[ Telephone rings ] -Michael.

It's incredible.

I don't believe this.

It's unbelievable -- I mean, with the camera turning, Michael.

It's ridiculous.

When did you start "Thriller" -- today?

Yeah, when is he gonna do the special effects?

It's tonight, huh?

I sure want to see some of that.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -1982.

Los Angeles.

The shoot of "Thriller"... the title track of the second solo album he produced for Michael Jackson... -[ Shouting indistinctly ] -...at the time the world's biggest pop star.

-Cut, cut!

-Quincy Jones produced this seminal album that has gone down in the history of 20th-Century music.

-Michael, I think this is gonna be the "Citizen Kane" of the videos.

I really do.

-It is.

Thank you.

-It's gonna be the most revolutionary thing in the history of -- in the videos, you know?

-Quincy Jones was at the peak of his music-industry career, having worked with the world's biggest stars for 35 years.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ An intangible mixture of jazz, funk, pop, rock, and electronic sounds, "Thriller" was a logical artistic high point for Jones.

It thrust him into the media spotlight and marked the moment when the producer became almost as important as the artist.

-"Dear Quincy, we're all part of history in the making.

'Thriller' is one of the biggest albums ever.

Thank you for your support, effort, and hard work.

Michael Jackson."

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -What makes Quincy run?

-We've only got 26,000 days here.

That's what makes me run.

[ Both laughing ] [ Jazz music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] [ Insects chirping ] When I think back of all the people that were around when I first started in the studio and when I reach back to try to see who's still there, and it's ironic, because the first name that comes to me is Count Basie is still there... [ Chuckles ] [ Piano plays ] ...like the rock he is, you know?

♪♪ Dizzy Gillespie's still there.

Ray Charles is still there.

Sarah Vaughan, still there.

-Just a few years after coming out of a childhood in poverty in the Black ghetto of Chicago, at just 20 years old, Quincy Jones became the favorite arranger of a number of jazz stars.

Very soon, the biggest names in the music industry were clamoring for the young prodigy.

[ Funk music plays ] There's a Quincy Jones sound, and that's what attracts everyone, from the very intro, which immediately has you hooked, a haunting swing, a way of taking over the whole body.

Whatever the musical genre, it's always there somewhere, kind of hidden in the score -- that jazzy, easy, swaying energy that gets you into an immediate groove, so fiendishly effective.

Quincy produced so many hits that have become part of our collective subconscious, we're no longer even sure that he was the brains behind them -- [ "Soul Bossa Nova" plays ] "Soul Bossa Nova," so timeless that 35 years after being composed, it became the theme music for the massive Hollywood production "Austin Powers."

[ "Ironside" plays ] "Ironside," reused by Quentin Tarantino as the musical gimmick for the fight scenes in "Kill Bill."

"Fly Me to the Moon," originally composed in waltz time, turned by Quincy into a global hit of swing through the mellow tones of Frank Sinatra.

-♪ Fly me to the moon ♪ -"Ai No Corrida," a disco-style cover version which in 1981 heralded the electro beat that would invade the planet 10 years later.

[ "Give Me the Night" plays ] George Benson's "Give Me the Night," which in record time reached number one on the U.S.

soul singles chart.

[ Whip cracks ] [ "Bad" plays ] "Bad," which in a matter of months became the second-best selling album of all time after "Thriller."

-♪ Who's bad?

♪ -I've seen four decades of kinds of popularity, you know, from when Frank Sinatra was the phenomenon of the decade to when Elvis Presley was the phenomenon of the decade and the Beatles were the phenomenon of the decade.

The '80s so far looks like it belongs to Michael Jackson.

[ Jazz music plays ] ♪♪ In three months' time, we did "Thriller" and the "E.T."

storybook album -- In three months.

It was really mad.

>> Yeah.

We were sleeping out on the couch.

Wake up, mix it, go back to sleep, sing, wake up.

He spoke -- A lot of hard work when into -- -We spent a lot of time.

-[ Chuckles ] [ Snake hisses ] -"Thriller" runs for just under 45 minutes -- a short album in the end, made up of nine tracks carefully chosen from among 600 possible compositions.

He sought the ideal balance, the most organic blend possible.

As usual, he crossed over and brought together different genres -- jazz, the matrix of his musical world, rock by bringing on board guitarist Eddie Van Halen... [ Electric guitar plays ] ...pop with the participation of Paul McCartney... -♪ You keep dreaming ♪ -♪ I don't believe it ♪ -...like a symbolic passing the baton from the old to the new global icon.

[ Piano plays ] "Thriller" became the best-selling album of all time.

The eyes of the whole world were fixed on the Jackson/Jones double act.

-And the Producer of the Year is... -Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson.

-Yeah!

[ Cheers and applause ] -This ceremony went down in the annals of American entertainment.

-Michael Jackson is one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century.

I mean that from all my heart.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ The rewards in this business are a lot of things that are material things that you really can't put your feet on the ground with.

Somebody told me a story once about -- I won't say what the countries are.

The difference in composers from two different nationalities.

They both see what they want across the park, and one composer walks straight across the park and goes straight to what the object is.

And the next composer goes through, and he lays underneath the tree for a while and has a little cheese and wine, you know?

Just takes his shoes off and sticks his feet in the lake and so forth.

So I'm talking about enjoying the trip.

And the bottom line is to me, my great reward is when the hair and the goose bumps rise up after we listen to a playback, or you can play a thing that you recorded 15 years ago and play it back and still get that same gooseflesh rising, you know, that you got when you first did it.

That's really real.

♪♪ -His musical identity was forged gradually by his wanderings in his inner park and a complex equation between his rhythm and blues and jazz roots, the many artistic encounters throughout his career, and a childhood marked by violence and poverty.

-[ Laughs ] ♪♪ -In 1945, Quincy Jones was only 12.

Having spent his childhood in the rundown suburbs of Chicago, his father moved him and his brother to an equally dismal suburb of Seattle, where he stayed until 1951.

♪♪ It was there that he discovered an old piano at his high school.

[ Beethoven's "Fur Elise" plays ] ♪♪ It was also in Seattle that he met a blind boy, two years his elder, who was making a name for himself at a nightclub in the city.

The boy was thin, elegant, and had an evident style, spark, and charisma about him.

-That's because... -His name was Ray Charles.

-♪ ...way over town ♪ ♪ That's good to me ♪ ♪ Yes, I have ♪ ♪ I've got a woman ♪ -They immediately hit it off and became lifelong friends.

-How did you meet the first time?

-I think it was at a jam session at the Elks Club down on Jackson Street in Seattle.

And so Ray showed up, and he was 16 years old, and he was like God.

You know, he had an apartment.

He had a girlfriend, two or three suits.

And he used to taught me how to arrange in Braille.

I just struggle with it and just plowed through it.

-Shining shoes and picking out a few cents from spittoons gave the two youngsters strength of character.

Ray opened Quincy's eyes and ears to blues, country, and classical music.

-In Seattle, to survive as a musician, you have to have a very eclectic musical background.

And that's where my eclectic background came from.

Ray Charles, too.

Ray Charles would play at the Seattle Tennis Club, and he'd have to play "Clair de Lune."

He'd have to play -- -Debussy?

-Of course.

Of course.

-Ray Charles played Debussy?

-Listen, man.

You know, we had to work.

[ Both laugh ] [ Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home" plays ] -Quincy Jones started taking trumpet lessons, and very soon, the pair formed a duet and became a hit in some of the city's clubs.

There, Quincy Jones heard all kinds of music -- bebop, blues, and rhythm and blues -- and saw some of the biggest names of the time perform live, like Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington.

At 15, Quincy tried to join the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

The bandleader agreed, but his wife, Gladys, who managed the band, wasn't as easygoing as her jazzman husband.

-I just got on the bus.

I was ready to go.

I wasn't gonna tell anybody at home or anything else.

We were gonna leave, you know?

But Gladys was more rational, and she said, "Get back to school."

-So he waited patiently for three years in Seattle, taking as many trumpet lessons as he could, then left the city at 18 years old, finally joining up with Lionel Hampton.

-The Hampton called again and said, "Could you join the band?"

And there was just such a thing about going on the road with a professional band.

You know, it's just like a dream, you know?

-Quincy auditioned and was hired... [ Trumpet plays ] ...and aged 18 started composing and arranging his own numbers.

This rapid artistic rise didn't escape the eye of one of the greatest jazz songstresses, Dinah Washington, who called on Quincy, now 21, to arrange her latest album, "For Those in Love."

10 more would follow.

♪♪ The 1950s saw Quincy make a strong foothold in jazz.

He did hundreds of arrangements for the same stars he'd admired 10 years earlier between shining two pairs of shoes.

He established his own sound, enjoyed the pleasures of a musician's life, and started traveling.

[ Jazz music plays ] ♪♪ In his early 20s while on tour in Latin America, he met other young prodigies who would also leave their mark on 20th-Century music -- Astor Piazzolla, who would soon set about revolutionizing Argentinian tango.

the young Lalo Schifrin, who would later compose the theme to "Mission: Impossible."

♪♪ And, then, one night in Rio at Copacabana, Quincy slipped his trumpet and did a samba of two young Brazilian musicians, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

[ Audience cheering ] This first jazz/samba fusion inspired the Brazilian artists to invent bossa nova a few months later.

While Quincy developed an ability to blend genres on equal terms to increase possibilities, an ability to travel anywhere and feel completely at ease, it was a period of artistic proliferation of cultural melting pots, a hotbed of precursors, and a worldwide musical new wave free of all complexes.

[ Jazz music plays ] ♪♪ In 1957, Quincy Jones received a phone call from France from a certain Nicole, who, with her husband Eddie Barclay, ran a record label bearing their name.

She'd heard of the young phenomenon and wanted him to come to France, where, unlike in the United States, Blacks were free to work as arrangers.

-In those days, in 1957, at that time, they didn't let Black arrangers write the string.

And so I bounced off to France, and I had strings all out in the hallway.

We had 12 cellos and 62 string sections sometimes.

And I really got a good opportunity to write for a lot of different types of music in Paris.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -Flitting between Paris and the French Riviera, Quincy explored different musical worlds and mixed with established and upcoming artists -- Boris Vian, Charles Aznavour, Henri Salvador.

And along with Miles Davis, he worked with many of the American musicians in the jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, rubbed shoulders with Juliette Gréco, and partied with the artistic night owls of Paris's Left Bank.

-Outside of the fascination that any young musician would have, because we heard about, you know, when Billy Strayhorn, Billie Holiday would come here to the Mars Club.

And the French understood the power and the seduction of jazz very early.

♪♪ -In France, the burden of race was lifted from Quincy's shoulders.

He felt free and was totally allowed to be himself.

This spell in France was the first time that Quincy could completely dedicate all his time to music.

It was a period of hard work and great happiness.

In France, he could experience everything that had been forbidden to him since his birth in an America that was still racially segregated.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ Back then, African-Americans were doomed to poverty, and the musicians among them had to be content with playing in jazz bands that earned no money.

♪♪ They had no access to so-called "serious music."

The young Quincy's childhood and early musical ventures were no exception to this rule.

♪♪ In the 1930s, Quincy Jones lived in the Bucket of Blood, the rundown and dangerous Black ghetto of Chicago.

His father was a carpenter who did jobs for the ghetto's Black gangsters, while his mother was the manager of the Rosenwald Court Apartments on the corner of 46th Street and Michigan Avenue.

-♪ Yes, I'll be happy ♪ -She played piano and sang at the local church.

-♪ When I get inside the gate ♪ -♪ Yeah ♪ -But she suffered from a schizophrenic breakdown and was sent to a mental institution when Quincy was a young child.

He was raised by his father and grandmother in poverty.

-When I lived in Chicago, when I was about 7 years old, my father used to take us down to my grandmother's house in Louisville.

And my grandmother was -- probably had seen a lot of slavery.

You know, she still lived that way.

She had a garden out in the back.

She had kerosene lamps, no electricity.

She'd tell us to go down to the Mississippi River.

And they had rats that looked like rabbits down there, they were so big and had big, long tails.

And she said, "Grab the ones that tails are still moving."

And they would facedown into the water, but you could tell they just went in if the tails were still moving, because they were still alive.

And we'd put them in these brown bags and bring them home.

And she'd stripped the rats down with oil and a little salt and pepper and onions and so forth and fry them up for dinner.

It didn't bother us at all.

You know, at 7 years old, you know, your imagination is real close to that kind of primal living anyway.

So it was fine.

Little things like that... you hold on to later in life.

-One morning on the way to school, Quincy and his kid brother Lloyd saw a man hanging from a streetlight with an ice pick stuck in his neck.

Aged 11, Quincy got his first knife and started stealing to eat.

-I have a 24/seven antenna that stays on because as a kid, I made up my mind that you can't go with blanket sweeps of "they" of anything.

[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ] -Close to his home were two speakeasies frequented by gangsters, drunks, sailors, and prostitutes.

It was there that Quincy discovered live music, women, booze, gambling, and money.

He managed to get hired by one of them to clean the prostitutes' rooms between clients.

Meanwhile, he played trumpet in the school orchestra.

After a few years of intense study and work, he was an accomplished jazz musician.

In 1954, the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Brown vs.

Board of Education case effectively banned racial segregation in public schools.

Dizzy Gillespie, also a young prodigy already leading his own prestigious big band, was soon given State Department funding for an international tour.

He hired Quincy as a trumpeter, arranger, and musical director at just 21 years old.

It was an exceptional opportunity.

-Obviously, you know, when they sent a Black band around the world as ambassadors, you're gonna do a lot of kamikaze work.

So we went to Abadan, Iran, and Tehran and Dhaka, Pakistan, Karachi, and Istanbul, and they sent us to South America.

Some of these people have never seen Western instruments before.

And it was very exciting.

It opened my soul.

It opened my mind.

[ Funk music plays ] -But Quincy was soon fed up managing not just the musical direction, but the band's travel plans, wages, drunken nights out, and love affairs.

[ Horn honks ] [ Down-tempo music plays ] And so it was that he finally made that fateful and career-forging trip to France.

-I always had this ridiculous passion for France, you know?

The first time I went there, I was coming on the train from Switzerland, and I couldn't sleep.

I get up, and I just stood up.

We came at about 6:30 in the morning, and the music almost came from my soul when we came and we saw that crimson sunrise and the smell of Paris.

♪♪ -Paris was where he had another defining encounter -- [ Piano plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Nadia Boulanger, the renowned music teacher and the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

At her manor-house school in Fontainebleau, Quincy studied composition, counterpoint, and orchestration and plunged into the world of classical and contemporary music.

-She said, "There are only 12 notes.

From 12, and that's it.

Until we get 13, you should understand what everybody did -- Bach, Debussy, Ravel, or Bird, Duke Ellington."

It was just an amazing, amazing experience with her.

-Michel Legrand, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla were also among her students, while the renowned composers Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Leonard Bernstein were her good friends.

It was a key period for the young Quincy, who rubbed shoulders with a number of immense figures of European music.

He left for three months and ended up staying five years.

[ Up-tempo piano music plays ] ♪♪ -I remember one of my first impressions, John, in New York in 1951 was going into Charlie's Tavern and seeing Charlie Parker hanging over the jukebox like this, listening to "The Rite of Spring," you know?

-[ Laughs ] -And he had just listened to a country and western record before that.

And it's right after he listened.

He was very interested in that.

He listened to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring."

And you saw where a lot of things came from.

That's the dream of mine, is to see that fusion of the same kids that line up to see police to line up to see the symphony and see you and your sister... -I believe that.

-...in a concert with John McLaughlin and a symphony orchestra.

That's my dream in the future of music.

-It was also in France that he was asked to compose his first score for the movies by a budding French director called Jacques Demy.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] But sadly, Quincy had to turn down the offer and suggested a young musician he'd met at Nadia Boulanger's school, a certain Michel Legrand.

[ "Moanin'" plays ] ♪♪ It was then, driven by the artistic impetus he'd found in France, that Quincy formed his first big band, the Jones Boys, and embarked on a European tour.

Count Basie even agreed to be the guarantor of the band's $5,500 bank loan.

But the tour ended in financial fiasco, leaving Quincy broke and up to his neck in debt.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] -We finally came.

I hocked everything I had, my publishing companies, and got the band and all 30 people back home, which is the closest I ever came to suicide.

♪♪ The band and myself, we'd like to say auf wiedersehen, revoir, and goodbye.

♪♪ -Not yet 30, Quincy was financially ruined when Irving Green, the visionary president of Mercury Records, offered him the post of Musical Director in New York -- a first for an African-American inside such an important record label.

-He asked me to become an A&R man.

And I owed so much money I had to sit someplace to pay it back.

-Quincy soon became as important a figure as his friend Ray Charles, who was already making regular appearances in the most popular American TV shows.

-Quincy has done a lot of arrangements for me -- lots and lots of arrangements.

And not only that, he's given me lots of his own arrangements that he had done for himself, for me to put in my band book.

So I have Quincy all around me all the time.

[ Smooth jazz music plays ] -Soon after his appointment as musical director, Quincy was made vice president of Mercury Records -- a promotion that reinforced his position as a major player in the record industry.

♪♪ Boosted by this new position, Quincy finally felt he could try his hand at a motion-picture score.

[ Henry Mancini's "The Pink Panther Theme" plays ] ♪♪ In the 1960s, Henry Mancini was already a Hollywood bigwig and the king of movie soundtracks.

♪♪ -When I met Q, he wanted to get out of the record business.

He had had enough of records and all of the people -- the crazy people he thought that were in records.

He wanted to get into films, not knowing that there were a lot of crazy people in films, too.

♪ Do do do, do do, do do ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Laughing ] -Kiss it.

A friend of mine was doing a movie.

And he came to me, and he said, "Thinking about Quincy Jones for a movie, you know?"

I said, "Yes.

Great, great."

He says, "So, do you think -- He's Black, yeah?"

"Yeah."

-[ Laughs ] He said, "Do... Can Black men write movie music?"

I said -- -[ Laughs ] -I couldn't answer him.

I said, "Of course they can, you know?"

And he got the job.

It was amazing how... even those -- that was the '60s.

Everything was supposed to be cool then.

[ Beeping ] [ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -With his score for the Sidney Lumet movie "The Pawnbroker," Quincy soon became a favorite of young filmmakers looking to break with old-school Hollywood.

They made movies that examined social and political issues and painted a different picture of American society.

They saw in the young composer an ideal partner in creating a new, more cutting cinema.

-When I was 15 years old, I always wanted to write for film.

I remember meeting you at the May Fair Hotel in London... -Oh, yeah.

-...when you were doing "Charade" and bugging you to say, "How do you count the time?

You know, where do you put the timing on the score paper, you know?"

And you've always been -- -I told you it wasn't the time.

It was the music.

-That's right, that's right.

But, I mean, but just the technical... -I know.

-...introduction to the mechanics were really important, 'cause that's what stops a lot of people.

[ Piano plays ] ♪♪ So far, I haven't found any experience that is more pleasurable than.

It takes you three, two nights to sit down at the blank page, the score paper, and then try to imagine and hear that orchestra sound in your head and put what you think is gonna sound like you think it sounds on that paper for each instrument.

And finally having the orchestra there, and when you do the downbeat, to hear that sound, there's no experience in the world like that.

♪♪ [ Speaks indistinctly ] ♪♪ -Until then, Quincy Jones had arranged other people's scores.

Now he was a composer in his own right.

For someone in his early 30s, it was a major change of professional status.

-As a film director for me, and producer, I work with materials that are hatched by someone else more often than not so that I bring whatever I may have as a talent.

I use it and superimpose it over whatever is brought to me.

Quincy, on the other hand, creates from the beginning.

I mean, the origin of what the gem is begins inside of Quincy's creative machinery.

-In just five years, he composed 35 soundtracks for young filmmakers such as Norman Jewison... -♪ In the heat of the night ♪ -...Sydney Pollack... ♪♪ ...Sam Peckinpah... ♪♪ ...and Richard Brooks.

♪♪ It was probably by composing movie scores that Quincy established himself as a prestigious all-rounder of a musician.

The biggest names called on him more and more for arrangements, record production, and orchestration.

-I would like to have you meet a gentleman who's been doing these marvelous orchestrations for me, Mr.

Quincy Jones.

[ Applause ] -It was even Frank Sinatra who in the late '60s gave him the minimalist nickname adopted by the whole industry.

-Bright young stars in the orchestrating business.

Q, go ahead.

-Quincy Jones was from then on Q and as he neared 40 was enjoying one success after another.

-May I introduce our next guest, Mr.

Quincy Jones?

[ Cheers and applause ] -He was entrusted with the musical direction for the 1971 Oscar ceremony.

-As soon as the winner is announced, Quincy is ready with the downbeat, and the musicians are ready to go into the correct theme.

-He attended Martin Luther King's funeral alongside his distinguished friends Marlon Brando, James Baldwin, and Norman Jewison.

But he was also a victim of the trouble that comes with fame.

A pro-white newspaper published on page one a photo of his mixed-race children, calling them bastards, and Quincy himself received death threats.

As always, in the face of adversity, like in all situations, he kept his composure and stayed cool.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ Quincy had long since learned to be stoic on the streets, in poverty, or under pressure.

To him, there was no room for self-pity.

For a bebopper, staying cool was much more than mere show.

It was a philosophy, a response to the hardships faced by all African-American jazzmen -- something almost as important to be proud of as being a top musician.

It starts with clothes, of course, with a style that must assert elegance as much as the fanciful.

Everyone had to show their personal touch, their originality.

That also meant having a kind of detachment, a mischievous nonchalance, a roguish charm.

-In those days, we were all, I mean, ultra hip -- I mean, so hip, you know -- -How did you dress?

-Oh, and the whole thing -- zoot suits, you know?

Just we had the whole thing, because all we could do was hear about the ways that everybody acted in the East.

And, you know, Seattle is still a small town.

We were luckier than most because a lot of people came through.

But we heard about Charlie Parker, how he dressed, and Ray Brown and Dizzy and Miles and everything.

We'd look at the pictures, you know, to try to -- And the guys would come through.

And that's the way we would get our information as to what was going on back East.

[ Jazz music plays ] -In the jazz world, it was down to who had the most style.

As a teenager in Seattle, Quincy sometimes shone the shoes of gangster bosses, who wore white, silk socks and brand-new Stacy Adams shoes.

♪♪ Quincy polished his routine, trying out different hair waxes, creams, and gels and aftershaves and wearing the sharpest suits, scarves, and snow-white gloves.

He gradually became an icon and a model of insolent achievement, and all with apparent ease.

It was as if his numerous successes required no effort.

Everything was no sweat.

-We were introduced at a place called Birdland.

In those days, Quincy was a very young, very handsome person.

As you can see, he is -- -In contrast to old.

[ Laughter ] [ Jazz music plays ] ♪♪ -In the 1970s, giant-sized Q's were posted all over the streets of Los Angeles, the mecca of cool.

Beyond his own talent, his all-encompassing, impish personality inspired confidence in other artists, and demands continued to pour in, and it started raining Grammys.

-Quincy Jones.

-Quincy Jones.

-Quincy Jones.

-But best remembered is his vibe, his way of being in this world.

And everybody loved Quincy's way of being in this world.

-Watching him with his family is a tremendous lover -- lover of life, lover of children, lover of women, lover of music, lover of art.

And the few times that I've been in his home, too, it's like it's a rambunctious atmosphere, and there's just stuff happening all the time.

And that's love.

That's love of life.

And it doesn't -- You don't invent that.

It's either there or it's not there.

And not everybody has it.

I'm -- [ Laughter ] I'm sweating over here.

I'm so embarrassed.

[ Laughter ] [ Funk music plays ] -Another important step in Quincy's career, as an arranger, he was super famous, but always remained in the background.

From now on, it was his face that we saw on record covers.

♪♪ In the late 1970s, he was approached by one of the most promising young artists.

Michael Jackson, partially free from his father's yoke, asked Quincy to produce his first solo album.

-When did you meet him, Michael?

-Mm.

-We really got to know each other on "The Wiz."

♪♪ -We finished the movie.

Michael came back all teary-eyed one day and said, "The people at Epic don't want to use you."

They said, "You're too jazzy, you know?"

Everybody at epic, Black and white, said, "No way.

It's not gonna work."

And I love that.

-Yes.

I know you do.

[ Laughs ] -I love -- Ooh!

All you got to do to get me going as underestimate me.

-♪ Whoo!

♪ -The scintillating, off-the-wall video seemed to illustrate the irresistible explosion onto the scene of Michael Jackson as a global star.

It rapidly became the best-selling record for an African-American artist, with 10 million copies sold.

On this album, which forged Michael Jackson's solo career, Q blended his seminal jazz with incredible disco funk sounds.

-He just has a great quality for excellence, for perfection.

-But make, see, the vamp before you come in for eight bars instead of four bars before you come in with the singing.

-Anybody who's worked with him notices this way he'll make you do a thing until it's perfect.

-Hey, okay.

-See, if you're write it on the screen... [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -After this unprecedented success throughout the 1980s, Quincy remained more attentive than ever to cultural and technical changes.

He integrated electronic keyboards and wah-wah pedals and slid naturally into funk.

-[ Speaks indistinctly ] -Hey, alright.

[ Both laughing ] -Alright.

-In four decades, he saw the emergence of the Fender bass, stereo recording, the audio cassette, the LaserDisc, and synthesizers.

And every evolution was an exciting opportunity to enlarge his playground.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -People blame machines very often for, "It's, oh, the machine's fault."

How can it be the machine's fault?

We have to plug it in.

The machine doesn't do anything but sit there until we plug it in.

It doesn't plug itself in.

It doesn't program itself, yet.

[ Both laugh ] -It's on the way, though.

-It's on the way.

This is why, you know, Quincy and I can get together.

And no matter what kind of instrumental sounds we have, we use them according to what we feel.

[ Samples play ] [ Both laugh ] -It was a period that he navigated with devastating ease, notching up one global hit after another -- "Off the Wall," "Thriller," the awesome achievement of "We Are the World," which brought together 46 American stars under his baton.

He founded his own label, Qwest Records, which became the biggest multimedia group run by an African-American.

He suddenly found himself surrounded by employees, attorneys, and sales managers, with projects piling up on his desk.

-Here's the final cover, Q. So here it is, final, with all final color touches and everything.

-That's beautiful.

Really beautiful.

-I think from the standpoint that he is such a multifaceted performer and artistic and business entity, I think traditionally, you have an artist who is artist/producer or artist/writer, artist/performer, whatever, but very rarely do you find the person who is a combination of all of those things, as well as a very astute businessman, Quincy happens to encompass all of those things.

-He ran several companies through which he could produce music, stage plays, and movies, and he co-produced Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," for which he composed the soundtrack of course.

-♪ Wah wah, wah wah-wah wah ♪ [ Trombone plays ] -"The Color Purple" was a two-year project.

And I was totally involved in that, because when you work with somebody like Spielberg, you got to pay attention.

I forgot as a line producer that there was music to do.

For the first time, I said, "Oh, my God, a score."

You know, an hour and 54 minutes, And we had -- I don't know -- six or seven weeks.

[ Dramatic music plays ] ♪♪ -Quincy Jones couldn't have dreamed of a greater honor.

But for 30 years, he'd been a workaholic, burning the candle at both ends, and he entered the 1980s mentally and physically exhausted.

♪♪ For a few years, he was swallowed up by the pop-music industry, which saw him as the ultimate king and queen maker.

♪♪ [ Pop music plays ] ♪♪ -[ Scatting ] -And so it was that Patti Austin, goddaughter of the jazz diva Dinah Washington, for whom Q had produced 10 albums, came to him for the theme song of the next John Travolta movie.

-We are doing a marathon session here, and we're at the last -- -[ Laughing ] -Thursday.

-The last stage of the marathon session with Patti, which began Thursday.

-♪ And I've been waiting for you ♪ ♪ Now that you are here ♪ -It was the kind of project in the early '80s that took Q far away from his musical homeland, at a time when he was starting, without letting on, to be overwhelmed by all the contracts and sheet music.

[ Dramatic music plays ] While he beamed at the cameras and seemed to soar above the world music industry, things were very different behind the scenes.

He was unable to save his marriage.

Prizes came one after the other, sending him on a spiraling ego trip until he sank into a severe depression just before he was supposed to start working on "Bad," his third album for Michael Jackson.

-I was a mess -- a mess.

Goes from irritability, sleeplessness, you know, no appetite, and then turn against your friends and then turn against yourself.

♪♪ -But Quincy couldn't stay away from the industry for long.

He came back with a smile for the cameras and a strong stance against fierce criticism from the jazz world, which accused him of betrayal and being led astray by the millions to be made in easy-listening music.

♪♪ -There's absolutely no correlation between the direct creative process and material gains.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ I mean, when you put $1 million on the table and the piano, they don't speak to each other at all.

Wow.

Beautiful, tight.

Wow.

-In the early 80s, a musical explosion would snap Q out of his torpor.

-♪ Straight Outta Compton ♪ -Videos filled with anger, like this one by NWA, set a new, radical artistic trend -- hip-hop.

Nothing could breathe new life and energy into him than this movement that came out of the ghettos where he grew up.

-They had this whole brand-new sensibility.

And most of the time.

it's the sensibility that's just as important as the music.

-Like with this video by LL cool J, made with very basic means, young rappers were victims of widespread indifference within the industry.

Only Q understood that this was a major musical turning point.

-It's interesting, because I met LL Cool J about four years in New York, and he asked me, "What do the singers and musicians think about us rappers?"

And that's the first time I ever considered that they don't consider themselves musicians or singers.

-♪ Colors, colors, colors ♪ -He immediately recognized how deep-rooted the movement was, coming out of rundown neighborhoods where poor kids were creating music with urgency.

-Us being rappers, we're not really get that full respect in the musical community.

You know what I'm saying?

But now, when somebody of Quincy's caliber says, "Yo, rap is in there, rap is in there," all the suckers got to leave that alone now.

-He recognized the pride and dignity of these gang-chic aesthetes who hurled their punchlines against pulsating bass lines.

He recognized the teenagers who had invented a culture where they could scream out their existence and legitimacy.

He recognized the same roots as those of bebop.

-It's attitude.

It's a lifestyle.

It's about a very hip way of dealing with it.

'Cause I know the beboppers always dealt with things from a very high awareness level, and they're always necessary to be very hip.

[ Soft music plays ] -Now over 50 years old and after depression that ran alongside his rise to the summit, Q once again felt the excitement of unexplored territory.

But this time, he was in charge of getting youngsters on board the bus and was using all his weight and influence in this birth of a new genre.

-♪ Keep it up while I tell you like this ♪ ♪ A fresh little story... ♪ -A crazy gamble in the late '80s saw him bring together in the same studio some of the all-time greats of jazz, like Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, and Ella Fitzgerald... -[ Scatting ] -...and young DJs and rappers right out of the ghettos -- -Uh, my name is Flavor Flav.

I'm with the rap group Public Enemy.

-Hi.

I'm Kool Moe Dee.

-Well, I'm Ice-T.

-Hi.

I'm Al B. Sure!

-The B-I-G D-A-double D-Y K-A-N-E, or the Big Daddy Kane.

-An unlikely encounter embodied in a joyful video that mixes the generations.

Quincy reconnected with bebop and brought together his oldest and newest traveling companions.

"Back on the Block," a statement album on the plurality and wealth of American music.

-One of the first television productions I did was Duke Ellington, "We Love You Madly."

We had everybody -- Basie, Aretha, Sarah Vaughn, Roberta Flack.

[ Cheers and applause ] And Duke gave me a picture of him, and he says, "May you be the one to de-categorize American music.

'Cause I hate categories, man.

It's good or it's bad.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] -"Back on the Block," Quincy Jones.

Producer, Quincy Jones.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Album of the Year for "Back on the Block," a cross-generational, musical hybridization that blends jazz, rap, Zulu sounds, gospel, funk -- an umpteenth Grammy for Q, but one that took on a whole new dimension.

-I can't believe this.

I really can't believe this.

I've been in this academy since 1958, and this is the first time I even dare to think about having a... Grammy under my own name.

And I'm so proud.

[ Cheers and applause ] -In 1993, he founded Vibe, a magazine mainly featuring hip-hop and R&B artists.

And it was the rapper Snoop Dogg who was chosen for the cover of the first edition.

-I got my Stacy Adams on, representing for the old school.

I'm suited and booted, gooted and looted.

I just want to thank you for always being there for me, always being a big brother, and always just being the love that we needed in hip-hop.

It wouldn't be no Snoop Dogg if it wasn't for Quincy Jones.

We thank you for being you.

-Among the music press, Vibe soon became a hip-hop reference in the way that Rolling Stone is for rock.

Quincy then gambled on a young rapper by producing a sitcom based entirely around the real-life character -- [ "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" plays ] a charming, street-smart, African American teenager who couldn't be any cooler, who cultivates his look and his punchlines.

In Will Smith's character, you can see a readaptation, a human sample of the young Quincy of the 1950s, an eternal bridge between bebop and hip-hop.

Back then, rappers weren't multimillionaires in either dollars or followers, latter-day models of success.

[ Siren wailing ] -Is that the police?

-Punch it, man!

We're in a Benz.

-The sitcom overturned the clichés connected to young rappers, often associated with criminals.

-Get out of the car now.

-It turned Will Smith into a worldwide star and rap into a slightly more respectable artistic expression in the eyes of the public.

[ Laughter and applause ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Numerous young deejays, seemingly less well-behaved than Will Smith, delved into Q's body of work and found a host of tracks that they started sampling, taking Quincy's existing hits and turning them into their own.

[ Album scratching ] In 1996, the rapper Tupac released one of his biggest hits, "How Do U Want It," which samples "Body Heat," written by Quincy 22 years earlier.

Dozens of other samples of Quincy Jones tracks would follow, used by the crowd of hip-hop artists emerging at the time -- ♪♪ The Pharcyde with "Passin' Me By."

♪♪ -There's no way to really measure his impact on popular culture, because he's impacting culture in places where people don't even realize that he created the gravity that's holding them down.

-Quincy Jones is everything that... [ Applause ] He's everything that every producer wants to be when we grow up, We want to be like him.

-I actually first met Quincy Jones, my idol, The reason why I make music.

And... [ Clears throat ] -I loved hanging out with him.

You know what I'm saying?

It was like being with James Bond every day.

He was the coolest dude in the world, man, I'm telling you.

-Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that it would come to this?

-No.

No.

I say, you just keep going an inch and just pray it and dream.

You know, it's -- I think that's something you have no control over.

None at all.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ Picasso was a very important influence on me in terms of a person that has to create from your heart and your mind to exist.

And I don't think it's any coincidence that the man painted up until 91 years old, sat down with his friends and drank wine, and died peacefully in his sleep at 91 years of age, totally independent, and probably left the greatest creations that were ever created on this planet behind him.

And a lot of it had to do not because of him dying of pneumonia in the streets of New York, you know, from a heroin habit or of starvation or anything else.

He did it because he, number one, had the divine gift and a creative ability.

But he also knew intuitively that it's very important for him to control his own destiny.

-If Quincy Jones managed to flit between one genre and another while keeping his own identity intact, it's probably because he has always managed to remain deeply independent.

-Okay.

-Okay.

[ "My Buddy" plays ] -He often quit the jazz bands of his youth after a few months, and he resigned from Mercury Records after one year, turning his back on clear-cut prestige.

Quincy clearly had it in mind to never lastingly ally himself to anybody in the aim of staying free.

♪♪ -♪ I think about you ♪ ♪♪ ♪ All through the day, my buddy ♪ ♪♪ ♪ My buddy ♪ -Quincy Jones was thus able to cross over into every musical style, often venturing into brand-new styles when they appeared.

His career path followed the never-ending metamorphoses of American music without ever conforming to the latest fashions.

Instead, he sought to gate-crash at the very heart of these new genres and to bring forth a personal vision.

Because what is most striking in the end about this music of a thousand sources is the authentic constancy of style.

His mastery of the jazz blues vocabulary, combined with relentless attempts at fusion, made him an eternal educator.

-♪ My buddy ♪ -He who drew on everything to make his own music himself became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for countless artists.

-♪ Buddy ♪ ♪ Your ♪ ♪ Your buddy misses you ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm going to put all the pictures that I found of you two together on that -- -Okay.

Alright.

-It's gonna look real great.

-Oh, my God.

I hope you ain't got some of them that I know about.

-[ Laughs ] [ Piano plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ You're a friend ♪ ♪ You are kind ♪ ♪ Most of all, you're Quincy ♪ ♪ You brought sunshine ♪ ♪ Into many lives, including mine ♪ ♪ Da da ba-da-da ba da ♪ ♪ Ba da ♪ ♪ We love you, Quincy ♪