Listing Quincy Jones' career achievements ably identifies him as one of the most accomplished arrangers and producers in the history of American popular music. Having worked with great names from Frank Sinatra to Aretha Franklin to Michael Jackson, his influence cannot be overestimated. For one period in his career, the early 1980's, his concentration on producing R&B and Dance music left an indelible stamp on the development of club music. Quincy Jones' flawless integration of musical styles including Rap, Soul, Pop, Latin, and Jazz significantly broadened the palette of sounds that would be heard on the dance floor.
In the late 1940's a 15-year-old Quincy Jones began his professional musical career in the Seattle area playing in Jazz bands with the 17-year-old Ray Charles. From there, after a musical education at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, a young Quincy Jones toured Europe with Jazz legends Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. Upon return to the U.S. in 1961, he was hired as president of A&R for Mercury Records, the first African-American to hold such a position for a major record label. At Mercury, Quincy Jones gained his first major success in producing Pop music, Lesley Gore's 1963 number one Pop hit, It's My Party. Jones spent much of the remainder of the 1960's producing and arranging such acclaimed movie soundtrack music as The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, and In the Heat Of the Night. He was also orchestral arranger for a number of Frank Sinatra's classic recordings of the decade.
Early in the 1970's, Quincy Jones began more concentrated work on Pop music including recordings by Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. In 1975, his own album, Mellow Madness, introduced the Brothers Johnson on the track Is It Love That We're Missin. The brothers quickly became R&B superstars on their own recordings with such Quincy Jones-produced songs as Get the Funk Out Ma Face and Strawberry Letter 23. Near the end of the decade, Michael Jackson, eager to shed his image as a child star, hired Quincy Jones to produce his coming-of-age album Off the Wall. The result was a groundbreaking collection that placed Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough at number two on the Dance chart and included 4 top 10 Pop hits. As the dominance of Disco was fading, the smooth, glossy R&B with touches of Jazz favorably impressed club audiences.
In 1980, Quincy Jones production of George Benson's Give Me the Night reached number two on the Dance chart and continued the sparkling sound created with Michael Jackson. Rufus and Chaka Khan's funky Do You Love What You Feel? broke into the top 5 and by the summer the Brothers Johnson topped the Dance chart with the bracing, funky Quincy Jones production Stomp.
Quincy Jones' own recording Ai No Corrida from the album The Dude reached the Dance top 3 in early 1981. With the album, Every Home Should Have One, Quincy Jones brought Jazz singer Patti Austin into the Pop/Dance/R&B mainstream with the number one dance hit Do You Love Me? The album also featured a soulful ballad sung with James Ingram, Baby, Come To Me, which finally managed to top the Pop chart two years later in 1983 after being featured on the soap opera General Hospital.
Following production work on a top 3 Dance hit, Love Is In Control (Finger On the Trigger) by Donna Summer in 1982, Quincy Jones concentrated on Michael Jackson's next album. In 1983, four years after Off the Wall, Michael Jackson's Thriller dominated the music world topping Dance, Pop, and R&B charts in America and around the world. Ranging from Eddie Van Halen's rock guitar on Beat It to the horror movie theatrics of Thriller, the album pointed Pop and Dance music in many different directions at once. The influence of this album reverberates throughout popular music to this day. After Thriller, Quincy Jones again turned his attention in other directions such as producing USA For Africa's charity single We Are the World, Frank Sinatra's album L.A. Is My Lady, and the film The Color Purple.
Michael Jackson's third album produced by Quincy Jones, 1987's Bad, included two more number one Dance hits, the title cut and The Way You Make Me Feel. Jones' own 1990 album Back On the Block brought together a who's who of contemporary black performers in popular music. The single I'll Be Good To You, a remake of a Brothers Johnson song, featured Ray Charles and Chaka Khan as well as a remix by Arthur Baker and topped the Dance chart. In 1991 Quincy Jones moved into the world of television production with the series Fresh Prince of Bel-Air featuring Will Smith.
Recent achievements have included production of the concerts to celebrate Bill Clinton's 1993 presidential inauguration, receiving the 1995 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and one more #1 Dance hit with a Hip-Hop star laden remake of Stomp in 1996. Approaching age 70, Quincy Jones can assuredly look back on one of the most celebrated careers in American popular culture.