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Quincy Jones and me · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, November six. Results will start flowing in tonight
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  Speaker 1: make sure you don't miss a thing. The former police
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  Speaker 1: officer accused of murdering two men in Sydney has not
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  Speaker 1: ended a plea to the charges against him. Bo Lamar.
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  Speaker 1: Condon's lawyer has withdrawn from the case and he'll now
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  Speaker 1: be represented by legal aid. The matter returns to court
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  Speaker 1: at the end of the month. Quincy Jones, the most
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  Speaker 1: influential musical figure of our age, has died at ninety one,
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  Speaker 1: amid a world's worth of tributes. Our own Jasper Leikue,
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  Speaker 1: who composed the Front's theme and edited this episode, reflects
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  Speaker 1: on his own moment learning at the feet of the Master.
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  Speaker 2: I would like to have you meet one of the
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  Speaker 2: finest musicians that I've ever known, mister Quincy Jones.
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  Speaker 1: That was Frank Sinatra in the sixties introducing someone whose
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  Speaker 1: imprint on American music and therefore the music of the
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  Speaker 1: entire world, is indelible. Quincy Jones has died at the
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  Speaker 1: age of ninety one, leaving a musical legacy that spans
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  Speaker 1: the story of this century and the last, from the
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  Speaker 1: legends of jazz to the titans of popular music the
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  Speaker 1: blossoming of hip hop.
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  Speaker 3: Quincy had about ten careers in his lifetime.
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  Speaker 1: This is Jasper Leak. He's part of our team here
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  Speaker 1: at the front, but Jasper is also an incredibly accomplished
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  Speaker 1: musician and producer in his own right. In the naughties,
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  Speaker 1: Jasper moved from Sydney to New York as a jazz
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  Speaker 1: obsessed twenty something with dreams of being where the magic happened.
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  Speaker 1: He toured with some of the world's biggest acts. He
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  Speaker 1: also weighted plenty of tables, and then he found himself
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  Speaker 1: in the orbit of Quincy Jones. Jasper was music consultant
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  Speaker 1: and supervisor on Netflix's twenty eighteen documentary Quincy, for which
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  Speaker 1: Jasper received an Emmy nomination.
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  Speaker 2: It started with a phone call from my friend Alan Hicks,
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  Speaker 2: another Australian who'd already spent a year working as a
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  Speaker 2: co director on the documentary with Quincy's daughter, Rashida Jones
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  Speaker 2: Al called me with an idea to score the documentary,
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  Speaker 2: but only using music from Quincy's pre existing catalog. I
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  Speaker 2: love the idea, and I'd been secretly hoping for this
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  Speaker 2: to happen, but it was one of those situations where
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  Speaker 2: my immediate response was sheer terror.
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  Speaker 3: How was I going to.
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  Speaker 2: Capture the career of music's most legendary figure over a
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  Speaker 2: two hour documentary?
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  Speaker 1: Jasper said about listening to everything Jones had ever recorded.
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  Speaker 2: I was handed a hard drive with Quincy's full discography
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  Speaker 2: on it, and I knew the only way I'd get
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  Speaker 2: comfortable with this huge task was to listen to everything
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  Speaker 2: front to back.
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  Speaker 3: It was the best job I've ever had.
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  Speaker 2: I'd wake up in the morning and for eight hours
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  Speaker 2: a day, I'd listen to Quincy's discography in chronological order,
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  Speaker 2: which was an incredible education in itself, and as I listened,
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  Speaker 2: I made the whole thing searchable. I set up a
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  Speaker 2: spreadsheet and identified little snippets from all these tracks that
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  Speaker 2: I imagined would come in handy during the editing process, and
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  Speaker 2: I'd tag them all according to era.
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  Speaker 3: Mood style and genre.
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  Speaker 2: It was more than three thousand and songs across about
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  Speaker 2: three hundred albums. So eventually, if al Or Rashida needed
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  Speaker 2: music for a scene and asked me for something that
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  Speaker 2: was introspective and bluesy from the fifties recorded by a
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  Speaker 2: small ensemble, I could find it straight away. With the
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  Speaker 2: exception of Quincy himself, I'm probably the only person who's
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  Speaker 2: listened to his full discography, So I was learning at
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  Speaker 2: the feet of the master. I knew who he was,
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  Speaker 2: of course, but I became overwhelmed at the volume of
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  Speaker 2: work that he'd produced in his lifetime. Not just the volume,
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  Speaker 2: but how ambitious a lot of it was too, and
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  Speaker 2: the genres he spanned. There were film scores with full orchestration,
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  Speaker 2: records that were quite experimental. He did one gospel album
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  Speaker 2: with Little Richard. Michael Jackson's Thriller is a great example
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  Speaker 2: of Quincy's ambition.
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  Speaker 3: It was a lot more than.
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  Speaker 2: Taylor to write a great song and recorded in a
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  Speaker 2: studio with a great band like Artistically, it was really
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  Speaker 2: ambitious music video that was the longest music video ever
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  Speaker 2: at the time. Quincy had the vision to bring that
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  Speaker 2: team together, Rod Tempert and the songwriter with the director
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  Speaker 2: John Landis who directed The Blues Brothers and choreographer Michael Peters.
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  Speaker 2: Quincy achieved so much in his lifetime that you can
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  Speaker 2: draw inspiration from him, but it'd be impossible to try
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  Speaker 2: and model your career after his. He was beyond prolific.
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  Speaker 2: I was trying to carve out this career for myself
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  Speaker 2: as a musician, as a songwriter and a producer, but
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  Speaker 2: when you see what he did with those elements, it
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  Speaker 2: was beyond humbling.
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  Speaker 1: While this was going on, Jasper's father, Bill Leak, died.
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  Speaker 1: Bill was the Australian's legendary cartoonist and a celebrated artist
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  Speaker 1: in his own right.
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  Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time thinking about my dad
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  Speaker 2: during work on the documentary, and something I loved about
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  Speaker 2: the project was that it was Rashida's tend to tribute
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  Speaker 2: to her father.
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  Speaker 4: To have somebody who's created music that breast a certain
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  Speaker 4: emotion and then to be able to pair about with
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  Speaker 4: an emotional moment in his life as a real huge blessing.
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  Speaker 1: He's Rashida Jones talking to The Hollywood Reporter about the documentary.
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  Speaker 4: That being said, it's spanned so many decades and there's
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  Speaker 4: so many different types of genres, and so the music
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  Speaker 4: selection became essential to the storytelling.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up how Jones helped Jasper find his own roots.
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  Speaker 1: Join Beet for one of the most memorable nights of
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  Speaker 1: the year as we honored the icon hit maker and
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  Speaker 1: musical legend Quincy Jones. This was no ordinary eighty fifth
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  Speaker 1: birthday party. It was a musical tribute to Jones at
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  Speaker 1: a theater in downtown, LA with American Musical Royalty playing
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  Speaker 1: in his honor, John Legend, LL Cool, j Gladys Knight,
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  Speaker 1: Gloria Estefan.
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  Speaker 2: There was an after party at a Hollywood bar, and
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  Speaker 2: there was this extended jam session with people like Usher
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  Speaker 2: was singing in the band and Herbie Hancock was playing keyboards.
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  Speaker 2: Dave Chappelle got up and spoke, I mean, it was
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  Speaker 2: the who's who of American culture in this little bar.
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  Speaker 2: But Quincy was the last man standing. He always was
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  Speaker 2: by that stage of his life. He'd given up drinking,
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  Speaker 2: but he was nocturnal. He'd spend the night doing puzzles.
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  Speaker 2: He never switched off.
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  Speaker 1: Born in nineteen thirty three in Chicago, Quincy Jones was
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  Speaker 1: directly descended from enslaved people.
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  Speaker 2: One of the first times I met him, he asked
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  Speaker 2: me about my own racial background. He said, I look
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  Speaker 2: like a Richie, one of Lionel Richie's kids. He said,
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  Speaker 2: you got some gumber going on, by which he meant
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  Speaker 2: I looked like a mixture of a few different heritages.
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  Speaker 2: Quincy was really into genealogy, ding his own family story.
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  Speaker 2: I told him I didn't know a huge amount about
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  Speaker 2: my mum's heritage. She's German, but she grew up in
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  Speaker 2: children's homes and never found out who her biological father was.
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  Speaker 2: Quincy leaned over and said, look into your roots, man.
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  Speaker 2: I got my mum a DNA kit for a next birthday,
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  Speaker 2: and it came back with the results that her jeans
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  Speaker 2: were seventy five percent Western European twenty five percent West African,
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  Speaker 2: which suggests her father was half West African. Our family's
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  Speaker 2: theory is that maybe her father was an ex American
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  Speaker 2: military person in Germany after the war.
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  Speaker 1: Jones's mum was a talented singer who taught him her
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  Speaker 1: love of music, and in his teens he was in
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  Speaker 1: a band with a young friend, Ray Charles. By his
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  Speaker 1: early twenties, Jones was a gifted young trumpet player and
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  Speaker 1: an arranger with the Lionel Hampton Big Band, playing alongside
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  Speaker 1: artists like Tommy Dorsey, Elvis Presley, and Dinah Washington.
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  Speaker 3: That could have been it for him.
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  Speaker 2: He was at the top of his craft, but before long,
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  Speaker 2: Quincy became one of the world's most in demander arrangers.
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  Speaker 2: He got a call out of the blue one day
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  Speaker 2: from Frank Sinatra, which led to work with Sinatra and
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  Speaker 2: the Count Bassi Orchestra.
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  Speaker 1: From that moment on, Quincy Jones was at the center
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  Speaker 1: of whatever was happening in music. He won twenty eight
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  Speaker 1: Grammys from the Et soundtrack with Michael Jackson to Harry
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  Speaker 1: Stiles's Album of the Year in twenty twenty three for
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  Speaker 1: a baseline sample on the track Daydreaming. One of Jones'
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  Speaker 1: last Grammys was in twenty nineteen, You Guys Are Ready
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  Speaker 1: for That documentary Jasper worked on with his friend Alan.
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  Speaker 5: The Grammy Goes Too, Quincy Jones.
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  Speaker 1: Alan collected the award with Quincy's daughter, Rashida.
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  Speaker 4: When my dad first watched the film, he said, I
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  Speaker 4: wish I could live forever, and if anyone is going
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  Speaker 4: to be able to be the first to do that,
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  Speaker 4: I believe it's going to be hens.
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  Speaker 5: So Dad, I hope you live forever. Thank you so much,
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  Speaker 5: thank you, thanks.
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  Speaker 1: For joining us on the front. Election results from the
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