#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Remembering Music Legend Quincy Jones
Episode Date: November 16, 202411.15.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Remembering Music Legend Quincy Jones We are paying Homage to musical legend Quincy Jones, who died at 91 from pancreatic cancer. Tonight, we have a special show ...dedicated to celebrating the life and legacy of his life's work with special guests like Howard Hewitt, Patti Austin, Gerald Albright, and more. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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This is an iHeart Podcast. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it.
I'm Max Chastin.
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I know a lot of cops.
They get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glott.
And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war.
This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.
This kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We met them at their homes.
We met them at their recording studios.
Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does. It makes it real. It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two
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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.
We get down on ourselves on not being able to,
you know, we're the providers,
but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.
A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.
Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's
dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services and the Ad Council. Folks, today is Friday, November 15, 2024,
and coming up on Roller Martin Unfiltered,
streaming live on the Black Star Network.
The next two hours, we'll pay tribute
to one of the greatest artists America has ever seen.
Quincy Jones, who passed away last week at the age of 91,
left a mark that is simply unmatched.
Not just a musician, but a composer.
I mean, movies and televisions, you name it, he's done it all.
And we'll pay tribute to an enormous life.
The man everyone called Q.
Remember him right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Puttin' it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks
He's rollin'
Yeah, yeah
It's Uncle Roro, y'all
Yeah, yeah
It's Rollin' Martin, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Rollin' with Rollin' now
Yeah, yeah
He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best
You know he's rolling, Martel.
Now.
Martel. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Ten years ago, this photo here was taken
at Oprah's Legends Ball in Santa Barbara, California.
This, of course, was when I saw Quincy on the red carpet
and we took this photo.
It was always great to see him.
He always had a great smile,
always had great stories to tell.
Quincy Jones passed away on last Monday
at the age of 91.
And, of course, with the election taking place,
there were so many things that were going on.
We did not have... We normally that day would pay tribute.
So we decided to hold off and decided to focus on that today.
Again, an extraordinary, extraordinary man who led an extraordinary life.
And I said this the other day, and I meant every word.
Quincy Jones may have died at the age of 91,
but this is somebody who I dare say, I would say packed 200 years of life into 91 years. When you look at the things that he did, when you look at when he had an aneurysm, almost died, and he had
a whole second life, then a third life, then a fourth life. We can go on and
on and on, the type of life that he led. We now know that Quincy passed away from pancreatic
cancer. Don't know how long he was diagnosed with it, but again, folks remember, you know,
so much about him. When you think about his story,
not only people talk about the Grammys,
they talk about, of course, working with Michael Jackson,
but we talk about Frank Sinatra.
We talk about what he did in movies and television
and how he had just this enormous impact
on so many aspects of music.
We'll be getting into that over the next couple of hours.
And so right now,
I want to bring in Michael Bearden. Michael Bearden, of course, musician, director,
you name it, can do all of that. And there's so much we could talk about. So Michael,
let's start off with you because, again, when we talk about Quincy Jones, we talk about his influence.
I don't know of anyone in the second half of the 20th century,
and then, of course, the 21st century,
whose impact can be close to Quincy.
I would probably say, if you had two legendary figures,
it would be Quincy Jones and Duke Ellington.
Michael? Yes, sir.
Again, as I said,
when you think about, again, the role that he played, the two legendary figures
I would compare Quincy...
The person I would compare Quincy Jones to would be
Duke Ellington. So what Duke Ellington
did in the
first
half of the 20th century, I think Quinton did in the first half of the 20th century, I think
Quincy Jones in the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century.
Yeah, I would not disagree with that. And also, Quincy tells the story that Duke kind
of tasked him with, you know, being the person to decategorize music, if you will.
So Duke was definitely a fan of Quincy
and saw the future in him. So yeah,
I wouldn't disagree with that statement.
Again, his
impact. I think that it's important for people to understand that it just crossed so many areas.
And there was no one genre, frankly, where you can actually talk about Quincy Jones.
No, that's absolutely right. and that's what he was about.
You know, he was
a blueprint for many. I just, I don't
claim to be the only one,
but he was definitely the blueprint for me
being, you know, from the south side of
Chicago, as he was,
as I am. Then he moved
to New York, I moved to New York, he moved
to L.A., I moved to L.A.
But, you know, in his early career,
he had, you know, so many hits, not only just his jazz things, but, you know, It's My Party
and I'll Cry If I Want To, Leslie Gore. Like, he was a producer of that song. And so I remember
having a conversation with him one time because after he started finding success in the
pop genre and other genres,
people that he came up
with, and I won't name names,
but people were calling him a
sellout and all these kind of things. So I was
talking to him about that because
a lot of my early part of my career
was jazz. As my
friend Gerald Albright could tell you.
And so I was talking to him one day
about that and people calling me
a sellout and all that kind of thing.
And he told me, he said,
you know what you tell them? And I said, what's that, Q?
He said, well, you tell them you want to sell out
every record in the band.
And that was his
thing about that.
So folks were calling Quincy Jones
a sellout because he wasn't solely focused
on jazz as opposed to
but here was somebody who was
a music composer.
A music producer.
And so I saw a clip. I was
looking early. I saw a clip where he was being
interviewed in Brazil and he started
naming all these Brazilian musicians
that he loved.
When you're a music connoisseur or renaissance person,
you're not focused on one genre or one part of the country.
You literally understand that music is worldwide.
No, absolutely right.
And from where we grew up, especially in Chicago,
back when I'm sure when Quincy was growing up, but when I grow up too,
music wasn't as segregated on the radio as it's at it become. So, you know, when I was a kid,
I was listening to, you know, James Brown, Jackson 5, Creta's Clearwater Revival, Jim Croce,
Led Zeppelin, you know, like all these things, Ohio players,
like all these things just blended together.
We didn't know that you weren't supposed to like a certain type of music.
So when it came to Quincy, you know, he was a world traveler.
So, you know, he studied with Nadia Boulanger.
And so, you know, the famous, famous composer who taught a lot of composers.
So when he was in Paris, he was exposed to all kinds of music.
And when you're a world traveler as a musician, you hang with the musicians in the culture.
And so you learn the culture and you you absorb all the music that's being played around the world.
So you don't just think in a homogenous type of way.
You think globally, you know, you know, you know, in a stew,
you know, what am I trying to say?
Just a palette of just of everything that you really want to,
to express musically. And so it should not be one thing.
And so when any,
anybody expressed that he was a sellout or anything like that,
it just showed more about them than it did about Quincy.
One of the things that when he...
We got a show a little bit later,
when he did the Historymakers interview,
it was quite interesting.
Michael, you talked about, frankly,
his dad being a numbers runner,
and they were run out of Chicago by the folks,
and they were, let's just say, involved in some underhand activities in Seattle.
Then they were robbed of the place, and he actually saw this trumpet and fell in love with it,
and that's what changed his whole perspective when it came to choosing not to be a street criminal and then going into music. Yeah, I read that in his book, his autobiography,
and he talked about that a lot in interviews, as you say.
And back then, especially for Quincy, you know,
in the South Side of Chicago, it was gangs.
It was that way when I was growing up.
So, you know, a lot of times the kids just got
involved in that activity and he just felt that he didn't want to do that anymore and so see for
him to just see the trumpet and just take to it was a blessing for all of us for the world because
had he gone down the gang route there would not be a Quincy Jones. What was it like to sit and talk to him about music?
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news
show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.
I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.
Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,
taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,
even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st
and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Lott.
And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,
Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding
of what this quote-unquote drug ban is.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
What we're doing now isn't working
and we need to change things.
Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new
episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content,
subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.
We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.
They showcased a sense of love that I never had before.
I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.
At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.
I wouldn't change a thing about our lives.
Learn about adopting a teen from foster care.
Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more.
Brought to you by AdoptUSKids,
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
and the Ad Council. It had to feel as if you were having a conversation with Dr. King and the Pope
about religion. Yeah, that's such a great question. As I said earlier, I don't claim to just have
to be the only one to have access to him. He was a mentor to many of us, so many musicians. And he was so generous with his
time and his wisdom. So to sit with him in his house and just have him, you know, you could ask
him any question and he would answer it. And just to have him. I remember one time I was doing a
show with him in Washington, D.C. We were doing a thing at the Kennedy Center. It was for
jazz. I think it was the first time jazz had been, you know, prime time televised in 30 years or
something like that. And it was a big concert with all these jazz stars. Natalie Cole was on it.
And the orchestra was a big, you know, who's who of jazz in there. And I was fortunate enough to
be in an orchestra and we were riding on
on in the van going to somewhere i think like the vice president's house or something like that
and i hear him and percy heath and all these you know the older school cats talking and quincey was
like yeah you remember we went to this place uh down the street right here yeah you me and bert
uh we were going over there and i'm just sitting next to him like,
you talking about
Charlie Parker, Bert?
He was just a walking history
book of everything, and he was saying
it matter-of-factly because that was his life.
That's who he grew up around.
That's who he came up with.
Yeah, you, me, and Miles went over.
We ate at this place over here, then we went to this
club. It was probably sitting and talking.
I didn't get the chance, but talking to Dr. King about things I did,
I did have a friendship with Harry Belafonte. So it was like that.
It was like talking to, you know, historians, people who lived this and could tell you verbatim what happened.
Flat out. And I just think that again,
because he wasn't
in... Actually, I'll rephrase that.
What's interesting is that
Quincy Jones was in front
of the camera and
behind the microphone. He did
both. And so he wasn't a singer,
but when you think about artists
and producers, Quentin
was like in a whole separate category where he
was as
an even bigger star than, frankly,
a lot of the folks he was producing.
No, that's right.
And I think it was just because his
personality was so big
and so giving and so generous.
His light just shined all the way through that.
Like he he was just confident when he came in the room and not trying to be so.
That just that's just how he was.
And so people just were attracted to him in that manner. And yeah, he was just as famous,
if not more famous,
than the artists that he produced and worked with, yes.
A lot of things you can remember in those conversations.
What's that one thing that stands out?
Oh, wow.
I remember, so there's so many, Roland.
But I remember one time I did the ASCAP Awards,
and they were honoring Quincy,
and I was the music director for the show.
And I put together his music and did this whole thing.
And so afterwards, I sat with him,
and Sidney Poitier was there sitting with him.
And I sat with Q, and I asked him, how was it?
And he said, it brought me to tears.
And I said, and I'm so self-deprecating sometimes.
I was like, it was that bad?
He said, no, it was that beautiful.
And we sat down and we just talked for a while.
And, you know, Mr. Poitier left and it was just me and Quincy and everybody was coming around him.
And, you know, because I'm from Chicago and I revered him so much uh you know
I would still talk to him as one of my heroes which he was and still is and um you know I was
praising him and doing all these things and he he said boy stop all of that and I was like what do
you mean Q he said you have now become uh the people that you look up to so now you have now become the people that you look up to. So now you have to pour into others what, you know,
you've got from me and others that you like and continue the cycle that way.
And that's the thing that I'll remember.
I'll never forget that because in one breath, you know,
he knew who he was and he knew that I revered him and all that.
But he also knew that once you get to a certain level, like I was the music director for something that I just did for him.
And I was able to get, you know, that knowledge and wisdom through things that he's done in his career.
And his thing was like, that's great. Now it's time for you to pay it forward.
So that's one of the many things that I'll absolutely remember from Q.
All right, Michael Bearden, man.
Always appreciate you sharing your thoughts and reflections
with us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much
for having me, Roland. You know I love you, man.
I appreciate it, bro. Thanks a lot. Folks,
we're going to go to a break. We come back. We're going to chat with
saxophonist Gerald Albright
to share his thoughts and reflections
about the late, great Quincy Jones.
Right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered
on the Blackstar Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you.
Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders?
Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy.
Join me each Tuesday on Blackstar Network for a balanced life with Dr. Jackie.
We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on.
So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network,
A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie.
Black Star Network is here.
Oh, no punches!
A real revolutionary right now.
Thank you for being the voice of Black America.
All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going.
The video looks phenomenal.
See, there's a difference between Black Star
Network and Black-owned media
and something like CNN. You can't
be Black-owned media
and be scared. It's time to be
smart. Bring your eyeballs
home. You dig?
Now that Roland
Martin is willing to give me the blueprint,
hey, Saras,
I need to go to Tyler Perry and get another blueprint
because I need some green money.
The only way I can do what I'm doing,
I need to make some money. So you'll see me
working with Roland. Matter of fact, it's the Roland Martin
and Sheryl Underwood Show. Well, should it be the Sheryl Underwood
Show and the Roland Martin Show? Well, whatever
show it's going to be, it's going to be good. ¶¶
¶¶
¶¶
¶¶
Folks, Quincy Jones, 91 years old.
When you look at the folks who this man worked with,
I mean, it is shocking and stunning.
You're talking about Lionel Hampton,
Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie.
Then you go, you know, director Sidney Lumet.
When you talk about playing in a band behind Elvis Presley.
Also, when you look at Michael Jackson, when you look at, I mean,
when you just start just naming all of the folks, I mean,
absolutely from the age of 20 till he passed away,
there was no one who he, you know, seemingly didn't seem to work with.
And so we are paying tribute to him tonight on the Black Star Network.
Joining us right now is saxophonist Gerald Albright.
Glad to have you on the show.
And I don't say this lightly.
You know, when Michael Bearden was just talking,
he was talking about seeing Quincy in a conversation with Sidney Poitier.
And when I think about the greats, when I think about, you know, being in
rooms with certain people, I mean, when you saw when you saw Harry Belafonte, when you saw Sidney
Poitier, when you saw Quincy Jones, I mean, you did approach them with reverence because they
not only American royalty, but they're absolutely black royalty.
Absolutely.
But at the same time, the irony of that, Roland,
and by the way, happy belated birthday, my frat brother.
Appreciate it.
The irony behind that is that he was just Quincy.
Even though he was royalty both musically
and an ambassador for the United States,
you forget what he really was because he was so down to earth and so approachable.
And that's what I loved about him. I kind of called him my industry dad because you could
talk to him at any time. If you called him, he'll answer the phone. You know, he was that guy. And
I appreciate him and I wholeheartedly miss him.
I said this to Michael as well.
I mean, the man's musical knowledge was just utterly ridiculous.
Absolutely.
There was a time in my career back in, I was going to say the late 80s, where I was recording the Back on the Block album with him.
And I prefaced that recording session by saying,
hey, Q, you know, when we take a break,
I'd like to go into the lobby of the recording studio
and just talk to you about career-oriented stuff.
And he said, absolutely, man.
And we sat on the couch.
And this was the point in my career
where I wasn't really happy with the things
that were happening in my career. And I wanted to figure out the best way to optimize that. And he gave
me some great golden nuggets in terms of what to do and what not to do in the recording industry,
some things that I use to this day. And to have somebody take the time to sit down with you,
a man at work as a producer and songwriter, it just meant so much to me.
And I'm going to miss those times that I talked to him.
We talk about those things. And again.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding,
but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on
Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.
I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what
happened when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one
visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1.
Taser Incorporated.
I get
right back there and it's
bad. It's really, really,
really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1,
Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glod.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King,
John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
What we're doing now isn't working
and we need to change things. Stories
matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it
real. It really does. It makes it
real. Listen to new episodes
of the War on Drugs podcast season
two on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear episodes one
week early and ad-free with exclusive content,
subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.
We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers,
but we also have to learn to take
care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but
never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.
Never stop being a dad. That's Dadication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.
To have a conversation with somebody who not only is an artist himself,
but also that musical knowledge journey is just ridiculous.
Again, starting at the age of 20, and again, when you start saying,
okay, wait a minute, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton,
and you just start going down all of these artists
and band leaders or whatever,
people say this, but it's a little hard to say,
I think I can get one over on Quincy.
Because he did see and hear it all.
Yes, absolutely. Quincy always had the did see and hear it all. Yes, absolutely.
Quincy always had the finger on the pulse.
I tell the story all the time that me and my wife went to a concert in the late 80s
at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles.
And there was a couple of groups performing and it was intermission time.
The lights came on and I discovered that three rows down from me, Quincy Jones was sitting. And I nudged my wife and I said,
hey, that's Quincy Jones. And she said, go say hi to him. I'm like, I'm not going to go and,
you know, I don't want to bug Quincy, you know. Finally, long story short, I got enough nerve to go
and say hi to Quincy. And I kind of tapped him on the shoulder. I said, Mr. Jones, and he's like, hey, Gerald Albright.
He already knew me, and to the point of, hey, man,
I like that record on your new album,
which at the time was my very first album as a recording artist,
just between us.
It was a song called King Boulevard that I dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.,
and he actually sung the melody in real time at me,
which, you know, man, yeah, that, that messed me up.
I was cool for the whole night, man.
I'm sure you're sitting there going, hold up, wait a minute. Hold up.
Hold up. I got a new album and Quincy, not only has he heard it,
but he's singing it back to me. But, but, but that, but,
but that shows you this dude listened to it all.
He loved music.
He truly did, and all styles of music.
But as you said so eloquently, Roland, his history, starting from age 20,
I mean, he's done every genre of music known to man.
Unimaginable.
And he was quite the chameleon.
He was great at all of it.
And, again, for him to sit there and actually sing the melody to one of my songs, man, that's the greatest compliment.
I mean, it doesn't get better than that, Roland, you know? Well, and I think that, and when I talk about, again, appreciation of the craft,
what I often say to people is that
that really what sets apart greats from others,
where they aren't just sort of just locked
into their own little space.
They are listening and seeing and studying
and experimenting and going all
over and
gaining
inspiration
from so many
different sounds. I just think that
I always joke
with people all the time because they go, man,
you listen to all this stuff I said
but you don't understand. I said if it sounds interesting and appealing, I want to hear more
of it. We don't have to be so locked into just this one style, this one genre. You got to go
broad and beyond. And that was Quincy, which made him the one person you wanted on speed dial.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And he inspired me so much in my own personal production and songwriting.
I myself do, to Quincy, listen to different genres of music to help inspire what I'm doing.
And you never know what's going to really hit home and really inspire you in a way to
make a hit record.
So you got to listen to everything.
And he was one of those guys that just really
pushed that point. You know,
you have to be broad in terms of
your approach to the music because it's powerful
and it's vast.
And so I thank
Quincy wholeheartedly for that.
There are so many things
that he did.
Again, when you look at 79 Grammy
nominations, winning 28,
the record was broken by
Beyonce. But it's not
really even just the Grammy Awards.
I just think how
Quincy Jones was received
across the world.
Yes.
Again, he was a true ambassador.
In a non-musical sense.
The one talent that he had was making everybody around him comfortable.
You couldn't say no to Quincy. Again, he's like an industry dad.
When he called you, you would drop everything and go and do whatever he asked you to do.
He just had those type of relationships. But he he made you feel like you were part of his family. And whenever was on that stage. But I was blessed to be there myself.
And as I looked around, I'm like, wow, this guy is truly loved.
And, you know, as he was getting to the work of making that show what it needed to be,
he was still like dad showing up.
You know, he's just showing up at home and, you know, we're just playing in his living room.
You know, it was that type of vibe.
It was very comfortable. And I'm going to miss those moments with him, man.
But I'm glad I have the moments that I have to remember, you know, between he and I.
Indeed, indeed.
Gerald Albright, we certainly appreciate it, Fred.
Keep up the great work.
06, you're very welcome, man.
See you soon.
All right, absolutely.
Folks, as I said, Quincy Jones sat down for an interview
that was taped here in Washington, D.C.,
by the Historymakers, and it was great to be there.
I had an opportunity to witness this conversation.
And in that conversation, there were a lot of things
that were talked about, a lot of things that were talked about.
But one of the things he talked about was going to,
moving to Washington State, moving to Seattle.
And that was a significant part of his life.
This is Quincy Jones being interviewed
by the late Gwen Ifill here in the nation's capital
for the Historymakers Conversation.
After all these decades, six decades almost,
of doing this. It's pitiful.
It's not pitiful. It's fabulous.
But Herbie and I have one thing, though.
We don't play that Mr. Hancock,
Mr. Jones stuff. Can I call you
Q? Yeah, thank you.
So tell me, Q,
what drives you?
Life. Life and love.
In which order?
Well, love, naturally.
But there was nothing in your childhood to suggest that you would be doing what you're doing today.
In fact, there were so many things in your childhood which argued against it.
Absolutely. We wanted to be the great gangsters, because that's what Chicago was best at.
Chicago, they groomed the best gangsters, black, white, green, blue, whatever.
Oh, gee, come on, Capone. And my father, ironically, was a master carpenter, and he worked for the Jones boys.
You talk about the OGs, these were the triple OGs. Smart, beautiful, organized, structured, elegant guys.
And I remember the biggest whipping I ever had
was when I was at a birthday party when I was seven.
And Eddie Jones, the boss of the gangsters,
his daughter Harriet was five years old.
She asked me to cut her hair a little bit,
and I cut all of it off.
But you spent most of your time, your real growing up time in Seattle,
which people do not think of naturally as being a wellspring of American jazz.
It was about half and half.
I spent 10 years in Chicago.
We left right after the Jones boys were politely asked to go to Mexico.
My daddy came by the barbershop and picked my brother and I up
and said, no, you don't have time to go home and get your toys.
We're getting straight on the trailway bus.
And we went to the Northwell.
Because he was a Jones, but he wasn't a gangster.
But that's all we saw.
That's all we knew.
That's what we wanted to be.
My stepbrother was pitiful.
He was a serious gangster. And then we went to this unclaimed territory in Bremerton, Washington, Bremerton
shipyard. I said, man, we're going to waste this place. We're 11 years old or 10 years
old, and I'd seen all these professional gangsters working all this time. I said, we could tear this place up because they don't know what's going on.
I remember our first big job, if you want to call it.
Clowns save lives, I used to call them businessmen, please.
We stole a carton of honey, bottles of honey, and went out in the woods and drank all that
honey, and I never touched
honey again for 20 years.
Tell me about lemon meringue pie and juke joints.
Right across the street from my house was the army camp with the barbed wire,
50 caliber machine guns and there was a big armory next door that was our recreation hall
for all of the whole community.
And we had inside tracks and everything.
I'm telling you, we had our stuff together.
And we heard that there was some lemon meringue pies being shipped in on Monday.
And some chocolate and vanilla ice cream.
So we were ready on arrival.
And we broke in there and ate as much as we could
and we had pie fights.
And I went and broke open the superintendent's office
and saw a little spinning piano over in the corner
and we're getting ready to close the door
because it didn't look valuable to me.
I didn't know people played them.
And somebody said, fool, go back.
God's whisper said, go back in that room now and I went back and then I slowly went over to that piano and touched it with my fingers
and every cell in my body said this is what you do the rest of your life and that that one move
you know changed everything in my whole life. Folks, fantastic conversation.
We'll share more of that when we come back.
Going to a break right now.
We come back.
We'll chat with singer Howard Hewitt about the late, great Quincy Jones.
Right here.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding,
but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on
Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,
taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,
even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,
Have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a
company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called
this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed
everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company
dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
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Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,
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Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
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I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glod.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,
Heisman Trophy winner.
It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Be real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.
Stories matter and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear episodes one week early
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We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.
We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.
They showcased a sense of love that I never had before.
I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend.
At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.
I wouldn't change a thing about our lives.
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We're doing an interview, motherfucker. Folks, to understand Quincy Jones and how much he was involved with, I think about this interview that he did in 2007.
He was asked a question,
would he work with Michael Jackson again? He said, man, please, we already did that.
I have talked to him about working with him again, but I've got too much to do. I've got 900 projects. I'm 74 years old. Quincy Jones was doing music. He was doing movies. He was
doing television shows. He was doing all sorts of things. And folks, just think what I just told you.
This was he was 74 years old. He lives another.
He lives another 17 years and he was still doing things up until the last few months of his life.
Howard Hewitt Jones is right now.
And Howard, glad to have you here.
Man, I just think, again,
the output of this man is just sick.
Man, Quincy, you can't be sad about Quincy,
you know, today, because Quincy lived the life that every musician wants
to live, you know what I'm saying? Every musician, every wannabe producer, every vocalist, the whole
thing. When I first met Quincy, man, I was like, I was, I was kind of branching off. Cause I, I had gotten with the
group. I got him with Shalimar and I was kind of, and, and I worked with Leon Silvers, you know,
and then checked him out as a producer, the way that he did his thing. And I worked with, uh,
then, then I kind of branched out. I started working with, uh, Stanley Clark, started working
with George Duke, of course. And then my big brother, James Ingram.
I met James.
James and I are from the same hometown, from Akron, Ohio.
So James was always like, I met James when I was 15.
So when he came to L.A., a couple years later, I went to L.A.
Then we connected, and we stayed connected and stuff.
And then he brought me into the whole situation because he wrote a song called PYT right and
and it got placed on the uh on the Thriller album and so that he wanted me to come in and work with
him on the backgrounds so that's when I first met Quincy and like man, working with Quincy was like going to school.
It was like going into the classroom.
The professors in there, he would come up.
He and Bruce Wadeen would sit there.
He would, you know, bring out his briefcase and his folder.
And, man, it was like going to school.
And after that, we worked on a bunch of stuff.
We worked on Barbra Streisand's project.
We worked on Donna Summer, Ernie Watt's album,
about a bunch of stuff through the years.
But it was always like going to school when I go in the studio with Quincy.
We just have fun.
And it was amazing. It was amazing.
You talked about that partnership with James Ingram. Of course, so many hits came out of
that relationship. In fact, when that Historymakers conversation took place, it was recorded here in
D.C., James Ingram actually performed on that broadcast. That was actually the first time I got a chance to meet James Ingram that night.
And you talk about that vast musical knowledge.
I mean, it was essential.
I would just say if you were around Quincy Jones working on music, that was like going to college every single day.
Every day, every day.
You know, and it was beautiful. It was like, and his whole, you know, cause as a
producer, you have to, you have to develop like, like a doctor, you know, bedside manner, you know,
cause you gotta be able to bring the best out of your artists. You know, you gotta make that
artist comfortable. You gotta make you, you gotta, you, you have to know and seem like, you know,
and, and know that, you you know what you're doing.
As an artist, if I'm sitting there with a producer and the producer doesn't really know what he's doing,
that doesn't make me that comfortable as an artist.
Then we're both in there looking around and figuring out which way we're going to go.
Now, he let an artist be an artist, that's for sure.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not like he just controlled the whole situation.
But, you know, he did make it comfortable enough.
He made it comfortable enough for you to put your best foot forward.
But he also had it, it everything you knew that he had
everything under control well i love the story he tells of michael jackson calling telling him to
take the violins off uh the uh the beginning of the song quince was like hell no yeah he's like
you don't tell me what to do exactly and. And from that story, you realize that's
one of the most identifiable parts of that song.
And so as a producer, he knows what he's doing.
He knew what he was doing.
And you had the confidence.
You had full confidence in that when you went into the studio
with him.
Well, I think what also people need to learn,
you have amazing artists, Michael Jackson or Prince,
who are musical geniuses,
but you can't also deny that there's a musical genius
of the producer as well.
You can't deny it.
Say that again, I'm sorry.
I said the artists, we talk about Michael Jackson or Prince
and how they're musical geniuses,
but you also can't deny the musical genius of a producer like a Quincy Jones.
Oh, definitely. Definitely.
Like I said, Quincy, when he would come in,
he would have everything worked out,
and he knew how to balance the whole situation
between what he had worked out
and leave room for spontaneity
and the artist to put their identifiable situation on it as well.
But spontaneity is very important in the studio as well,
and he realized that.
So, you know, and as a producer, you have to know,
you have to have a good balance between the two, you know?
Absolutely. Absolutely. When,
when you think about the, just so many of the different artists,
does it also impress you that this,
he was able just to move from not only decades,
but genres, but also musical tastes and styles from 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000, 2020.
I mean, he was like a chameleon of music.
I mean, he brought over all,
he went over all genres of music,
you know what I'm saying and and like back we worked
i worked on the back uh back on the block uh project with him as well and to see him go from
you know the uh patty uh patty austin to uh uh big daddy cane to you know, jumping back into Ray Charles and Shaka.
And I mean, he jumped, he jumped. It was amazing watching him work on that project was really, really an amazing, an amazing process that he went through.
Share a little more about that, because most people don't understand how albums come together.
It's not like everybody is operating in the same space in the same time.
And so how much time did you spend with him?
We spent on the back on the black album. Like, I went in and did, we worked on, I worked on about maybe three or four tracks on that album with him.
And James, me and James and a couple other people.
Then he had some of the chorus type of situation where you had a bunch of people, a bunch, a bunch of artists that were, that were, uh,
like a choir type of situation, you know, and, and everything, when you, when you start,
when you think about a project, especially a project like that, to keep everything, it's
a chore to keep everything in order.
You know what I mean?
Because, because he was going back and forth from, from one genre of music to the music to the other, from one artist to the other.
So, you know, it was like he had, as a producer, he had to keep everything in order.
You know what I'm saying?
So there wouldn't be total, complete, just chaos.
You know, because in a production like that, it's easy to fall into a bunch of chaos.
Because, you know, everybody's going to have an opinion about that.
Everybody's going to have an opinion about this.
There's going to be, you know, this type of thing, that type.
So as the producer, you're the one that has to be able to listen, but then keep everything on track as well.
So that you keep you stay on the stay on the on the schedule that you that you set for the, you know, for the completion of the album.
Keep you got to keep everything on track.
So that was like, man, that that in itself and a big part of Quincy um quincy's team was uh bruce swedeen the engineer
and man with his with his uh with quincy's guidance and bruce bruce's ear and quincy's
ear along with bruce's ear and keeping everything like uh uh pinpointed as far as the sound that you want, the, you know, the type of vocals that you want in there, what you want to what you what you want to project as far as, you know, the mood of a song.
And back and back on the Black Album, there were so many different moods that were happening.
So to keep all that stuff, man, intact and keep it on track and keep it, man, it was the times on the tracks that I worked on.
I forget what tracks it was.
Back on the Black and I forget the name of it.
It was so long ago.
But, man, to keep everything on track, man,
that was a feat all in itself
did you ever watch in the process wonder how he gonna pull all this together
you know it's like but then but you might say that but then you look up there and you see oh
this is quincy jones you know what i'm saying? It's like then all speculation, all questions,
and everything go out the window because you know he's going to pull off.
Before we did that project, like I said,
we had worked on a bunch of other stuff before that.
And by that time, I had really gotten to know his style and that's what my
whole thing was at the time like I said I started working with uh when I first came into the
business into the recording business anyway uh I started I was working with Leon Silvers so Leon
and and Quincy even Leon even though Leon is is prolific in his own and amazing in his own right,
they were two completely different ways of producing.
Sometimes I would look at Leon and say, and something that we were working on,
and how are you going to pull this off?
Is he going to pull this off? Is he going to pull this off? You know, but with Quincy, you ask that,
you might have a shot in your head with that thought,
but then that goes out the window, you know,
immediately when you look out there and you say,
you see, this is Quincy Jones.
So you know what to do.
You know it's going to be cold blooded.
Indeed, indeed.
Howard, always glad to see you and chat with you.
Good to be with you.
Quincy Jones was a unique brother.
And in the beauty of music, it will always be with us
even when folks move on to become ancestors.
Yeah, man.
He was a mentor like he was for probably thousands and thousands of other artists
and musicians through the years, man.
He will be missed, but like I said, you cannot be mad.
You can't be sad because he lived the life.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I said at the top of the show, I said Quincy Jones dies at 91.
He packed 200 years of life into 91 years.
And that's what he used to tell me, man.
He said, Howie, he said, man, I've been talking to some doctors in Stockholm, man.
I'm going to freeze this stuff.
I ain't going to get old, you know.
And we sat.
I remember one time I saw him out, man, and we just sat and we talked. And he talked about that whole, what do they call it, cryogenics?
Yeah, cryogenics.
Cryogenics.
Yeah, and all that kind of stuff.
I said, Q, man, come on, man.
Come on, man.
He said, no, baby boy, I'm a good guy.
I'm living forever.
You know what I'm saying?
He was an amazing, amazing cat.
And we will miss him, but we ain't crying for him right now.
Oh, no.
I send a lot of love out to the family.
That's one thing that he was heavy, heavy on was his girls and his son and the kids.
And I send my thoughts and my prayers, and God bless all of them.
And, man, thank you for letting me come on here
and just talk about my man for a minute, man.
It's very special.
I think the only thing that he loved,
I would probably say number three to music in his family
was women, which produces family.
Well, you know, that was
one of the main reasons for the cryogenic
situation.
And I...
And again, and again,
Roland, I ain't mad at him.
I ain't mad at him, boy, because he
had some fine women on his arm, you know?
That was Q.
Oh, man, that was Q, and like, if you look at, you know? That was Q. Oh, man, that was Q, and, like,
if you look at, you know, I would
suggest to everybody
to watch that
Netflix special. Absolutely,
yeah, yeah. It's amazing.
Yep. It's amazing,
and it goes all
the way back to the beginning.
Oh, yeah, the documentary, Donovan Hymn, I tell you,
if there's one thing, it still drives me crazy.
When I was at TV One, and you talk about
what's been approachable, because I would often
call him at his house, and we would chat.
Not long chats, we would chat.
And he actually agreed to do a sit-down interview.
And something happened, and the folks at TV One production...
A lot of times, the big economic forces we hear about on the news
show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.
I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.
Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,
taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
Guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull
will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,
even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.
I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot
your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer
will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there
and it's bad. It's really,
really, really
bad. Listen to new
episodes of Absolute Season 1,
Taser Incorporated, on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st,
and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Lott.
And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,
Heisman Trophy winner.
It's just a compassionate choice
to allow players all reasonable means
to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King,
John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding
of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.
Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real. Listen to does. It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs
podcast season two on the iHeart
radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear episodes one week early
and ad free with exclusive content,
subscribe to Lava for Good Plus
on Apple podcast.
Sometimes as dads,
I think we're too hard on ourselves.
We get down on ourselves
on not being able to,
you know, we're the providers,
but we also have to learn
to take care of ourselves.
A wrap-up way,
you got to pray for yourself
as well as for everybody else,
but never forget yourself.
Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.
Never stop being a dad.
That's dedication.
Find out more at fatherhood.gov.
Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.
We put it off, and it never made it happen.
I'm like, that pissed me off.
To this day, it pisses me off,
which is one of the reasons why I tell people,
by me owning and controlling it now,
I ain't got nobody who can tell me,
no, you can't go and do it.
So I still hate the fact,
and I'm talking about Quincy.
He said, yes, we're going to do it at his house.
This was prior to the documentary and everything.
And man, I'm still sitting here.
Matter of fact, I may try to find an email to cuss out the person who said no because we never got a chance to do that
conversation so uh yeah we did i did not because you're but i did an interview one time uh over in
england over in the uk right and they were talking about we were talking about a lot of different
stuff people i work with talking about quincy i I worked on a Shaka Shaka project also.
And like, you know, I said something I can't remember what exactly what it was, but it but it was misconstrued.
You know, once it came by time, it came out in print. This guy was saying Howard says this and that about Quincy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right. And I read it when I was on a plane coming, I was coming back home from the UK.
And, man, as soon as I got off the plane, because my flight got in like early afternoon, early morning, whatever.
And as soon as I got off the plane, I went to Westlake Studios and took the article there.
And I said, Q, I did not say this. I didn't say this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And man,
and that's when he, that's one,
that's one of the big lessons that he taught me that he told me right then he
taught me that he said, Howard,
you have to learn how to guide the interview that you're doing. You don't,
don't let people guide you in, in the interview that you're doing you don't don't let people guide you in in the interview
you figure out how to guide that interview the way that you with the information that you want
to put out that you want to include in in that in that uh article or or or a radio interview or
whatever it would be and that was one of the, cause, cause you know, that was early,
that was early in my career. So like, you know, I'm still, I'm still, you know, feeling my way somewhat around interviews and stuff. And a lot of times, man, you'd be in an interview, man. And
like, you know, somebody says something and you go off on a whole nother situation that you shouldn't
go off on and then they take it and then they got.
So that was one of the mentoring situations that was very, very dear to me when he told me that.
Absolutely.
Well, Howard, we appreciate it, man.
Thanks a bunch.
Thank you, man.
God bless.
Appreciate it.
Folks, Quincy Jones talked about
in that History Makers interview
how music was his escape.
Here is that conversation.
Music for you was an escape.
It was your form of rebellion.
But music was more than an escape.
It was a mother.
I started out in Seattle when you had to play
a white tennis club dinner,
white cardigan jackets and played dance music and so forth.
Then we changed our uniforms and go to the black clubs, the rocking chair, and Washington
Educational and Social Club.
What a joke.
And the proprietor was Reverend Silas Groves, please.
Bring your own bottles and play for strippers.
We do comedy acts, man. Bring your own bottles and play for strippers. And we'd do comedy acts.
Man, we'd steal all the comics that come through.
We'd steal all the material at 17
and do all these nasty jokes.
And we weren't supposed to be in clubs.
I was 13, you know.
Yeah.
So we pretended like we were smoking and everything
so we could get in the clubs.
And I was just lucky that the teachers didn't.
I had one teacher, Parker Cook, that saved my life
because he said, you're doing what you're supposed
to be doing because I didn't get finished playing
until 5.30 in the morning.
Garfield High School's right across the street.
That's where Jimi Hendrix went to.
And I couldn't get there until 11 sometimes.
He supported me though.
In fact, I thought I saw him up there
in one of those joints a couple of times.
Did it ever occur to you that you were in the middle
of something revolutionary?
No way.
We were just...
Ray Charles came to town.
I was 14.
I couldn't believe him.
He came in, and he was 16 or 17, but he was like 100 years older than me because I was still couldn't believe him you know he came in and he was 16 or 17 but he was
like a hundred years older than me because I was still staying at home with
eight kids you know and two parents and his raggedy stepmother and he had two
suits his own record player two girlfriends girlfriends, everything.
I couldn't believe it.
And I was with Ronnie Moller.
I didn't do it like Lorenz Tate did.
I wasn't like that at all.
I wrote the dialogue for that,
but I wasn't like that at all.
Movies, they have to make up stuff, you know.
This little cat was loud and cocky and talked.
I never talked at all when I was little.
I sat up and listened,
because I was around guys I knew they were talking about, like Basie and Clark Terry.
And there's one thing that Ray and I used to say every day
to keep from being affected by the climate in this country at that time,
and that not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me.
Because you never wanted an...
APPLAUSE to me, because you never wanted an external force to decide which your identity was about.
And we were really, really, really, really cognizant of that, and we stuck to it.
Ray was a strong boy.
He says, I'm going to have three of my own planes in 20 years.
1968, he had three planes.
And Ray went, he knew how to deal with money, everything.
Because in the beginning, we didn't think
about money or fame.
We didn't.
Like today, the bling bling, forget that.
There was no money.
There was no bling bling.
The biggest joke on Broadway when we were out there starving
to death was in front of the Brill Building,
was you'd see somebody being held by their ankles out of a
33-story window and the overcoat hanging all over his head and they say what's
that going on up there? They say that's Jackie Wilson renegotiating his contract.
All of the booking agencies, the nightclubs,
record companies, everything was all owned by the gangsters.
Everything, the Copacabana, the Chaparri,
Horseface, Liccavoli, Fish and Stuff.
And boy, between them, Chicago and Sinatra, I met all of them.
Tell us the story of the first time you met Charlie Parker.
Oh, I almost had a heart attack.
And even worse, Bird was never aware that anybody was around.
Unfortunately, what happened, he came from Jamie Shan's band,
Dizzy came from God Calloway's band,
and they had this new idea,
but they did not want to be entertainers anymore.
They didn't want to have to roll their eyes or dance or entertain
and dance for anybody
anymore.
Louis had to do it, and I'll defend Louis to death.
Louis did what he had to do.
If it wasn't for Louis, we wouldn't be here.
Everybody did what they did, and it's a sociological music.
That's what I try to tell my little brothers all the time.
You can't say, throw jazz and blues away just for hip hop,
because it's all part of millions
of people's sociological experience, a terrible one.
And for the 50s and 60s, black artists got wasted.
I'm telling you, you cannot believe what happened.
I'd record with Verne Baker.
They'd send the arrangement over to the other side of town.
George Gibbs would copy it.
Fats Domino would do his tune.
Pat Boone would take it to the other side.
And the markets were split in the black and white markets, you know.
So now, please, what did Jay-Z make, man?
All right, folks.
Got to go to break.
We come back.
We'll chat with the great Patty Austin right here
as we continue to pay tribute to Quincy Jones
on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. I'm going to go ahead and hatred on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly
violence white people are losing their damn minds there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s
capital we're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.
We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.
I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial.
This is part of American history.
Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic,
there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash.
This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America,
there's going to be more of this. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors
and its attitudes because of the fear of white people.
The fear that they're taking our jobs,
they're taking our resources,
they're taking our women.
This is white fear.
Pull up a chair, take your seat at the Black Tape
with me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network
Every week, we'll take a deeper dive
into the world we're living in
Join the conversation, only on the Black Star Network
This is Tamela Mann.
And this is David Mann.
And you're watching Roland Martin.
On Twitter. ¶¶
¶¶
¶¶ Folks, welcome back to our tribute to Quincy Jones,
who, of course, passed away Monday before last at the age of 91.
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that later came out.
He's since been buried.
The family had a private funeral service for Quincy Jones.
And, you know, of course, with his passing happening the day before the election,
there was so much focus on that.
And so we wanted to definitely pay our tribute to him.
And, of course, we talked about James Ingram being one of the folks who worked a lot with Quincy Jones.
Well, when you say James Ingram, you can't help but say Patty Austin.
And she joins us right now. Patty, how you doing?
I'm fair to Midland.
Well, it's always good to see you. Have a chat. Have a chat in a while.
Let's talk about Q. I just again, when you hear the words legend, iconic, goat, all that sort of stuff.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action,
and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg
Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving
into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters,
and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone,
sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull
will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,
even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.
I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution.
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Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened
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This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
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Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th.
Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glod.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-stud on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.
It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug
man. Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real
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Stories matter and it brings a face to them.
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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.
We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.
A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget
yourself.
Self-love made me a better
dad because i realized my worth never stop being a dad that's dedication find out more at fatherhood.gov
brought to you by the u.s department of health and human services and the ad council
but um this man an absolutely an absolutely musical genius
most definitely This man, an absolutely, an absolutely musical genius.
Most definitely.
It's, you know, to keep talking about Quincy's genius is a little bit redundant.
That's kind of a given for anybody
that had the opportunity to make music with him.
But for the people who, for the folks who only,
who are on the receiving end,
take us inside of that process.
What was it like? And what made him so different and unique?
Oh Lord.
I guess the best way to explain working with Quincy,
it was kind of like joining the circus.
And you weren't allowed in the room
unless you had equal musical expertise
to his level of musical expertise because he wasn't the kind of producer
that dictated a lot about what you were going to play. It was usually in front of you or maybe
you'd hear a demo of what you were going to do. And then his sense of orchestration his sense of
chemistry
played into how
the music ended up
but there was never
a sad moment
there was always
happiness there was always
insane levels of
silliness
and if you did a four hour happiness. There was always insane levels of silliness.
And if you did a four-hour session with Quincy, at least
three hours of it would be laughing.
And one hour
would be getting down to business.
We're actually playing a video as you're speaking
and that's literally what we see.
We see the two of y'all cracking
up, laughing.
The two of y'all cracking up, laughing. The two of y'all cracking up, laughing.
But was that part of the secret in that his desire was to make you as comfortable as possible in order to get the best out of you?
I don't know that it was about comfort as much as for anybody, as much as it was just his sense of silliness, you know?
I mean, I met Quincy when I was four years old.
And by the time he passed, I was probably with him longer
than even his children.
His oldest daughter is about three years younger.
So you met at four years old.
When was... How did y'all meet?
19, 1954.
Wow.
He had a two-year-old
in a high chair
in a basement apartment
married to a white woman
in 1954
in New York City
in a basement apartment
and writing arrangements
and playing trumpet.
And one of the people
he was writing arrangements for
was a lady named Dinah Washington,
who proclaimed herself to be my godmother
after daring me to perform on the stage of the Apollo Theater.
So I did that, and she decided that we needed to work together.
And if we were going to work together, we were going to need arrangements.
And the way that we were going to get those arrangements was to go and meet with this guy,
this trumpet player slash arranger guy that she was working with and making recordings with.
So we went to his apartment.
I went into his music room and sang for him.
And he looked at Dinah and said, she's a midget, right? And Dinah said, no, this is my
goddaughter. And he said, well, if she's your goddaughter, then she's my goddaughter too.
And that's how I met Quincy. And so we've literally come up together. the older that he got and the older that i got when he
hit his 90s and i hit my 70s i'm 74 now he kept saying to me you're catching up with me you know
don't get cute over there because you're catching up with me so he was he was always hilarious uh
when i was a little girl i just found him to be just just, just so fun to be around. He always had this incredible, youthful, wonderful spirit.
But he spent his life in the company of people like Dizzy Gillespie, who was just so silly.
I can't even explain to you how silly Dizzy was.
And Ray Charles and all these people, all of these musicians from that genre, from that jazz,
which is where Quincy was at that particular time in his life musically.
That's where he was working, let's put it that way.
His musical taste was always tremendously eclectic,
all over the place.
He listened to everything,
which was why when he became the president of Mercury Records,
he knew what to do because he listened to everything.
So when Bob Dylan came across his desk, he knew what to do because he listened to everything so when bob dylan came across his
desk he knew what to do with them you know when the when this uh cast album west side story came
across his desk he knew what to do with it because he had technical training but he also had a lot of
soul and a lot of funk going on around him with amazing people who pretty much invented whatever
it is that we're doing now, or whatever it is we think
we're doing now, is really kind of an invention of the musicians that came up at that time.
And Quincy was sitting right in the middle of that pod of silliness, wonderfulness,
progressiveness, an ability to improvise, an ability to sit in a room full of strangers and make magnificent music.
So that's where that was his Petri dish.
So by the time we got to him, he was he was fully, fully formed.
Right, right. And and knew how to make musicians make the best music they could make.
A lot of times when we were working on stuff with Michael, or when we were working on the Dude album, he would just, you know, play the track that
we were going to develop, and then he'd leave the room, and he'd come back like an hour later and
go, okay, you know, put some grease on this and take that down a little bit, and maybe Patty sing
that again, you know, because it was really horrible. So do that again.
Whatever he
had to say to you, there wasn't
a lot of, now maybe you can try
to, no, no, no, no.
Limited dialogue
because you wouldn't be there
unless you were, can I say
this wherever the hell we're broadcasting
to? He was a badass.
Yeah, first of all, that's why the show's called
Rolling Mark Unfiltered, trust me.
I ain't got no problem cussing.
What else rolling?
That's the only way I roll.
That's the only way I roll.
Only way I roll.
I didn't know that.
But one of the things that I think is also interesting
is that, listen, for all your greatness,
there can be hits and misses.
I was reading a book on Aretha Franklin,
and he produced an album for her that didn't do well.
And some of that, they were like, he was so...
And what they laid out was that he was so busy,
and he was doing so many things.
Oh, yeah. Always.
And when you read these stories and you watch these interviews,
I mean, you sit here and go, my God,
how in the world did he keep up with all of that
because he was doing everything?
Yeah, at one point he did absolutely everything.
But again, he knew how to delegate everything
so that he didn't have to do everything.
Right.
And to me, that was his talent because-
He was a cosmic band leader.
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. The roots are so, you know, how that sausage got made
is so important. And what was happening historically when his sausage got made, the countries that
he was in where he learned his technique,
in Paris, not in the States, in Paris.
He comes back, he works with Ray Charles,
Andy Williams, Dave Grusin, Henry Mancini.
He starts doing movie scores.
He starts doing TV themes.
He's doing everything,
but all of it within the realm of music and all of it coming from that amazing space when black musicians were creating a culture, not just as they've done with hip hop.
You know, we do this all. This is what we do.
You know, and he came up at a time when this was this was the time of creation that everything else has sprung from.
And so he got to sit in that.
He got to marinate in that and was able to shift any way the music business went because he'd seen it all.
He played it all.
He knew what it all was supposed to be and what even more important, not what it was supposed to be, but what it could continue to become.
Because music constantly evolves as it should.
You know, it's our gift from the maker.
And he understood that.
So it was just about making a joyful noise with him.
And also he loved to challenge you
if he thought you were a badass too.
Then you're going to be challenged.
I'm going to assign you some weird stuff
that no one else would even...
I remember he called me up one day,
was working on the score for Roots,
and he wanted me to pop a sound that exists with an African tribe.
It's a yodel in their alphabet.
It's like, and I had to sit for hours listening to recordings of that.
So I could sing like about eight bars of whatever that became underscoring.
I don't even know if they finally used it in Roots.
But this is the kind of stuff that he would do. And it was great, though, because it made you
grow. You didn't just sit in his garden and look cute when the sun hit you. You got to grow.
You better grow or else you're not there anymore. So that was the formula.
I always called him the Pearl Mesta of producers.
Pearl Mesta was a lady for anybody
that's not 100 years old like me.
She was a lady that gave society,
so-called society parties in New York City
when that was the thing to do.
And she used to invite the garbage collector
and, you know, like the highest hoity-toity-est woman in America at the time, put them in a room together and let them jam.
And they always did.
Somehow, she always had the right chemistry of people in the studio, which was another thing that Quincy was very aware of.
Who's going to work best in this environment, in this situation?
He might know somebody that's going to play their booty off,
but they're gonna be an equal pain in the ass.
They're not gonna be on the session.
And this was something I learned from watching him work
when I became a contractor for singers.
I would always keep those kinds of things in mind
because I saw how he would put bands together.
He learned a lot from putting his put bands together. He learned a lot
from putting his first band together. He got stranded in Europe. They had no money. He learned
everything the hard way, everything, and was very good at remembering what he'd learned
and not trying to do it more than twice, maybe twice, but third time wasn't going to happen.
So when he gets in the studio,
he's not even thinking about any of that anymore.
He's already put bands together, had them break up,
had them go broke, had them love him for one week,
and then when he decided to leave that world and score movies,
the guys left behind were just like, what are you doing?
We're the last, We are literally the last
band standing playing this genre of music. And he said, well, you're going to be standing without me
because I'm going to California and the rest is history.
You said you met him in 54. 20 years later, he has an aneurysm.
Yes.
And two brain operations.
Yeah, two aneurysms, actually.
They went in, got the first one out,
but it would be too traumatic to the body
to remove them both at the same time.
So they had to close him up.
He had to heal.
They had to cross their fingers
that the second one would not burst, and, you know, that's, that's like the first two bullets he ducked. He
was a bullet ducking man. Right, I mean, first of all, I'm reading this account where they thought
he wasn't gonna make it, so they planned a memorial service, and he attends the memorial service yeah i mean you know listen this last time
um we had gotten to a point at least let me speak for myself speak for myself i'd gotten to the
point where i had seen him when he was really this is this is it you know you go through this when
you have seniors in your life right my grandmother went through this my mom went through this i took
care of my mom for five years i I know what all this looks like.
So it's like, okay, this is it.
He's just gotten
out of the hospital. He's frail.
I don't know if he's going to make it.
I go to see him.
I'm very worried about him, but we
had...
Oh,
not sure what happened, folks.
We're going to get Patty Austin.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, Patty.
Patty, you there?
Yeah.
The phone blacked out there.
Yeah.
So you said, what we heard was he was frail.
Yes, when I, not this time.
And I said, well, actually, that's another story,
but I'll get into that in a second.
Go ahead.
I went to see him when he was very, very frail.
And I was warned, you know, he's very, very frail. I said, look, I know what frail looks like.
I'm a damn near frail myself, okay? So a mirror can tell me what frail looks like. So I went to
see him and we had this thing between us. When Quincy was working with Leslie Gore, he invited
me and my parents to see the recording session. And she went on a break and he said,
I'm gonna let you go in the booth and sing
so you can see how you sound,
so you can hear how you sound on tape.
And he said, sing.
And I said, well, what,
I'm like maybe 11, 12 years old.
What should I sing?
He said, whatever you feel like singing.
So of course I'm like 11, I'm 12 years old.
So I sing my favorite song,
which is great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat, little dirty birdies feet,
one quart jar of all-purpose porpoise pus
floating in my pink lemonade and me without a spoon.
So Quincy used to sing that to me whenever he'd see me.
We wouldn't see each other for, I don't know,
three or four months or maybe even a year. He'd sing'd see me. We wouldn't see each other for, I don't know, three or four months
or maybe even a year. He'd sing that to me. So I go to see him when he is bent over in frailness
and the nurse is saying, this is your goddaughter. She's here to see you. He barely lifts his head.
He looks at me and he sings the entire song. Okay. Then I had a conversation with him about the band, about his original band.
I said, you know, Poppy, I called him Poppy. Poppy, I was listening to the old stuff the other
day. God, that band was so great because I worked with that band when I was a kid. I did a show with
Quincy called Free and Easy that we rehearsed in Europe and the plan was to bring it to Broadway,
but they lost all their money. It was a mess. But anyway, so spent pretty much a year, almost a year in Europe working on this
show with him. Huh? No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh no. So I spent almost a year on the, on the road,
uh, in Utrecht first, which were, which was where we, we rehearsed at the world's fairgrounds.
Remember when they used to have World's Fairs?
And the building we were rehearsing in,
they were going to tear it down as soon as we finished rehearsing,
which they did, and we moved the production to Paris at that point.
So I had this whole, you know, background going with Quincy
in those days of his working with the big band stuff.
So I knew all the guys.
They were all in the free and easy band.
My dad was in the free and easy band.
And so I talked to him about those musicians.
I named two of them.
I guess there were maybe at least 10, maybe 13 members altogether.
He named every one, every last one of them,
and said that was the best band I ever had.
And then about three weeks later,
I think it was last Thanksgiving,
I went to the house,
and he was sitting straight up in a chair
like a potentate,
and I went over to kiss him,
and he said,
baby, I like that dress.
And I said, okay, you're fine. I don't know how you're
fine. The last time I saw you, you were singing great green gobs to me and with your head hanging
what, and we were all, all of the kids and I were standing around him going, what happened?
How are you here like this? So after that one, I was like, look, he's going to be here at least another 20, 30
years. He's just going to be sitting on top of earth. It's going to be ashes and Quincy's going
to be sitting on top. So by the time that he finally did pass, I'm telling you, it's just
catching up with me now because I'm just in this state of, you know, I just don't believe it. I had a very similar thing with Luther when he passed.
That because we never saw each other regularly.
Right.
Sometimes we wouldn't see each other for a year or a year and a half.
Then we'd get together for three days and put our pajamas on and watch all the silly stuff he wanted to see.
Amos and Andy and World Wrestling.
Those were Luther's favorite things to watch.
And I'd watch it with him and and we'd go out to dinner,
and we'd talk, and we'd go to a movie,
and we'd talk some more,
and then we wouldn't see each other forever.
So I always, to this day, wait to hear from him again.
And I know I'm going to go through this with Quincy
even worse because I saw,
the first time I laid eyes on him, I was a child.
You know, when you have that kind of a relationship
with somebody, it changes all the dynamics of what you see. And we did business together and we did father-daughter
stuff together. And when my dad, my biological and beautiful, wonderful papa died, Quincy
was there. He just said, you know, I'm the understudy. I'm filling in. And he did. You
know, he helped me get through that. When my mom passed away, same thing.
Because our families were close very early on when I was a child.
So the relationship was very unique.
And I got to see him, you know, almost die at least 20 different times.
I know it's ridiculous.
It's gallows humor to laugh at this, but we all
got together. But he would
laugh at it. I mean, he would.
He would make light
of it. No, he would crack the joke
first. Come on. And then it would build,
you know, it would build experimentally
from there with everybody in the room.
But, you know, it's
just the vibe that was around
him and it just didn't matter
how horrible it would get. And it got horrible sometimes. He just always found he always had
this reserve to to pick himself up and dust himself off and start all over again and do
whatever he had to do. You know, well, if there is a lesson, there's a lesson for a lot of people.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.
I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.
Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,
taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that
make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.
I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
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I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
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We got Ricky Williams,
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It's just a compassionate choice to allow players
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Music stars
Marcus King,
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from Brothers Osborne.
We have this
misunderstanding
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Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
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It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
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People who are watching or listening to this,
a lesson they can take away from Quincy Jones' life
is that, and again, the reason I mentioned the aneurysm is that if you look at the output of
his life after. How about that? I think what happens a lot is that people go through things
and they also believe that, well, I've reached a certain age and then you know what
that's there's nothing more but the reality is um all of these things that happen after he was 40
after i mean these things happen and so what it's what it means is as long as there's still breath
in your body you can keep you can keep moving you can keep aspiring you can keep you can keep moving. You can keep aspiring. You can keep going.
You don't know when God's going to call you home.
So you use every single ounce of talent that you've been given,
and then you say, I'm going to go grab some more.
So when God comes to your home, you're like, listen,
you gave me these talents.
Man, I'm bringing back 30
extra ones. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny you should say that, Roland, because I've started
teaching master classes with a little bit of regularity. And I love doing it because I learned
from the absolute best. I learned from the innovators. People like to call me an innovator and I just go,
no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm an imitator, imitator. There's a whole bunch of ladies that came before
me and men and musicians of every elk that made what I'm doing possible. I've ended up
being more in the world of jazz than in the pop world because it matures better.
I think after a while, if you're doing, you know, certain kinds of music at a certain age,
if you notice most pop artists, when they get a certain age, they start recording the great
American songbook. There's a reason for it. You know, it's sophisticated. It reaches a different
audience. You're trying to say different things in your life at that particular point.
But I always tell my students to keep something in your back pocket, you know, which is what I learned.
I learned so much stuff from Quincy about what you do when you perform.
I'm jumping all over the place, but as I'm thinking of stuff.
We went to the Newport Jazz Festival with Quincy and the band. Again, we being
my family, mom and dad and I, Quincy, uh, the band. And it was, uh, um, Newport Jazz
Festival and Ray Charles was performing at the jazz festival that, that and uh as a matter of fact there's a
there's a scene in the Ray Charles movie where he is talking to Quincy yeah I remember it yeah okay
so we were there we were at that and Judy Garland was on the bill and Quincy said to me before he
got out of the bus and went to the tent he he said, and came over to me and pointed, put his
fingers in my face and said, I want you to see Judy Garland. I was already performing. I was
doing TV. I was doing theater. I was doing everything. And he said, I want you to see.
I said, I don't know. You know, I'm listening to like Led Zeppelin and I'm listening to Motown
and I'm listening to everything. But what he's talking about, I said, Judy Garland, she was pretty much a hot mess at that time.
Her personal life was just a mess.
And her chops were bad, and I'm like, eh, he said, I want you to see her.
And I said, okay, okay, I'll see her.
Well, I saw her, and her chops were bad.
And it was maybe one of the most magnificent performances
i'd ever seen anybody do because she was a brilliant actress and she knew how to sell
whatever it was she was selling in a song with or without a voice she made you believe whatever
she was singing about when she did over Rainbow, which of course was obligatory,
it's like the biggest hit she ever had in her life. So she comes out to do, I think she ended
the show with Over the Rainbow, or I think it was the end of the first half of the show.
And people, you could see people lifting their butts off their seats when she'd go for the song,
where? It was like, you know, is she going to make that where? And then it would not
quite be somewhere. You know, she's sliding up to it and everybody's like, come on, Judy. Come on,
baby. It was like watching a horse race with a horse that wasn't quite going to make it,
but they'd make it eventually. But it just didn't matter. And I'd never seen anybody
perform like that before because that really didn't have anything to do
with the tradition of jazz or the way jazz female vocalists performed. They were very non-dramatic,
very stoic. You know, Lena Horne just posed and looked magnificent and sang her butt off,
and that was enough. I had never seen anybody be theatrical when they sang or sell a song from that point of view.
Quincy knew me well enough that I was a drama queen and that if I saw that, I would reinterpret that for myself.
So I'm always telling my students, find those things, because if you want to have longevity, and as you said, this is in life in general, but more so, you know, if you're a
stevedore or a dancer or any of those things that, or an athlete, you know, 45, you ain't going to,
you're not going to be doing that anymore. So you have to have other things that interest you that
you're fabulous at, but you can hang in there a very long time as a comedian doing what you do.
You gremlin, you're going to be there for a hundred years doing what you do, you gremlin, you're going to be there for 100 years doing what you're doing.
Singing, you can hang in there a good long time
if you take care of yourself.
And so I think it's always great to have something
that you don't expose right away about your talents.
Don't show all of your talents.
Again, this was from hanging out with Quincy
and these old folks in the business
who knew every trick in the
book. Don't go out there
and if you can hit the highest note
in the world, don't hit the highest note in the world
in the first act. Close the second
act with that highest note. Save these
things as you go along. If you plan on doing
this a long time,
really save up some stuff.
It's like, oh yeah? Well, wait a minute.
I can whistle too. whatever that may be.
Whatever that may be, you hold on to that.
You keep that, and you save that as a gift to yourself to keep you going and to keep your audience interested.
Well, I remember it was one year at Essence, and Janet Jackson performed the night before, and Gladys Knight was the next night.
I think in Janet's show,
she may have changed like six, eight times.
And so the next night,
Gladys comes out
and it's a stool.
It's a towel on the stool,
a bottle of water.
It's the microphone stand.
And Gladys says,
I'm going to sing my hits from the 50s.
Then I'm going to sing my hits from the 60s. Then I'm going to sing my hits from the 50s. Then I'm going to sing my hits from the 60s.
Then I'm going to sing my hits from the 70s.
Then I'm going to sing my hits from the 80s and 90s.
All right, that's enough, Gladys.
So I go backstage.
I go backstage to the show.
And I go speak to her.
And I tell her, I said, Janet changed like six, eight times.
She said, I'm walking in that one damn dress.
I ain't got time to do all that changing.
She said, we're just going to stand there and sing.
So it was just hilarious.
As you were talking, I just immediately thought about that.
Yeah, old school, man.
Old school.
Speaking of that, so we were playing a clip from that 2007 conversation with the Historymakers with Quincy Jones.
And the reason I, every time I see it,
I laugh because
that was actually
the first and the only time
I met James Ingram.
But I had previously
met his daughter
in New Orleans
at Essence Fest
and we were in a restaurant
and I can't remember
if I told you
the story before.
So I woke up to James
and I said,
and so good to meet you.
Tell him I met your daughter.
And he was like, yeah, she told me that because I made her crack up, and I said, good to meet you, tell him I met your daughter. And he was like, yeah, she told me that,
because I made her crack up laughing,
because I said, please tell your dad,
how is it that he never got the woman?
I think only one of his songs, he finally got the woman.
And I had...
You did a lot of begging, didn't you?
Oh, no, so I, right, so that night,
after the Quincy Jones thing, I said, James, seriously, bro?
I said, I think you got the woman one time.
I said, could you
at least gotten a sister
two or three times? And he just
bust out laughing. I know he did.
He's like, I cannot believe you
just, he said, I cannot believe you said that.
I said, bruh. I said, I was listening
to like 10 or 12 of
your songs once, and I was like,
damn, did he lose a woman in every song?
Just once.
Just once.
What about me?
I used to tease him about that title all the time.
I used to imitate James' voice.
Sometimes I would have to do gigs without him,
and so as a spoof, I would imitate his voice.
I did a pretty good imitation of James,
and James used to say to me,
Patty, you do me better than I do me.
And then we would just look at each other
and hit the floor.
It's like, I don't know how to take that, man.
You just, you know, you take that wherever you want to.
But no, James was also, again, silly.
Another silly, wonderful, crazy person.
You just, I think Quincy had some kind of magic,
magic dust that he brought with him out of the womb and, and he kind of hid it maybe in his armpit
and saved it up for the future because it, it's really difficult.
It's so difficult. This is going to sound weird. It's so difficult for me to grieve him,
to have, you know, to have real grief about him because the very thought of him brings back
the laughter and silliness and joy and happiness. And I have to like carve through the joy to get
to the pain of the fact that I've lost him. That, you know, which I
consider to be kind of selfish.
I know he's in a better place. As a
matter of fact, we were all talking about
the folks that he's with
now. You know,
I mean, there's a show going on up there.
There's a jam
session. Baby!
And somebody said we need
a dancer.
So, you know, we got my lady.
Judith Jameson.
Judith Jameson the other day.
So now they got somebody dancing, doing 6 o'clock kicks,
and being fabulous.
And Quincy's up there with Greg.
Quincy said I needed a drummer.
So Roy Barnes.
Come on.
Come on.
And you don't need a singer yet.
Maybe you're looking in the wrong direction. Okay. Oh, no. No. I mean, come on. And you don't need a singer yet. Maybe you're looking in the wrong direction. Okay. Oh no. No, I mean, come on.
But, but no, it's, it's, it's, it's hard. You know,
Quincy knew a guy named Babs Gonzalez and Babs created his own kind of
language. This was during the bebop era.
And he would always come and visit Quincy.
And he came to visit Quincy one day,
and Quincy said,
so, man, you know, how's work and everything?
He said, man, it's hard to get exotic
when the gigs are so spasmodic.
And, you know, this is the environment
that Quincy was in all the time,
with these kind of cats, you know,
just talking silliness,
making the most wonderful things out of absolutely nothing,
you know, just crafting amazing music,
crafting incredible lives.
It was just, it was a magnificent time
to grow up in the music business
and it was a magnificent time to know him and um
the other thing that that that i really learned from from from quincy uh one day uh an old friend
of his came up to him and said man oh you look great wow and how's everything going and quincy
talked to him a little bit he said man you man, you haven't changed a bit. And Quincy got really mad.
He said, what are you?
I haven't seen you in like 10 years and I haven't changed a bit.
What an insult.
And he carried that through his whole life.
It didn't mean he was never going to make a mistake or do anything stupid.
Right.
But he would, I mean i in his 80s
you know he had a drinking issue i'm not telling anything out of school watch the documentary
you'll see all about it and and um and when he was going to do something no matter how destructive
or constructive you could not stop him that was going to happen whether you thought it was a good
idea for him to do or not if he thought it was a good idea for him to he was going to happen. Whether you thought it was a good idea for him to do or not.
If he thought it was a good idea for him to do it, he was going to do it.
So getting him to stop drinking was an effort.
And I was doing quite a bit of drinking at that time, my damn self.
But he just, as they say down south, he just up and stopped.
He just said, that's it.
I've hit whatever my rock bottom is.
I'm not doing this anymore.
And he didn't.
And I saw him be able, I don't know too many people in that age bracket that have that kind of an issue who can even begin to address it.
Never mind, stop it.
You know, and that's what he did.
And I saw him do that all the time. And biggest compliment I
ever received from him was about a year ago, we were having one of our goddaughter,
goddaughter, godfather conversations. And he said, don't you ever change? And I said,
oh, I want that in writing. This is from the man that says you must constantly change and evolve he said you're what i said are
you telling me i'm there i can like stop now he said you can stop now i said i wanted in writing
i never got into writing damn it but no it's it's uh to me that was that was the other great talent
that he had as as a human being that he was able to eventually dig himself
and dig himself out of whatever he had dug himself into.
Well, it's a whole lot of that for the man
folks affectionately call Q.
Patty Austin, we appreciate...
Patty, where are you based?
I live in Panama.
I got out three years ago ago that's another movie and um and all of
us were teasing that quincy left when he did because he was not about to see uh our enemy
number one public enemy number one right in the present right so actually actually actually
somebody somebody hit me on wednesday they like yeah, Q left on Monday because he didn't want to see this shit.
So that was literally what somebody.
Orchestrating.
Orchestrating.
Right.
That was what somebody.
It never stops orchestrating.
That's exactly what someone said.
Right on out the door.
Well, Patty, when you're back in the States or if I find myself in Panama, let's be sure to connect.
Please, please, please.
And I'm back and forth all the time, actually.
All right. Nobody wants to let me retire. People, please, please. And I'm back and forth all the time, actually. All right.
Nobody wants to let me retire. People,
I've been doing this for 70 years. Do you hear me? Can I stop now,
please? Hey, as long as the direct
deposit still goes through, I'm good.
Patty Austin, I
appreciate it. Thank you so very much for sharing
your reflections on Quincy Jones.
Thank you. Love you as well.
Folks, the great Patty Austin.
We appreciate her sharing those reflections.
Let's go to a quick break.
We come back.
Kirk Whalum sent us a video sharing his thoughts,
and we'll also play a couple of more clips.
And the only time I got Quincy Jones on camera.
It wasn't long, but at least we made it happen.
We'll show you that as well.
You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into
deadly violence.
You will not be my son.
White people are losing their damn minds.
There's an angry pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol.
We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.
We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.
I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result
of violent denial.
This is part of American history.
Every time that people of color have made progress,
whether real or symbolic,
there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University
calls white rage as a backlash.
This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys.
America, there's going to be more of this.
Here's all the Proud Boys guys.
This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes
because of the fear of white people.
The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources,
they're taking our women.
This is white fear.
Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you.
Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders?
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A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.
I'm Max Chavkin.
And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.
Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,
taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.
But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,
and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,
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Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
Cops believed everything that taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened
when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1.
Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,
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Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
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It's just a compassionate choice
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We have this misunderstanding
of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Karamush.
What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.
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It really does.
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¶¶
¶¶ Well, there were several people who couldn't join us live on the show,
but they wanted to pay their respects to Quincy Jones.
One of them is my number one artist, my homeboy, Kirk Whalum.
Here is what he had to say.
Quincy Jones, of course, was an original,
but I am so privileged to get to share a memory or two with him.
First of all, Q used to love to snack.
So if you were in the studio with him, you had to be, you know,
have super human strength to not eat all the M&Ms and stuff he always had around.
And he had certain combinations that he liked,
like one M&M and one potato chip at the same time, all that kind of crazy.
But one thing that really was like the first real encounter I had with him, Bob Jones, Bob James had recommended me for a session to play with Quincy Jones.
And it was like, oh, my God, I was just so nervous, you know? So I'm in there in the studio and I played my solo and, you know, and I looked over there at him, uh, waiting for
him, you know, he's in the control room and, you know, he's got the talk back button and I'm just
like, oh God, please don't tell me I didn't mess this up, you know, cause he wasn't saying anything.
And it felt like an hour, you know, I'm sure it was probably like 30 seconds, but
I believe he probably played this though, you know, I'm sure it was probably like 30 seconds. But I believe he probably played this, though.
You know, he knew I was nervous and everything.
So he finally hit the talk back and he said,
you know what was wrong with that?
I'm like, oh, man, what a...
My one chance and I blew it.
He said, not a damn thing.
Of course, he cracked up. Like, it was funny to him. It wasn't funny to me.
I was like, man, you jerk on my chain. And all was well, you know, he loved it. And he was the
guy, he would hire people to do what it is he wanted you to do. You know, if he didn't know
you could do it, he wouldn't hire you. And once he hired you, he didn't really give you a whole
bunch of instructors. He's like, do what you do, you know? And so the times I worked with him after
that, I was equipped, you know? And, you know, man, I especially loved the thing we did with
the sacks in the garden, you know, the secret garden remake. Anyway, I love that brother. And
I'm just, he was an avatar for so many of us in composition and arranging and playing.
He could play that trumpet, too, you know, but he was a humanitarian.
He was a great, great person.
Oh, we appreciate that, Kirk Whalen.
Thank you so very much.
And yeah, Saxon and the Garden are some of my favorites.
Music director Ray Chu also sent us this video for our Quincy Jones tribute.
Hey, everybody. This is Ray Chu.
And I want to pay my personal tribute
to the great Quincy Jones.
I met Quincy when I was very young.
And before I even met him, I studied his music.
I studied all of his albums, all the big band stuff,
all the great stuff that he's done. And when I finally met him, I studied his music, I studied all of his albums, all the big band stuff, all the great
stuff that he's done, and when I finally met him, it was such a great experience, and spending time
with him, hearing his wonderful anecdotes, and all his stories, and the Quincy-isms, Quincy could go,
he's got like a barrel full of Quincy-isms. I don't know how he
remembered all that stuff, you know, and all the history that he would recite and talk about when
you got into the space. So those are my memories of him. And he was very funny too. So,
like everybody that's going to be talking about Quincy, you can talk about Quincy
for hours and hours.
Talk about his movies. You can talk about
all of his world productions,
We The World, all the great stuff.
But most of
all, it's about Quincy Jones,
the man. And I got to know
him as Quincy Jones, the man.
And that was my honor.
Thank you.
As I said earlier, we were
supposed to do a one-on-one with Quincy Jones when I
was at TV One, but the folks
there canceled the trip. It never happened.
Oh yeah, I'm still
cussing folks after that one. But 2011,
we had the Washington
Watch show. We were
in LA doing a
special on philanthropy at the NBA All-Star Game.
And I don't know what the red carpet was.
We ended up shooting a red carpet.
And guess who came rolling down?
The great man himself, Quincy Jones.
Here's that quick interview.
Well, last time I saw you, sir, with the History Makers, you had a hell of a time telling these
wonderful stories about Chicago
and being a gangster, all that good stuff.
You're Chicago, aren't you?
Actually, I lived there for six years, and so now I just moved to D.C.
So you're a gangster, too.
Well, I'm a Texan, so we cowboy.
Same thing, same thing, same thing.
Let me ask you, this movie, it delves into a part of our history
that folks aren't aware of.
And even when it comes to music, you've always made it perfectly clear
that people need to be aware of history, and it's not just about today.
Well, that's about anything, though.
You know, if you know what's happened before.
I look at it like this.
If you don't have an accurate diagnosis, you cannot write a prescription.
It's the same thing.
If you know what happened before,
how it got there and everything else,
it's going to make the road easier to get where you're going.
Alright then.
So that's that.
First of all, I've got to hit them.
Was that board of that interview? It had to be.
I'm going to hit my old producer
Jay. I'm like, what the hell? That cut off early.
But that was again our chat with Quincy Jones in 2011.
You heard Howard Hewitt talk about the, was it Howard?
It was a past.
Talked about the Netflix documentary on Quincy Jones.
It was done by his daughter, Rashida.
Fantastic documentary.
If you have not seen it, be sure to check it out.
Here is the trailer for the documentary. If you have not seen it, be sure to check it out. Here is the trailer for the documentary.
I would like to have you meet one of the finest musicians
that I've ever known, Mr. Quincy Jones.
Pressure's on. Quincy's here.
What a great treat.
How you been, man?
I've been good.
My ultimate mentor and inspiration.
Y'all making me sound old.
You know who you are, man.
Quincy Jones, boy.
I was inspired by combining hip-hop and jazz.
And you was the first to do it.
Quincy called me and he said,
okay, well, I want to pitch your future to you.
You all know the story, right?
Quincy Jones discovered me.
Don't try to do what he's done,
because you could just kill him.
Paramedics operator 36, what is the emergency?
He has having chest pain and shortness of breath.
If you don't feel good, you've got to take care of it.
I will. I will.
I'm a survivor.
My whole life has been like that. I will. I will. I'm a survivor.
My whole life has been like that.
I'm from South Side of Chicago.
In the 30s, man, and during depression, I wanted to be a gangster until I was 11.
You want to be what you see, and that's all we ever saw.
I started playing in a band.
14 years old, worked in the nightclubs.
To see black men that were dignified, proud,
I said, that's what I want to be.
I want to be in that family.
Music was the one thing that offered me my freedom.
Dad, how do you deal with your ego and your art?
You have to dream so big that you can't get an ego
because you never fulfill all the dreams.
I've got six daughters and one son.
That's why I don't have any hair.
I've seen the power of music as a tool
to reach the hearts and minds of millions of people.
At each stage in this remarkable career he's been somebody who's walked through that door before anybody else has
You only live 26,000 days I going to wear them all out, and he absolutely did that.
I'm going to add another couple of quick interviews here.
I'm going to go to drummer Queen Cora.
She literally just landed where she is.
Cora, can you hear me?
I can.
All right, then.
You look like you just sat down.
Just real quick, thank you for joining us late.
Just want to get your thoughts and reflections
on the amazing, unbelievable Quincy Jones.
Quincy Jones was amazing.
Hang on one second.
Quincy Jones was an amazing influence.
I'm actually here in Chicago
with the National Black Musicians Coalition,
and his legacy still resonates with us. So being an artist, being a musician, and basically seeing yourself outside of a genre is what Quincy Jones'
impact has has done for me and for us. To be excellent at your craft as an instrumentalist
and become a composer, arranger, producer,
television, impact the television industry,
the film industry, and how we hear and see music,
how we see music as art, and how we see art as an impact
on the lives of people around the world.
I would definitely say his legacy is that for me.
Just timeless and incredible.
Incredible.
You talked about not being defined by one genre.
You've operated in different spaces.
And I think what it shows for Quincy Jones is music is universal.
It is worldwide.
And you don't have to be confined, if you will.
That's the beauty of music.
There is no such thing as boundaries in music.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And even business, like the business of music is something that I embraced,
you know, even as a publisher
and just going beyond the instrument to support your art,
to expand your art, to have your art live light years
longer than you.
Well, I know you're quite busy.
You said, hey, is there a small window to join?
I'm glad you hit me.
Just your final thoughts about Quincy Jones.
Thank you, Roland, for having me on the show always.
Quincy Jones is the quintessential expression of arts and education.
And I'm grateful that I had an opportunity to meet him,
grateful to share in his legacy and continue on as an artist
and as a businesswoman and as
an entrepreneur
and creative.
Quincy Jones is that, and his legacy
will continue to live on.
All right, then. Queen Cora, thanks a lot.
Thank you, Roland. Appreciate it.
Folks, in that HistoryMakers
interview, Quincy Jones talked about
how he
transitioned.
A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.
Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up.
So now I only buy one.
The demand curve in action.
And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey
Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at
what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business
Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.
Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.
I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.
So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer
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Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.
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I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glod.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir. We are back.
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Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.
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Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.
We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers.
But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else.
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Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.
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That's Dadication.
Find out more at fatherhood.gov.
Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.
...from jazz to pop.
Let's play that.
You know, there are no greater purists in music than jazz purists.
So there must have been some pushback when you moved into pop.
Honey, you know, you think I care.
When we were kids, 13 years old, in Seattle, Washington,
you had to play shodishes, bomb nestles, strip music, rhythm and blues.
You had to play everything.
Ray Charles, everybody had to play it.
So they're acting like I changed up for a scene.
You're kidding.
Rock and roll came out of black music.
It was music they played in the black neighborhoods.
That's not new.
Please.
We were playing Good Rockin' Tonight and all that stuff.
Listen to Pee Wee Creighton and T-Bone Walker when I was 12 years old.
Give me a break.
Selling out.
I mean, you know, the main thing
is, though, if some of these cats
that are talking about that knew how
to make a record and sell 50 million albums,
they'd be there in the New York minute.
Trust me.
And not compromise
your soul, because I never compromised my musicality.
Never.
I don't think you did.
But you moved that into films.
Is that something you always wanted to do?
The Pawnbroker and The Heat of the Night.
You did amazing.
And Cold Blood.
You did amazing film work.
Thank you.
How did you make that transition?
I wanted to do that since I was 15 years old.
I used to play hooky and go see all of these movies,
and I could tell Alfred Newman's sound
from 20th Century Fox and Victor Young and Paramount.
I don't know how.
Stanley Wilson from RKO.
I could just tell.
And I'd see Benny Carter's name on one song,
and it's Nose of Kilimanjaro,
or Calvin Jackson in a number,
or Fletcher Henderson's brother.
One tune, but never a full screen credit.
And I said, I know I don't have a chance,
but it is my passion to do films,
because they were all Eastern European names.
They didn't do that.
And 15 years later, thank God,
Lena Horne played it for Sidney Lumet,
who was dating her daughter and finally married her.
And she played a record I did for Basie, and he called me to do the Pond Broker.
And I was the happiest dude on the planet.
Television scoring is different from film scoring.
You did Ironside, which I would sing it for you all, but it would date me.
I do remember how it goes.
And Sanford and Son.
People don't know that you wrote that.
And all of Cosby's bombs.
And all of Cosby's.
Chester Kincaid, when he was a gym teacher,
and his variety show and all that stuff.
All of it.
A lot of TV shows.
But that's how you learn the craft.
You don't have an entitlement being in the record business
to say I can make films on TV too.
You better go learn how.
It's a lifetime craft, you know.
How long did it take you to write Sanford and Son?
20 minutes. Bud Yarkin came to me and he said, I'd like you to go see the film
on it. I said, who's in it? He said, Red, I said, you can't put Red Fox on national
TV, man. Are you crazy? Because we worked together with Billy Eckstein and Coles and
that, because at the Apollo
with when I used to write all Fox's entrances and man Coles was the dirtiest comic on
moms maybe we trained him and Slappy White. Are you kidding? I said you got him on
national television? He said yeah. I said I don't need to see it.
I wrote it in 20 minutes, we recorded in 20 minutes and it was a big, it was fantastic.
Oh I got the big one. 20 minutes we recorded in 20 minutes and it was a big it was fantastic
Quincy Jones also told when I for the best advice he's ever received
The best advice I ever got was from Nadi Boulanger in 1957.
She said, your music will never be more or less than you are a human being.
So I tried to work on the human being.
I'm discovering a lot of things about myself, you know,
and I'm trying now for the last two years to get all of the negative thoughts out of my body.
Grudges, no more anger.
It's a waste of time.
And Mark Twain's words just overwhelm me.
Anger is an acid which does more harm to the vessel in which it's stored than anything on which it's poured.
And isn't it amazing to get to 85 to figure that out?
It's pretty ridiculous, but you learn it from mistakes.
Well, that actually was from the Netflix documentary on Quincy Jones.
Folks, that is it for our tribute.
We appreciate everybody who has joined us.
Again, Quincy Jones, an absolutely amazing man.
And he was always funny.
So we're talking about Quincy.
Quincy, for some reason, thought I'd travel with him on a trip to China.
And every time we would see each other, he would say,
Roland, he said, man, did we have so much fun on the trip to China?
I have no idea what the hell Quincy was talking about.
Because the only time I went to China is with the National Urban League but of course I never corrected Quincy uh and just went along with it but it was always funny so
I can only imagine what the hell happened on that trip to China folks that is it for us
we'll see y'all on Monday right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.
And certainly our prayers and thoughts go out to the family of Quincy Jones.
Y'all take care.
Howl! © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.
Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.
But the price has gone up, So now I only buy one.
Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to,
yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it.
I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops.
They get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future
where the answer will always be no.
This is Absolute Season 1.
Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
Listen to Absolute Season 1. I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glott.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war.
This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.
This kind of starts that a little bit, man.
We met them at their homes.
We met them at their recording studios.
Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey.
We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.
They showcased a sense of love that I never had before.
I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend.
At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.
I wouldn't change a thing about our lives.
Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids,
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.