Turning pain into beauty

His mother was mentally ill, his childhood difficult. But then Quincy Jones discovered the piano, and it changed his life.

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 18, 2001

IN BOOKSTORES: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. Excerpt: In his own words ON TELEVISION: Quincy Jones: In the Pocket, a 90-minute portrait of the legendary producer, airs at 9 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3 as part of the PBS American Masters series. Grade: A.

Quincy Jones can count as friends everyone from Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to Michael Jackson, French President Jacques Chirac, composer Leonard Bernstein and former President Bill Clinton.

As a record producer, he has had hits in four decades, with everyone from Lesley Gore and Aretha Franklin to Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, Ice-T, Barry White and the aforementioned Mr. Jackson.

During a 50-year career, he has just about done it all, producing movies, film scores, magazines, TV series -- even a presidential inauguration.

But when talk turns to the rapid pace of today's music scene, the legendary producer can't help offering a mischievous analogy while discussing Jennifer Lopez's, um, talents:

"These days, you can't even tell what a singer can do (in videos) . . . if they can sing, dance or whatever, because you're just seeing flashes of images," Jones said in a chuckling, raspy voice, calling from his home in Bel Air, Calif.

"As much (backside) as J.Lo. has, you can't see it all in a two-second flash," he added, savoring the naughty-boy flavor of his own words. "You find yourself looking at the video, saying, 'Hold it up a little longer so I can see all of it.' Don't you feel like that, sometimes?"

Even at age 68, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. can still mix it up, regaling an interviewer with a curious blend of show biz wisdom, raconteur's charm and '60s-style spiritualism.

During a 90-minute conversation, he vaults from the rigors of film scoring ("It's 24 frames of film per second, my friend. . . . They do not budge.") to the earnest belief that his brother's fatal cancer came from internalizing the pain of their childhood.

As much as he claims to be tired of dishing on his five decades in the biz -- "Talking about yourself all the time . . . it gets boring, man." -- these days, Q is getting lots of practice.

There's a book, The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, now perched on the New York Times bestseller list. There's also Rhino Records' lovingly exhaustive four-CD boxed set, The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones, tracing his recorded work from trumpet duties in vibist/drummer Lionel Hampton's band in 1951 to Jones' last solo record, Q's Jook Joint, in 1994.

And there's tonight's tribute: a 90-minute film assembled by PBS' American Masters series that plays like a truncated, televised version of Jones' book.

Amid this multimedia flood of memories, tributes and tales, two questions loom large:

Why so many different versions of the same autobiography? And why now?

"Once you know me, you know I don't know how to do anything 50 percent," said Jones, whose workaholic habits -- he and Jackson regularly worked in five-day, nonstop binges while recording Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad together -- are legendary. "Empty your own cup, and it comes back twice as full. Besides, (considering) my senior moments, it's not such a bad idea. Because you get to a point, with a lot of this, where you can't remember."

[Photo: AP 2000] Quincy Jones directs the Orchestre National de France at a rehearsal in Paris on July 4, 2000. He conducted the orchestra in a star-studded jazz concert that evening. During his 50-year career, Jones, 68, has produced everything from film scores to a presidential inauguration.

Of the three projects, it's the book that may touch fans most significantly, and not because of his tales of hanging out with then-16-year-old Ray Charles in '40s-era Seattle or recording Frank Sinatra's hit Fly Me to the Moon with Count Basie.

It's the material about Q's family that resonates most strongly, including trouble with his mentally ill mother, Sarah.

Jones' mother was institutionalized when he was about 6 or 7, and she would be a constant, often destructive, presence in his life. Soon after she was taken away, he and his brother, Lloyd, were shuttled to his grandmother's Kentucky home and back to Chicago.

Eventually they moved to Seattle with their father, who married a second time to a woman barely concerned with her new husband's children.

Always hungry, on the verge of serious lawbreaking, the young Jones broke into a rec center one day and discovered a piano. He says the instrument changed his life, allowing him to find a constructive outlet for his pain while he developed a talent for brushing aside the unpleasantness in life, no matter how serious.

"If, before the age of 9, a caretaker doesn't nurture, guide and validate you, you'll end up with a hole inside you're trying to fix for the rest of your life," Jones said.

"I don't have a clue what a mother means. . . . It has no meaning to me, and that's pitiful," he added. "So I said, 'I can go to this other world (of music) and take all the negative feelings and pain and convert it.' Literally, convert it into something that's beautiful and creative."

"I had my little trio at this black joint called the Rocking Chair (in Seattle) . . . and this 14-year-old cat comes up to me talking about music, about jazz. When you're blind, you become a soul reader. Everything a person says is a soul note. Quincy had a loving style about him. He's genuine. Do you know that in all the years we've worked together, we've never had a contract? All the records, the movie scores we did. He's the only person in the world I'd ever do that with."

-- Ray Charles

Jones originally planned to write his autobiography with longtime friend and Roots author Alex Haley. But after Haley's death, the project grew to include many collaborators, with chapters written from the perspectives of important people in his life, including his brother, Lloyd; his ex-wives, Peggy Lipton and Jeri Caldwell-Jones; his mentor Clark Terry, the trumpeter; and pioneering rapper Melle Mel.

The personal chapters are the strongest: Caldwell-Jones, who is white, remembering how her mother nearly dropped a frying pan when she heard that her teenage daughter had a crush on "Quincy the Negro"; Quincy Jones III noting how he stuck a ski pole in the chest of a psychotic man his mother dated after settling in Sweden; Melle Mel describing how Jones' recruiting him to perform on 1989's Back on the Block album saved him from a crack addiction.

"It's the hardest thing I ever did in my life," Jones said of writing the book, which took about five years and offers details on the affairs he has had, family problems and two brain aneurysms that nearly killed him in the mid '70s. (He can't play trumpet these days because of a metal clip in his head that could blow out.)

"But when you stare back at an (untruthful) chapter, it looks at you and says, 'C'mon man. Give it up. I'm not going for that bulls--,' " he added, laughing. "So you tear it up and write again."

As an example, Jones cites a passage describing a visit he, Lloyd and his father paid to his mother in a sanitarium. The visit ended when Jones' mother defecated in her hand and his father struck her.

But when it came time to include that anecdote, Jones had a problem: He couldn't remember everything.

"The mind does not like pain, and it has an amazing capacity to shut down," the producer said. "I remembered my daddy hitting my mother, but I didn't know why -- well, maybe I did and blacked it out. My brother had to straighten me out, because I didn't know how to process all that stuff."

The PBS film joins Jones as he revisits the Chicago row house where he grew up (and where his mother was picked up when she was institutionalized). Narrated by Harry Belafonte, the film includes comments from Jones pals such as Winfrey, Sidney Poitier, Lipton and Clinton.

It also features rare footage from his stints with Hampton and Basie, along with clips of him writing film scores and organizing the We Are the World recording sessions.

"That's what I found toughest: How do you show what a producer does?" said Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of the American Masters series.

"When you're showing Michael Jackson and outtakes from recording Thriller, you ask, 'What did (Jones) do?' " she said. "How did he go from being this obviously amazingly talented . . . jazz musician, to being . . . the only musician alive, probably, who could have gotten all those musicians to do We Are the World?"

For Jones, the answer is simple: preparation, planning and passion -- greased with a lot of sweat.

"I dream of the end result first, and then . . . go backwards to find out, what are the details needed to execute this concept? How many people? What kind of people?" Jones said. "It's like I'm in a movie, I'm sitting in the front row by myself, and it knocks my socks off. Once my dreamer Pisces side sees the end result, my practical Leo influence kicks in and says, 'How do I get there?' "

The film traces Jones' singular evolution: a big band trumpeter and arranger in the '50s, Mercury Records executive in the '60s (after a dream big band he led was stranded in Europe, incurring $60,000 in back taxes alone), film and TV scorer in the '60s and '70s. Later, he helped pioneer black-oriented FM radio through a series of solo records and defined '80s R&B/pop by producing the King of Pop's biggest albums.

Through it all, Jones refused to acknowledge boundaries of race, culture or genre.

Before there were many black record label executives, he championed Lesley Gore's 1963 hit It's My Party at Mercury. When black composers didn't score mainstream movies, he tackled films starring Gregory Peck and Rod Steiger (he also did pal Poitier's 1967 film In the Heat of the Night).

"Everything I've done, I've worked from a core skill," Jones said. "I wanted to teach myself to write down on paper any (music) I can hear or feel or anything anybody else can hear or feel. I worked hard, from age 13 on, to be a master of that."

A move to TV work led to composing the classic Sanford and Son Theme in 1972, the theme from Ironside in 1967 and the theme for Bill Cosby's first series in 1969 (the song is also known as Hickie-Burr; listen to the cut on the box set and you'll understand). A reluctant agreement to join longtime friend Sidney Lumet in making 1979's The Wiz introduced him to Michael Jackson.

What does Jones think of the famously strange Jackson? "I don't know why anybody expects Michael to be normal," Jones said. "This is somebody living (as) the dream factory for the whole world. They make up the dreams, write them, act them, produce them. And how are they supposed to be normal, when (the world) expects them to do their freaky deaky?"

American Masters' Lacy says part of Jones' success is his appreciation for talent in all its forms.

"He's got this magic ear," she said. "He looked at the TV set and decided he wants to make a movie with the most famous filmmaker in the world (The Color Purple with Steven Spielberg). He looks at the TV, sees someone doing a talk show and says I want her for this movie (Winfrey, then a Chicago TV personality, who co-starred in Purple). He did the same thing with Will Smith on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

"He's a remarkable mixture of this extraordinary talent, human sensitivity, and a guy who never for one second thought there was any wall for him," she said. "That's the most amazing thing, given his childhood. He never thought there was something he couldn't do."

"Anybody who has ever been Quincy Jones' friend knows it's kind of like having an anchor there. You don't have to worry about him running off when things get tough."

-- former President Bill Clinton

To understand Jones' charisma, know this: At a recent affair kicking off his book's arrival, all five women with whom Jones has had children -- both ex-wives and ex-lovers -- came to celebrate, including ex-Mod Squad star Lipton and Cat People star Natassja Kinski.

Jones took time during a recent interview to ask a reporter where he's from and then tell his own stories about the city. Later, he asks for pictures of the reporter's children, so he can place faces with names that came up in conversation.

Now he's focusing that passion for others into more charity work through his Listen Up! Foundation, building homes and a computer industry in South Africa while reaching out to youths in south-central Los Angeles.

He's also mulling over plans to compose a Broadway musical -- one of the few show biz projects he has never tackled -- on the history of African-American music, working with Cirque du Soleil. ("I was a little presumptuous and tried to do both the musical and the book at the same time, and it kicked my a-," Jones said, chuckling.)

"I feel very good about the catharsis of the book -- it gave me a lot of clarity and cleansing and getting the pain out of the way," Jones said. "If life is an eight-course meal, then I'm at the dessert and the finger bowl. I'm very realistic about what time it is."

AT A GLANCE: Quincy Jones: In the Pocket, a 90-minute portrait of the legendary producer, airs at 9 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3 as part of the PBS American Masters series. Grade: A.

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