Quincy Jones - 1955 - 1962 : The Essential Works

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. is known to most people as the producer of some of the best-selling albums in the record-books, and particularly those by Michael Jackson. But Quincy’s talents as a producer were only able to bloom because he is an immense musician. For close to seventy years, the man has been writing, playing, producing and recording music. Born in Chicago and raised in Seattle, Quincy befriended Ray Charles in the Forties and went to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. As a trumpeter in the Fifties, Quincy acquired immense experience as an arranger for a great number of orchestras and musicians. The five years (1957-1962) illustrated in this album represent the peak of Quincy’s art as an arranger and bandleader. He toured the world and settled in Paris for a time, where he became Artistic Director for the label of Eddie Barclay. And then in the Sixties he returned to America to become Music Director of the U.S. label Mercury. He met Michael Jackson in 1978 on the set of The Wiz, which was produced by Motown. A year later, Quincy was the producer of Michael Jackson’s album Off the Wall, marking the beginning of a series of immense hits in every musical domain.