very much for sharing your reflections on Quincy Jones.
Thank you, love you as well, folks, Uh, the great
Patty Austin. We'll appreciate her sharing those reflections. Let's go
to a quick break we come back. Kirk Wahyaleam sent
(01:38:44):
us a video sharing his thoughts, and we'll also play
a couple of more clips. And the only time I
got Quincy Jones on camera wasn't long, but at least
we made it happen. We'll show you that as well.
You're watching Rolling and Unfiltered on the Blackshot Network.
Speaker 21 (01:39:32):
Hatred on the Streets, a horrific scene white nationalist rally
that descended into deadly violence.
Speaker 5 (01:39:41):
White people are.
Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Losing their their minds as a angry pro Trump monk
storm to the US capital. We're about to see the
rise where I call white minority resistance.
Speaker 23 (01:39:52):
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tolerate black folks voting.
Speaker 20 (01:39:59):
I think, what the is the inevitable result of violent denial.
Speaker 5 (01:40:04):
This is part of American history.
Speaker 22 (01:40:05):
Every time that people of color have made progress, whether
real or symbolic, there has been, but Carol Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a backlash.
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Says the wife of the Proud Boys and the Boogaaloo
Boys America. There's going to be more of this.
Speaker 6 (01:40:21):
It's all the God.
Speaker 24 (01:40:22):
This country is getting increasingly racist and its behaviors and
its attitudes because of the fear of.
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White people, the people that they're taking our job, they're
taking our resources, they're taking out women.
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This is white field.
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Speaker 26 (01:41:44):
Hey, this is motown recording artist Kim. You are watching
Rolling Martin unfiltered? Boy, he always unfiltered, though I ain't
never known him to be filtered. Is there another way
to experience Rolling Martin than to be un filtered?
Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
Of course he's unfiltered. Would you expect anything less? Why watch?
Speaker 26 (01:42:02):
Watch, watch what happens next?
Speaker 5 (01:42:15):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
Well there were there are people who couldn't join us
live on the show, but they wanted to pay their
respects to Quincy Jones. One of them is my number
one artist, my homeboy, Kirk whaleam uh. Here is what
he had to say.
Speaker 5 (01:43:00):
Quincy Jones, of course wasn't original, but.
Speaker 27 (01:43:04):
I am so privileged to get to share a memory
or two with him. First of all, q used to
love to snack, so if you were in the studio
with him, you had to be, you know, had super
human strength to not eat all the eminems and stuff
he always had around.
Speaker 5 (01:43:20):
And he had certain combinations that he.
Speaker 27 (01:43:22):
Liked, like one eminem and one potato chip at the
same time.
Speaker 5 (01:43:26):
All that kind of crazy. But one thing that.
Speaker 27 (01:43:30):
Really it was like the first real encounter encounter I
had with him.
Speaker 5 (01:43:35):
Bob Jon't Bob Jones.
Speaker 27 (01:43:37):
Bob James had recommended me for a session to play
with Quincy Jones, and it was like, oh my god,
I was just so nervous, you know. So I'm in
there in the studio and I played my solo and
you know, and I looked over there at.
Speaker 5 (01:43:49):
Him waiting for him.
Speaker 27 (01:43:51):
You know, he's in control room, and you know, he's
got the talk back button, and I'm just like, oh god,
please don't tell me I didn't mess this up, you know,
because he wasn't saying.
Speaker 5 (01:43:59):
Anything, and it felt like an hour.
Speaker 27 (01:44:02):
You know, I'm sure it was probably like thirty seconds,
but I believe he probably played this though. You know,
he knew I was nervous and everything. So he finally
hit the talk back and he said, you know what
was wrong with that? I'm like, oh, man, one chance,
and I booked. He said, not a damn thing. Of course,
(01:44:26):
he cracked up like it was funny to him. It
wasn't funny to me. I was like, man, you jerking
my chain? And all was well, you know, he loved it,
and he was the guy he would hire people to
do what it is he wanted you to do. You know,
if he didn't know you could do it, he wouldn't
hire you. And once he hired you, he didn't really
give you a whole bunch of instructors. He's like, do
(01:44:47):
what you do, you know. And so the times I
worked with him after that, I was I was equipped,
you know. And you know, man, I especially loved the
thing we did with the Sacks in the garden, you know,
the secret garden we made. Anyway, I loved that brother,
and I'm just he was an avatar for so many
of us in composition and arranging and playing. He could
(01:45:08):
play that trumpet too, you know. But he was a
human humanitarian. He was a great, great person.
Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Oh we appreciate that, Kirk Whale, thank you so very much.
And yeah, Sachs and the garden, it's my favorites. Music
director Ray Chu also sent us this video for our
Quincy Jones tribute.
Speaker 25 (01:45:29):
Everybody, This is rag Hu and I want to pay
my personal tribute to the great Quincy Jones. I met
Quincy when I was very young, and I before I
even met him, I studied his music. I studied all
of his albums, all the big band stuff, all the
great stuff that he's done.
Speaker 5 (01:45:47):
When I finally met.
Speaker 25 (01:45:48):
Him, it was such a great experience and spending time
with him, hearing his wonderful anecdotes and all his stories
and the quincyisms Quincy could go. He's got like a
barrel full of quincyism. I don't know how I remembered
all that stuff, you know, and all the history that
(01:46:11):
he would recite and talk about when when you got
into the space, so that those are my memories of him.
Speaker 12 (01:46:19):
And he was very funny too.
Speaker 25 (01:46:21):
So hey, like everybody that's gonna be talking about Quincy.
You could talk about Quincy for hours and hours, talk
about his movies. You could talk about all of his
world productions, We're the World, all the great.
Speaker 12 (01:46:34):
Stuff, but most so, most of all, it's.
Speaker 25 (01:46:37):
About Quincy Jones the Man. And I got to know
him as the Quincy Jones the Man, and that was
my honor.
Speaker 9 (01:46:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
As I said earlier, we were supposed to do with
one on one with Quincy Jones when I was at
TV one, but the folks there canceled. The trip never happened.
Oh yeah, I'm still cussing the folks after that one.
But twenty eleven we had to Washington watch show. We
were in l A doing a special on philanthropy and
at the NBA All Star Game, and I don't know
(01:47:09):
what the I don't know what the red carpet was.
We ended up shooting a red carpet, and guess who
came rolling down The great man himself, Quincy Jones. Here's
that quick interview. Well, last time I saw you, sir,
with the history makers, you had a hell of a
time telling these one of the stories about Chicago, I
ain't being a gangst all that good stuff. Actually I
(01:47:30):
lived there for six years and so now just moved
to DC. So well, I'm a Texans.
Speaker 17 (01:47:36):
We cowboying.
Speaker 9 (01:47:38):
Let me ask you this movie.
Speaker 1 (01:47:41):
It dels into a part of our history that folks
aren't aware of. And even when it comes to music,
you've always made it perfectly clear that people need to
be aware of history. And it is not just about today.
Speaker 9 (01:47:51):
Well that's what it's. That's about anything, though. You know,
if you know what's happened before, I look at it
like this.
Speaker 17 (01:47:58):
If you don't have an accurate diagnosis, you cannot write
a prescription.
Speaker 9 (01:48:04):
It's the same thing.
Speaker 17 (01:48:05):
And if you know what happened before, how we got
down everything else, you know.
Speaker 9 (01:48:09):
It's gonna make the road easier to get where you're going.
Speaker 1 (01:48:12):
All right, then, so that's that first of all I
got to hit them, was that bore? That interview had
to be okay, I hit my producer, my old producer, Jay.
I'm like, what the hell? That cut off early? But
that was again our chat with Quincy Jones. In two
thousand and eleven, you heard Howard he would talk about
(01:48:33):
the was it Howard was pat talk about the Netflix
documentary on Quincy Jones. It was done by his daughter Rashida,
A fantastic documentary. If you have not seen it before
to check it out, here is the trailer for that documentary.
Speaker 28 (01:48:48):
I would like to have you meet one of the
finest musicians that I've ever known, mister Quincy Jones's Quincy's here,
what a good see?
Speaker 9 (01:49:03):
How you been? Man'll be good?
Speaker 27 (01:49:05):
My ultimate mentor and inspiration are making me some old
Do you know who you are?
Speaker 16 (01:49:11):
Man?
Speaker 1 (01:49:12):
Quincy Jones?
Speaker 25 (01:49:13):
Boy, I was inspired by combining hip hop and jazz
and used the first to do it.
Speaker 13 (01:49:19):
Thence he called me and he said, okay, well, I
want to pitch your.
Speaker 9 (01:49:22):
Future to you.
Speaker 12 (01:49:23):
You all know the story, right, Quincy Jones discovered me.
Speaker 15 (01:49:26):
Don't try to do what he's done, because you get
jazz two, Paramedical Rider thirty six.
Speaker 22 (01:49:34):
What is the emergency?
Speaker 12 (01:49:36):
Yes, having justin and shortness of breath.
Speaker 1 (01:49:38):
If you don't feel good, you got to take care
of it.
Speaker 9 (01:49:41):
I will.
Speaker 5 (01:49:44):
I'm a survivor.
Speaker 11 (01:49:45):
The whole life has been like that.
Speaker 17 (01:49:49):
The South Side of Chicago in the thirties, man and dream,
the pressure. I wanted to be a gangship till I
was eleven.
Speaker 1 (01:49:55):
You want to be what you see, and that's all
we ever saw.
Speaker 17 (01:49:59):
Started playing it and fourteen years old's work in the
nightclubs of the sea, black men that would dignify proud.
Speaker 9 (01:50:07):
I said, that's what I want to be. I want
to be in that family.
Speaker 17 (01:50:12):
Music was the one thing that offered me my freedom.
Speaker 12 (01:50:24):
Dad, how do you deal with your ego and your art?
Speaker 17 (01:50:26):
You have to dream so big that you can get
an ego, because she'd never fulfill all the dreams.
Speaker 9 (01:50:34):
I got six daughters who won song. That's why I
don't have any hair.
Speaker 17 (01:50:39):
I've seen the power of music as a tool to
reach the hearts and minds of millions.
Speaker 5 (01:50:44):
Of people.
Speaker 9 (01:50:46):
At each stage in this remarkable career.
Speaker 16 (01:50:49):
He's been somebody who's walked through that door before anybody
else has.
Speaker 17 (01:50:54):
He only lived twenty six thousand days. I'm gonna wear
them all out.
Speaker 1 (01:51:05):
He said, I'm gonna wear him all out, and he
absolutely did that. I'm gonna ad another couple quick interviews here.
I'm gonna go to drummer Queen Cora. She literally just
landed where she is, Cora? Can you hear me all right? Then? Uh,
look like you just sat down, just just real quick.
(01:51:25):
Thank you for joining us late. I just want to
get your thoughts and reflections on the amazing, unbelievable Quincy Jones.
Speaker 29 (01:51:36):
Quincy Jones was amazing. Hang on, Quincy Jones was an
amazing influence. I'm actually here in Chicago with the National
Black Musicians Coalition and his legacy still resonates with that.
So being an artist, being a musician, and basically seeing
yourself outside of a genre is what Quincy Jones's impact
(01:52:00):
has done for me and for us. To be excellent
at your craft as an instrumentalist and become a composer, arranger, producer,
television impact, the television industry, the film industry, and how
we hear and see music, how we see music as art,
(01:52:21):
and how we see art as an impact on the
lives of people around the world. I would definitely say
his legacy is that for me, just timeless.
Speaker 12 (01:52:34):
And incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:52:36):
You talked about not being defined by one genre. You've
operated in a different spaces, and I think what it
shows for Quincy Jones is is you you. Music is universal,
it is worldwide. Uh and uh, it's you don't have
to be confined if you will, that's the beauty of music.
Speaker 9 (01:52:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:52:54):
There's no such thing as boundaries in music.
Speaker 29 (01:52:58):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and even business like the business of
music is something that I embraced, you know, even as
a publisher, and just going beyond the instrument to support
your art, to expand your art, to have your art
live light years longer than you.
Speaker 1 (01:53:18):
Well, I know you're quite busy. You said, Hey, is
there a small window to join. I'm glad you hit
me just your final thoughts about Quincy Jones.
Speaker 29 (01:53:28):
Thank you Roland for having me on the show. Always,
Quincy Jones is the quintessential expression of arts and education,
and I'm grateful that I had an opportunity to meet him,
Grateful to share in his legacy and continue on as
an artist and as a businesswoman and as an entrepreneur
(01:53:48):
and creative Quincy Jones is that his legacy will continue
to live on.
Speaker 1 (01:53:54):
All right, then, Queen Corn thanks a lot, Thank you,
Roland appreciate it. Folks should make us any of you.
Quincy Jones talked about how he transitioned from jazz to pop.
Let's play that.
Speaker 4 (01:54:09):
You know, there are no greater purists in music than
jazz purists, So there must have been some pushback when
you moved into pop.
Speaker 9 (01:54:17):
Honey, you know you think I care.
Speaker 17 (01:54:26):
When we were kids, thirteen years old in the Seattle, Washington,
you had to play shottishes, bomb mistress, strip music, rhythm
and blues, you had to play everything, Ray Charles, everybody
had to play it. So they acting like I changed
up for a senior. Rock and roller came out of
black music. It was of music they played in the
black neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (01:54:45):
Was that not new?
Speaker 9 (01:54:49):
We were playing good rocking the night and all that stuff.
Speaker 17 (01:54:52):
Listen to pee wee trading and two boys walking around
when I was twelve years old, glet.
Speaker 9 (01:54:56):
Me break selling out? Well, I mean, you know, the
main thing is.
Speaker 17 (01:55:02):
So if somebody these cats that are talking about that
knew how to make a record to sell fifty million albums,
they'd be there.
Speaker 1 (01:55:08):
In New York.
Speaker 17 (01:55:08):
Man, trust me, and not compromise your soul, because I
never compromised my musicality.
Speaker 9 (01:55:16):
Never.
Speaker 4 (01:55:17):
I don't think you did. But you know you moved
that into the film, into films. Is that something you
always wanted to do? The Pawnbroker and The Heat of
the Night you did amazing in Cold Blood? You did
amazing film work.
Speaker 12 (01:55:27):
You How did you make that transition?
Speaker 17 (01:55:29):
I wanted to do that since I was fifteen years old.
I used to play hooky and go see all of
these movies. And I could tell Alfred Newman's sound from
twentieth Century Fox, Victor Young in Paramount. I don't know
how Stanley Wilson from RKO. I could just tell them.
Let's see Benny Carter's name on one song and Snowsay
Killer Magerald or Calvin Jackson the number, or Toucha Henderson's
(01:55:53):
brother one tune, but never a full screen credit, you know.
And I said, I know, I don't have a chance.
It is my passion to do films because they were
all Eastern European names.
Speaker 9 (01:56:03):
You know, they didn't do that.
Speaker 17 (01:56:05):
And fifteen years later, thank god, Lena Horne played it
for Sidney Lunette, who was dating her daughter and finally
married her, and she played a record I did for
Basie and he called me to Judie Parnbroker, and I
was the happiest dude on the planet.
Speaker 4 (01:56:23):
And television scoring is different from film scoring. You did Ironside,
which I would sing it for you all, but it
would date me. But I do remember how it goes
and Sandford and Son. People don't know that.
Speaker 17 (01:56:34):
All Cosby's bombs and all just Kincaid when he was
a gym teacher and his variety show and all that stuff,
all of it a lot of TV shows.
Speaker 9 (01:56:44):
So but that's how you learn the craft.
Speaker 17 (01:56:46):
You know that you don't have an entitlement being in
the record business to say I can make films and
TV two. You better go learn how it's a lifetime craft.
Speaker 4 (01:56:55):
You know, how long did it take you to write
Sandford and Son?
Speaker 9 (01:56:58):
Twenty minutes?
Speaker 17 (01:57:00):
Bud Yarker came to me and he said, I'd like
you to go see the film on it.
Speaker 9 (01:57:03):
I said, who's in it?
Speaker 17 (01:57:04):
He said, I said, you can't put Red Fox on
Thattional TV man.
Speaker 9 (01:57:09):
Are you crazy?
Speaker 17 (01:57:11):
Because we worked together with Billy Eckstein and cole'sna because
that the parlom with but I used to write all
Foxes instances and it was the dirtiest comic on Moms
mainly trained him and slapping white It are you kidding?
Speaker 9 (01:57:24):
I said, you got him on national television.
Speaker 1 (01:57:26):
He said yeah.
Speaker 9 (01:57:26):
I said, I don't need to see it.
Speaker 17 (01:57:29):
I wrote in twenty minutes, We recorded in twenty minutes,
and it was a big It was fantastic.
Speaker 9 (01:57:34):
Oh I got the big one.
Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
Kelency Jones also told Gwyn I for the best advice
he's ever received.
Speaker 17 (01:57:50):
The best advice I ever got was from not Evil
want to say in nineteen fifty seven. She said, your
music will never be more or less than you are
a human being. That's so I started to work on
the human being. I'm discovering a lot of things about
myself and on I'm trying now for the last two
years to get all of the negative thoughts out of
(01:58:13):
my body, grudges, my anger, it's a waste of time
and Mark Twain's words just overwhelming. Anger is an ascid
which does more harm to the vessel in which it's
stored than anything on which it's poured, and amazing to
(01:58:35):
be to get the eighty five to figure that out.
Speaker 9 (01:58:39):
It's pre ridiculous, but you've learned it from mistakes.
Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
Well, that actually was from the Netflix documentary on Quincy Jones. Folks.
That is it for our tribute. Appreciate everybody who has
joined us again. Quincy Jones an absolutely amazing man and
he was always funny. So what timeout was sequin? Quincy
for some reason thought I travel with him on a
(01:59:04):
trip to China, and every time we would see each other,
he would say, Roland, he said, Man, did we have
so much fun in the trip to China. I have
no idea what the hell quiz he was talking about,
because the only time I went to China was with
the National Urban League. But of course I never credited
Quincy and has went along with it. But it was
always funny, so I can only imagine what the hell
(01:59:25):
happened on that trip to China. Folks. That is it
for us. We'll see y'all on Monday. Right here, I'm
rolling unfiltered on the Blackstar Network and certainly have prayers
and thoughts go out to the family of Quincy Jones.
Y'all take care. How