Monday Love to your Mystery and History

“ Once a task is just begun, never leave until it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.”

?~?Quincy Delight Jones, Sr.

First off, feel a big hug from me, you might be needing one this week for some reason or another.

Now… let’s talk about?Quincy Jones. That’s Quincy Delight Jones Jr., born in 1933, to be precise. That delightful middle name passed down to him from his father speaks volumes about his family.

Way up on his ex-slave grandfather’s side of the family tree he had English, French, Italian, and Welsh ancestry. His mother’s lineage was from Central and West Africa, the Tikar people of Cameroon. He was a walking musical melting pot.

He first started?toying?with his neighbors piano growing up during the wartime years in Chicago and then moved on to Seattle where he learned the trumpet in high school. He began playing with a National Reserve band at the age of 14.

A scholarship to Seattle University in 1951 was his springboard to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1953, at the age of 20, he landed a gig touring Europe with legendary bandleader Lionel Hampton.

He said?“It gave you some sense of perspective on past, present, and future. It took the myopic conflict between just black and white in the United States and put it on another level…Everybody had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these conflicts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.”

Return to New York found him working with Tommy Dorsey and playing second trumpet in the studio band supporting Elvis Presley in his premiere TV performances, followed by a tour of the Middle East and South America as trumpeter and musical director for Dizzy Gillespie. In 1957 he moved to Paris and became the music director at the Barclay record label.?“Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.”

He first began working with Frank Sinatra in 1958 on a benefit concert at the Monaco Sporting Club arranged by Princess Grace. About Frank, he said?“Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in ’98. He left me his ring. I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don’t need a passport. I just flash my ring.”

All that was preamble to the big time for Quincy. His career of colossal cultural contribution was just getting started. He became vice-president of Mercury Records in 1961 and composed the score for The Pawnbroker in 1964, his first of over 40 motion picture and television scores.

By the end of the 1970s he had produced and arranged albums and singles for a who’s-who list of superstars as well as releasing seven solo albums. His collaborations with Micheal Jackson started in 1978 with the soundtrack for The Wiz and peaked in 1982 with Thriller, the highest-selling album of all time.

He even earned accolades as a film producer, garnering 11 Oscar nominations and introducing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences around the world with The Color Purple. That same year he herded most of the big cats in the music industry into the studio for the We Are The World fundraiser for Ethiopia.

“I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music – gospel, blues, jazz and R&B – is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity.”

By the time he voiced a monologue for Canadian singer The Weeknd in 2022 his career spanned seven decades. He had hundreds of projects, dozens of awards, countless collaborations, three marriages, and seven children with five different women under his belt. To say that Quincy Jones, a trumpet player who never learned to drive, lived a full life would be an understatement.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. passed away last Sunday, Nov. 3rd at the age of 91. He lived right up to the cusp of a turning point in history.

It’s poetic, or poignant in some sort of way, when someone passes on just before?a major shift in our conscious world.

We all get to inhabit a long moment in-between epochs in time. We’re blessed with a series of our own special moments within that window — that’s what makes it a life.

Five years ago this month, Isabelle and I were taking our first selfies together. Since then, we’ve gratefully shared a lifetime’s worth of great moments, (and we’re just getting started).

We all live life on the cusp — of what, we’ll never know. That blip of mystery?between the bookends of history is called your life. Like a feather opposite the weight of the world, it equals out?on the cosmic balance.

You were born to contribute and create meaning while you are here, so it helps to remember that your inner child is with you all the way.

Take it from Quincy:?“I don’t ever want to grow up. That’s boring.”

Have another hug. See you right here next Monday.

M+

ML?#601

Mark Metz Director of the?Dance First Association

Publisher of?Conscious Dancer Magazine

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Monday Love is the weekly inspirational newsletter written by Mark Metz, publisher of Conscious Dancer and director of the Dance First Association. Join our mailing list and learn about membership at www.consciousdancer.com