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Issue date:
February 11, 2001 is
When you talk
about important figures in black music, Quincy
Jones' name comes up almost immediately. In a career spanning
almost half a century, Jones, 67, has worked with some of
the biggest names in music -- Diana Ross, Sinatra, Ray Charles,
Chaka Khan. Perhaps his most famous collaboration was with
Michael Jackson, with whom Jones produced "Off the Wall,"
"Thriller" (the worldwide best-selling album of all time)
and "Bad." The Chicago-born record producer has been nominated
a record 77 times for Grammy Awards, winning 26, including
"Back on the Block," 1989's Album of the Year. John Clayton,
48, who also won a Grammy in 1990 for Best Arrangement on
an Instrumental, is a composer, arranger and conductor who's
recorded six albums as part of the Clayton Brothers Quintet.
At a recording studio in Connecticut, Clayton "took five"
to call Jones, who recently finished the last chapter in his
autobiography "Q: The Lives Of" (Doubleday), due out in fall.
The two held a session on the legacy of black music.
Quincy Jones: I remember what Nat [King] Cole told me one night when we were on tour on with him. We were starving to death in Europe, and I my band was stranded over there. We were hanging out in a beer hole, and he told me that he'd started out as a jazz piano player and [began] singing in a way that he kinda became an industry [unto himself]. And he said, you have a choice in the beginning, to go after all the fast stuff like a lot of eligible brothers do now -- you know it's all about the Benjamins [making money] -- or you can take your time and tip. And John [Clayton] always took his time and tipped. I've always admired and respected that. That's why he's so thorough. Every time he reaches in his back pocket he has something to get because he kept putting something in it. He invested time in himself. They say God gives you your gift of talent. Your gift back to God is to develop it.
John Clayton: That's what I learned from Quincy. First, I was drawn to his music and everything,then I was blessed to play in Count Basie's band, where I was bitten by the writing bug. I started writing, and low and behold there's Quincy again. I could go through the Count Basie book and find Quincy's compositions and arrangements and analyze them. This was the stuff that made me pee my pants. Now I was able to check it out, take a microscope and really analyze what was going on, and use a lot of his techniques in my writing.
Q.J.: Who are you listening to now?
J.C.: I like what Maria Schneider is doing in terms of colors. Interesting enough, she's eliminated some elements of jazz music just by the nature of where she's coming from. She's eliminated certain aspects of jazz music I would never have eliminated.
Q.J.: Like what?
J.C.: Like tiddy-boom. This last concert I heard, I didn't hear anything that went dang, dang de dang dang de dang.
Q.J.: Eighth notes, John.
J.C.: The Eighth notes are all over the place. That's cool. She didn't go to a Baptist church like I did. I want her music to be honest. There's obvious elimination of the blues in her music, yet I still love it. In terms of the music evolving, it's starting to get more spread. The borders are less clearly defined. It's harder to pigeonhole this music.
Q.J.: The sensibility now is to stay so current that you dispose of your roots. And [black music] is the most amazing legacy and heritage. That's why everybody who has gone back and [studied it] has transcended everybody else; be it Herbie Hancock or Stevie Wonder or Donnie Hathaway or Earth, Wind & Fire. They end up way ahead of the game because one thing that's great about our music is that it's a collective voice. It's a collective culture. For instance, Roy Eldridge begat Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Miles etc. John, we talk about this all the time. People get on my case about being so eclectic. It's all the same stuff. Rap. Funk. BeBop. Gospel. African music.
J.C.: I see [younger African Americans getting more interested in jazz] through schools. That's where it's starting to happen more than in the community and the clubs. If you look in the clubs, the faces are basically white or Asian. When I go to schools, I still see quite a few white faces, but I see more and more large quantities of young black musicians interested in this music. You take, for instance, in Los Angeles, Washington Prep, they are slammin'. That's a serious jazz big band over there -- right in the middle of the ghetto.
Q.J.: That's a tribute to their teacher. What's missing [today] is the interaction between live musicians. Nothing will ever replace that. We were junkies, man, when we was young. We would play four hours of Lionel Hampton, and we couldn't wait to get down to some raggedy club and play for nothing all night long; play with the local people whether it be in Stockholm or Cleveland, Ohio. That's how we met Clifford Brown. The jam session is key. When we were kids, the JATP was almost like a Michael Jackson concert. We couldn't wait. We would anticipate it for months. They'd come through with Charlie Parker, Ray Brown. We had crowds like rock concerts.
Q.J.: Everything should get its shot. You could believe one day you're gonna run into a John Clayton or a Stevie Wonder in the hip-hop world that's gonna take hip-hop to its next level. Rhymes and a beat. To complete it you have to have harmony and melody. Dr. Dre knows that. It's not complete till you get all of that going. I worked with dozen of rappers, man. I put them in the category of their own thing, in another genre, the same way bebop dudes were. Bebop improvises. They are ridiculous now. You send them a tape before of what you're going to do, and I'll say Ice-T did you listen to the tape -- no. In the studio, time to record right, he listens to it two times. He sits there 10 minutes and kills it. Goes in there, three takes and it's over. Brilliant stuff. I got profound respect for these dudes. LL Cool J asked me one time in '85, "Mr. Jones, what do the musicians and the singers think of us?" That was the first time I ever considered that they would think of it as third genre.
J.C.: I'm overly concerned about young blacks being into our music because the pendulum always swings the other way. I don't know when it's gonna happen. It may happen in 10, 25 years, but nobody is going to let this music die.
Q.J.: John, you should check out the band with Jill Scott, man. They are smooooookkkkkkkkin'! I was blown away. Something told me to go down and see Jill Scott at the House of Blues. Everybody else got that message, too, because I looked up and there's Denzel. It was packed. The band was so hip and she's a good singer, man. I was very encouraged. Very excited. ... There used to be a saying in the old days, "Pops" Foster used to joke about it, "I'm learning how to read but not enough to mess up my swinging."
J.C.: I believe knowledge is the road to freedom. The more stuff you know, the more stuff you can choose to do or not do.
Q.J.: Exactly.
J.C.: People who don't have the knowledge are limited.
Q.J.: You have to open the lens wide and peep the best of it. I used watch Charlie Parker in Charlie's Tavern and listen to Alban Berg on the jukebox. You could tell Gil Evans listened to Alban Berg.
Q.J.: We'll start with "Kinda Blue," Miles Davis. And [John] Coltrane and [Julian] "Cannonball" [Adderley].
J.C.: The communication with them was just magic. Everybody recognized that.
Q.J.: When I first met John, he was Ray Brown's bass student. What were you, 18 or something?
J.C.: Younger than that. Sixteen. Actually, I had a crush on [your daughter] Joley.
Q.J.: Oh Lord! You like older women [laughs].
J.C.: I never told her that. I would go to Quincy's house and watch him work. He would always treat me great. Little by little, I would go to sessions and watch him work there, and we just became very close.
Q.J.: And I remember the pieces. In a way, it kinda reminded me of the path I ended up going on. John was into [Dave] Holland. He knocked me on my [butt] when I heard him play bass. But he picked up the reins and ran past everybody.
J.C.: That was back in 1970.
Q.J.: We are in an amazing revolution right now. Once MP3 and Napster and MS and all that stuff happened, technology took over the distribution pipeline, which should happen because the record companies played around and were too slow. But they didn't have to change it. Now technology is saying you have to change it. When those files go out you can have legislation jump up and down and sue, but it doesn't mean a thing. The two kids that came up with Gnutella were kids from the experimental part of AOL and they just got the assignment for two days and came up with the technology to distribute 2 million files. You can't pull it back. The genie is out of the bottle, and it will never go back. You gotta go through the world. How you gonna monitor all that? You can't do it.
A musician can start out and study for 10 years, and get a break and be successful for three years. His kids should be able to go to school off of that. And to think that you could take somebody's hard work and lifetime accomplishments and abuse it like that. ... It'll be straightened out because most people don't want to do that.
J.C.: I believe that, too.
Q.J.: The Web is their rock and roll. [It's] a vehicle for rebellion. They can kick old folk's ass because most of them don't understand the dynamics. It's all going to come together so it makes sense to everybody. [But right now] it's hard to get excited about a platinum album in a landscape of 300 million people. It's a joke. It says the distribution system is out of date. When people see something they like and they can download it on their computer the next day, you're gonna see a whole new world. You could see 100 million records selling. We're also gonna be in world where kids can record at 5:00 and it will be on the Internet at 6:00. That's gonna happen.
J.C.: To be a good musician [you have to do your] research. Background is so important. A fad is nothing but fade without the "e". And if you deal with fads, that is eventually going to teeter out. If somebody gets a break and they're in a position where they're selling a lot of records, but don't really belong there, that's cool. As long as they do their homework. That's what's going to determine your longevity. If you look at a Stevie Wonder or a Quincy Jones, you're talking about [people] who have a lot of talent mixed with the homework.
Q.J.: It's true. I [call it] "bootie power." Whether it's sitting down to rehearse or taking the time to investigate; because if you know where you came from, you get where you're going.
J.C.: I like that.
--Moderated by Shaheem Reid
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