Quincy Jones Big Band

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The Quincy Jones Big Band was an American big band led by the arranger and composer Quincy Jones and existed from late 1959 to mid-1961. In Europe in particular, the band, which only existed for 18 months with their Free and Easy tour, was considered a modern reincarnation of the classic swing bands .

The beginnings of the big band

Quincy Jones began in 1953 with a Swedish all-star cast around Åke Persson , Arne Domnérus and Lars Gullin with his first own big band projects; After several years as an orchestra conductor with Dizzy Gillespie , he was finally able to record his debut album This Is How I Feel About Jazz for ABC-Paramount in 1956 - with numerous musicians who found themselves in his regular orchestra around 1960.

Clark Terry, 1976

In 1957 Quincy Jones settled in Paris, studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen ; He was also the musical director for Disques Barclay , which sold Mercury Records in France . In early 1958, big band recordings were made in Sweden with an orchestra that he led with Harry Arnold ( Quincy's Home Again on Metronome ); At the end of 1958 he recorded in Paris with Eddie Barclay and Lucky Thompson as soloists ( Twilight Time ). At the beginning of 1959 Jones had the first opportunity to put together his own big band for Mercury ( The Birth of a Band ). a. Sweets Edison , Ernie Royal , Clark Terry , Joe Wilder , Billy Byers , Jimmy Cleveland , Urbie Green , Jerome Richardson , Phil Woods , Budd Johnson , Sam "The Man" Taylor , Danny Bank , Kenny Burrell , Milt Hinton , Jimmy Crawford and Osie Johnson . The arrangements of standards such as Lester Leaps In , Cherokee and Air Mail Special , which in Scott Yanow's opinion is still very bop-oriented music, were provided by Ernie Wilkins , Bill Potts , Al Cohn and Ralph Burns .

The Free and Easy Tour 1959/60

Harold Arlen, photographed by Carl van Vechten , 1960

In late 1959, Quincy Jones was hired to lead a jazz band for a two-act " blues opera" called Free and Easy ; the songs (like Blues in the Night ) came from Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer . Jones was also partially entrusted with the arrangements. It was planned to tour Europe before the Broadway performance (with Harold Nicholas , Sammy Davis Jr., among others ); the youngest member of the group was nine-year-old Patti Austin . The piece premiered on December 7, 1959 in Amsterdam, but after the official premiere of the show in Paris, the further tour did not go off as planned due to the failure of the piece, which resulted in the actors and orchestra and their families being stranded in Paris in February 1960. That put Jones in a serious personal crisis. With great difficulty he managed to keep his orchestra together; with his big band costing him $ 4,000 a week, he was forced to look for new performance opportunities for the orchestra after completing his engagements at the Alhambra Theater in Paris . At the end of the year, Quincy Jones owed $ 80,000 on the Free and Easy tour.

Jones brought "the first modern American big band that should be firmly established in Europe to the Old World ." From the recording of the last concert of this engagement on February 14, 1960, Jones released the album Q live in Paris in 1996 , but not that contained the music of the musical, but a set of original Jones' compositions and jazz standards like I Remember Clifford , Moanin ' and Walkin' . In this band, which then toured Europe for nine months, 18 musicians from the Arlen show played; Members included Terry, Benny Bailey , Floyd Standifer , Leonard Johnson (tp), Jimmy Cleveland , Quentin Jackson , Melba Liston , Åke Persson (tb), Julius Watkins (fr-h), Jerome Richardson, Budd Johnson, Porter Kilbert , Phil Woods , Sahib Shihab (sax), Patti Bown (p), Les Spann (git / fl), Buddy Catlett (b) and Joe Harris (dr); Bown, Standifer, and Catlett were from Seattle and were childhood friends of Jones.

Further recordings of this tour were made during performances in Gothenburg in February and in Lausanne in June 1960, where Roger Guérin also played as a guest musician. Musically, the Quincy Jones Orchestra moved in the wake of swing bands such as the Ellington and Count Basie Orchestra , with Jones setting his own accents as the arranger. In February and April 1960, further recordings were made for Mercury ( I Dig Dancers ) in Paris .

Musical rating

According to Joachim-Ernst Berendt , the band's music was “gripping and healthy, simple and sincere, in some ways the most enjoyable big band jazz beyond Ellington and Basie at the turn of the 1950s into the 1960s.” Berendt emphasizes that Quincy did not create any fundamental innovations. "But he has perfected and honed the old like no other."

Freddie Hubbard in 1976

The end of the big band in 1961

After his return to the United States, the big band existed for a few months. In early 1961, Jones recorded again in a New York studio; the peculiarity of its occupation was to use two drummers at the same time, Stu Martin and Jimmy Crawford. In 1961 the Quincy Jones Big Band went on tour again, documented in the album The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones Live! , which was recorded on March 10th at a concert in Zurich . Soloists in the orchestra were Freddie Hubbard , Eric Dixon , Budd Johnson, Phil Woods, Benny Bailey and Curtis Fuller . On July 3, they performed at the Newport Jazz Festival , which Scott Yanow described as the "last hurray" before the band finally ended. Then Jones “gave up the fight for the existence of his jazz big band in view of the uncommercial nature of jazz,” says JE Berendt.

After the regular end of the band, Quincy Jones and his musicians accompanied the singer Dinah Washington at her Mercury sessions in the second half of the year ; Band member Billy Byers took the opportunity to do an Ellington album with the Jones Orchestra. Quincy Jones marked the end of his big band phase with the Impulse! -Album The Quintessence .

After Quincy Jones shifted his professional activities to the studios, became A&R at Mercury and increasingly produced film music, such as for Boy in the Tree (D: Arne Sucksdorf , 1961) and Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1964), pure studio productions followed in constantly changing ones Lineups that also stood out stylistically from the big band tradition. In addition to jazz, rhythm and blues and gospel , Jones also integrated features of popular music such as Easy Listening or the Música Popular Brasileira in productions such as Quincy Plays for Pussycats (1962). At the height of the Bossa Nova wave, the Big Band Bossa Nova emerged with Lalo Schifrin , Jim Hall and Roland Kirk as soloists, and finally the pop-oriented album Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini with popular themes such as the theme song from The Pink Panther .

Discography

  • The Birth Of A Band! Vol. 1 & 2 (Mercury, 1959/60)
  • The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones (Mercury, 1959)
  • Free and Easy (Ancha, 1960)
  • Q live in Paris circa 1960 ( Warner Brothers , 1960)
  • Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series Vol. 1 (TCB, 1960) with Roger Guérin , Harold McNair
  • I Dig Dancers (Mercury, 1960)
  • The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones: Live! (Mercury, 1961)
  • Live at Newport (Mercury, 1961)
  • The Quintessence (Impulse !, 1961)
  • The Quincy Jones ABC / Mercury Big Band Jazz Sessions ( Mosaic Records ) The box includes his 1959/60 studio recordings and the 1961 live sessions for Mercury, his earlier studio session for ABC Paramount ( This Is How I Feel About Jazz ) and the Impulse - album from 1961.

occupation

Members of the Quincy Jones big band were:

  • 1959 : Art Farmer, Lennie Johnson, Jimmy Maxwell , Lee Morgan , Ernie Royal, Nick Travis , Harry Edison, Clark Terry, Joe Wilder (tp) Billy Byers, Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Frank Rehak, Quentin Jackson, Melba Liston (tb ) Julius Watkins (frh) Porter Kilbert, Phil Woods, Frank Wess (as) Benny Golson, Budd Johnson (ts) Jerome Richardson (ts, fl, picc) Sahib Shihab, Danny Bank (bars) Patti Bown (p) Les Spann ( g, fl) Kenny Burrell (g), Buddy Jones, Buddy Catlett, Milt Hinton (b) Don Lamond , Sam Woodyard (d) Bill Potts, Al Cohn, Ralph Burns, Ernie Wilkins (arr).
  • 1960 : Benny Bailey, Lennie Johnson, Floyd Standifer, Clark Terry, Freddie Hubbard, Jerry Kail, Clyde Reasinger (tp), Jimmy Cleveland, Quentin Jackson, Melba Liston, Ake Persson, Wayne Andre, Curtis Fuller (tb), Julius Watkins ( frh) Porter Kilbert, Joe Lopes, Phil Woods (as), Budd Johnson, Oliver Nelson, Jerome Richardson (ts), Sahib Shihab (bars), Patti Bown (p), Les Spann (g, fl), Buddy Catlett (b ) Joe Harris, Stu Martin (dr), Billy Byers (arr)
  • 1961 : Benny Bailey, Ernie Royal, Clark Terry (tp) Curtis Fuller (tb) Julius Watkins (frh) Phil Woods (as) Eric Dixon, Jerome Richardson (ts, fl) Sahib Shihab (bars, fl) Patti Bown (p) Don Arnone (g) Jimmy Crawford, Stu Martin (d) Mike Olatunji , Tito Puente , Patato Valdes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quincy Jones , Ebony March 1961
  2. ^ Discography Prestige Records 1953/54
  3. ^ Discography Mercury Records 1958
  4. ↑ a b Discography Mercury Records 1959
  5. ^ Review of the album The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones on Allmusic . Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  6. ↑ Information on Free and Easy at worthpoint
  7. ↑ Frank Ferriano Did He write that? America's great unknown songwriter Harold Arlen (1990)
  8. ↑ Liner notes of the album Q live in Paris circa 1960 by Paul de Barros
  9. ^ Cf. Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclams Jazzführer . 5th, revised and supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-010464-5 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e Joachim Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann: Das Jazzbuch . Frankfurt / M .; Fischer 1991, p. 517.
  11. ↑ Quincy Jones biography at achievement.org ( memento of the original from October 23, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.achievement.org
  12. ↑ Review of the album Q Live in Paris circa 1960 by William Ruhlmann at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  13. ↑ a b discography Mercury Records 1960
  14. ↑ a b Cf. Max Harrison, Liner Notes for Strike Up the Band (Mercury 1961-64)
  15. ↑ Discographic information at Fresh Sound Records
  16. ↑ Review of the album The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones Live! at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  17. ↑ Review of the album Live at Newport at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  18. ↑ a b Discography Mercury Records 1961 /
  19. ^ Review of the album The Quintessence at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  20. ↑ Discography Mercury Records 1962
  21. ↑ Review of the album Big Band Bossa Nova at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.
  22. ↑ Review of the album Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini at Allmusic (English). Retrieved February 26, 2011.