Jones’s musical legacy—and devotion to his Seattle roots—carries on.
by Alexa Peters
In 2017, during a performance from local garage-jazz quartet Industrial Revelation at Upstream Music Festival, I noticed a commotion near the stage as people huddled around the VIP seats. I stood on my toes and looked—Is that Quincy Jones?!
While Jones, the legendary musician, producer, and alumnus of Seattle’s Garfield High School, had given a keynote address earlier in the festival, I didn’t expect to see the mastermind behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller sitting amongst the crowd. But there he was, shaking hands, taking pictures with fans, and even sharing generously with a young musician who asked him about score orchestration. Then, it was my turn to thank him. He grasped my hand and grinned, wrapped in one of his iconic striped scarves.
On Sunday, Jones passed away at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91. Though it’s been many decades since he lived in Seattle, and he was only a resident from 1943 until 1951, Jones continuously nurtured his ties to the city over the course of his life and inspired generations of local musicians.
“Sometimes, in today's musical world, there can be a level of superficiality, and Quincy was the opposite of that,” says Riley Mulherkar, a graduate of Garfield High School and rising jazz trumpeter who released his acclaimed debut record earlier this year. “[He had] mastery of the form at a young age—and then he was able to take that into all sorts of musical situations, and literally change the world.”
Jones was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago. After a tumultuous early childhood with his mother, who had schizophrenia, Jones’s father, Quincy Jones Sr., moved Jones and his brother to Bremerton, Washington. When he was 12, Jones began playing trumpet at Bremerton’s Coontz Junior High.
In 1947, after Jones’s father remarried, he moved his sons, his new wife, and her three children, to Seattle. Jones started at Garfield High School and quickly met fellow student Charlie Taylor, who played saxophone.
Taylor was one of the sons of Evelyn Bundy, a trailblazing Seattle jazzwoman who formed one of the city’s first jazz bands in the 1920s. At Garfield, Taylor was ready to put together his own group. He invited Jones to become a member of his band, and Jones agreed, joining a cast of elite musicians at Garfield including Oscar Holden Jr. and Grace Holden, two children of pianist and Seattle jazz scene patriarch Oscar Holden.
After their first few gigs as the Charlie Taylor Band, Bumps Blackwell, a bandleader, songwriter, arranger, and record producer (who would go on to mentor Ray Charles, Ernestine Anderson, and Sam Cooke, among others), offered to manage them as the Bumps Blackwell Junior Band.
As Paul de Barros notes in his book Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle, the Bumps Blackwell Junior Band was a “focal point” in people’s memories of Jackson Street, which was home to a bustling jazz scene in the years around World War II until 1960.
The time in the band was influential for Jones, too. Jones got to perform frequently, including opening for Nat King Cole at Civic Auditorium, and the group allowed him to befriend other notable musicians who worked on Jackson Street at the time, like Ray Charles or “R.C.”, who first taught Jones about arranging.
Jones left Seattle in 1951 to attend Berklee School of Music. He soon dropped out to tour with Lionel Hampton’s orchestra and eventually form his own band. From there, Jones’s career is one milestone after another.
Some highlights from Jones’s career include working as musical director, arranger, and trumpeter in trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s band, becoming the first African American vice president at Mercury Records in 1964, composing film scores for dozens of films, composing for iconic TV shows including Roots, and serving as producer and arranger for top-tier talent including, of course, Michael Jackson.
Jones also founded Quincy Jones Productions, an all-encompassing media and artist management company that helped jumpstart the careers of artists like Jacob Collier.
With all his accomplishments and fame, Seattle organizations have bestowed Jones with various honors, including Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Northwest African American Museum and the Seattle International Film Festival. Likewise, Jones kept up his connection to the Emerald City, often supporting the local music scene and returning home for visits.
As far back as 1959, when Jones was hired to form his own band, he hired musicians from Seattle he admired, including pianist Patti Bown, trumpeter Floyd Standifer, and one of his lifelong friends, bassist Buddy Catlett.
Upon Catlett’s death in 2014, Jones tributed his “brother and bandmate” on Facebook, calling him “one of the greatest bass players to ever take the stage. From Charlie Taylor's and Bumps Blackwell's bands when we were starting out in Seattle to my Free and Easy tour of Europe, we traveled the world playing the music we love.”
Jones has stayed especially linked with Garfield High School. In 2008, when Garfield High School decided to name their freshly renovated performing arts center after Jones, he flew in for the dedication ceremony. As recently as last year, Jones donated $50,000 to Seattle’s Washington Middle School, which feeds into Garfield High School, to help keep their jazz program alive.
“Today, I had the pleasure of visiting my old school in Seattle, Garfield High, and man did it bring back some memories!!,” Jones wrote in a 2017 Facebook post. “I can't believe it’s been 70 years since I walked these halls as a student...Moving to Seattle forever changed me for the better...and finding music here showed me that I could be more than a statistic...”
Mulherkar, like Jones, found music at Garfield High School, where Jones is now embedded into the lore of the school.
In 2009, as a high school junior playing trumpet in Garfield’s jazz band, Mulherkar had the chance to meet and work with Jones when the legendary producer came into their rehearsal. He conducted the students in a couple songs, including a swingin’ Jones original and one of Mulherkar’s favorites called “Stockholm Sweetnin’.”
“It was hard to even wrap our minds around, because there's Quincy Jones, the celebrity,” said Mulherkar. “It felt so special to have this personal connection to the man, as a Garfield student, as a trumpet player, and [as] someone who wanted to make my life in the music.”
Mulherkar, who now lives in New York, still finds it special that the beginnings of his career were so touched by the icon.
“As a jazz musician from Seattle who went to Garfield… I love that he was able to make such a tremendous impact starting from a place that, for me, is so relatable,” said Mulherkar.
Through Garfield students like Mulherkar, and the countless other artists Jones mentored as a producer and music executive, Jones’s musical legacy—and devotion to his Seattle roots—carries on.
