Passages

[Lemmy Caution]

Quincy Jones knew and worked with everyone in the music industry over the 2nd half of the 20th C and beyond. Even putting together the We Are the World phenomena. I doubt there was another producer/songwriter so successful until maybe Sean Diddy Combs. But imo the best thing Quincy Jones did was write both the Sanford & Son and Bill Cosby Show theme songs.

And veering off, I was listening to a Bill Dana commentary on an episode of Get Smart in which Dana basically plays a version of Max while Don Adams was sick, and Dana remarks how proud he is that his brother Irving wrote the Get Smart theme and much of the music cues. Irving Szathmary, an interesting name which always stood out in the credits. Bill Dana was born William Szathmary.

[domino harvey]

People are posting excerpts of his interviews on Twitter and I’m loving it. No wonder his daughter is so funny

[beamish14]

People are posting excerpts of his interviews on Twitter and I’m loving it. No wonder his daughter is so funny

His autobiography, Q, is quite a trip

[flyonthewall2983]

One of the more underrated things he has done was conducting the Phil Collins Big Band in 1996, with Collins firmly stepping up his drumming to what are pretty intense results. This documentary about that time is a good snapshot of the show, also featuring David Sanborn who of course passed away recently. And Charlie Watts, whose comments on drumming and jazz really gives the musicians perspective here as much as anyone else interviewed.

[reaky]

Quincy Jones on producing Ringo Starr’s album Sentimental Journey:

“Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, ‘Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.”

While Starr went away, Jones claimed that he snuck English jazz drummer Ronnie Verrell into the studio:

“[He] came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says [to George Martin], can you play it back for me one more time? “So George did, and Ringo says: ‘That didn’t sound so bad,’ And I said: ‘Yeah, motherf***er, because it ain’t you.’ Great guy, though.”

[pistolwink]

An incredible thing about Quincy Jones is how he was able to navigate (even innovate) the changes in pop music for decades on end. Hard to believe that the guy who arranged (and sometimes produced) Ray Charles also made Lesley Gore's hit records and Michael Jackson's state-of-the-art blockbuster records in the 1980s. Most great producers/arrangers are associated with a particular style or era. Not so QJ.

...Not to speak ill of the dead, but one thing that sticks in my mind about QJ is in a 2018 GQ interview. Can't imagine his daughters, self-identified feminists, were too happy to hear this kind of misogyny from him:

Would you ever go out with anyone your own age?

"Hell no!" Jones gives me a look, a kind of incredulity that is some mixture of horror and bewilderment. "You see me with an 84-year-old woman? Are you crazy?"

And why not?

"Why not??? Why? For what, man? There's nothing…there's no upside. You gotta be kidding. I got me some technology out there"—he gestures to the mansion's perimeter—"that keep fat and old away from here. Buzzes if they're too old."

[hearthesilence]

I see a lot of people lamenting that too many obits concentrate on his producing work for Michael Jackson and "We Are the World," but at least with Jackson's records you have arguably his best and most influential work in the pop realm. ("We Are the World" is unimpeachable as a cause, but musically and lyrically it's a terrible record.)

Outside of that, his musical legacy feels less tangible, possibly because his most lasting accomplishments beyond the Jackson albums may have been outside of actual record-making (as described by the New York Times). No denying he was an excellent arranger though.

If I had to pick one album to listen to, I'd go with his first, This Is How I Feel About Jazz, the highlight of which is "Stockholm Sweetnin'."

[Rayon Vert]

Quincy Jones on producing Ringo Starr’s album Sentimental Journey:

“Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, ‘Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.”

While Starr went away, Jones claimed that he snuck English jazz drummer Ronnie Verrell into the studio:

“[He] came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says [to George Martin], can you play it back for me one more time? “So George did, and Ringo says: ‘That didn’t sound so bad,’ And I said: ‘Yeah, motherf***er, because it ain’t you.’ Great guy, though.”

Quincy Jones on producing Ringo Starr’s album Sentimental Journey:

“Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, ‘Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.”

While Starr went away, Jones claimed that he snuck English jazz drummer Ronnie Verrell into the studio:

“[He] came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says [to George Martin], can you play it back for me one more time? “So George did, and Ringo says: ‘That didn’t sound so bad,’ And I said: ‘Yeah, motherf***er, because it ain’t you.’ Great guy, though.”

That has sounded like a BS anecdote to me since first hearing it. It’s an album of standards and Ringo only sings. He didn’t drum on any of it. (And Jones didn’t produce the album; he arranged one track and conducted the orchestra on it.)

[Lemmy Caution]

How about after the second hearing?

Didn't QJ say all kinds of nutty stuff a few years ago while promoting a book?

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

RIP Kazuo Umezz, one of the greatest manga artists. The Drifting Classroom is necessary reading for anyone vaguely interested in horror manga.

[colinr0380]

RIP Kazuo Umezz, one of the greatest manga artists. The Drifting Classroom is necessary reading for anyone vaguely interested in horror manga.

Here's Anime News Network's post on Umezz who passed away last Monday, 28th October. And here's a good video on Umezz's work. So far in English Viz has put out The Drifting Classroom, Orochi and Cat-Eyed Boy, and is two volumes into My Name Is Shingo.

Lots of connections to film too. He turns up as an actor in Yazuso Masamura's mid-60's Shintaro Katsu starring film Hoodlum Soldier, and soon after had the first film adaptation of his works with The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch.

Cat-Eyed Boy had a fascinating live action animation hybrid series in the mid-1970s. Nobuhiko Obayashi made a bonkers semi-musical adaptation of The Drifting Classroom in 1987, but there also looks to be another film version of the story from 1995, Drifting School with Henry Silva and Bubba Smith (aka Hightower from the Police Academy movies!) in the cast! Which somehow has fewer musical numbers but even cheesier acting!

Into the 90s, there is Baptism of Blood and during the J-Horror wave of the 2000s there was a 2008 adaptation of Orochi from director Norio Tsurata, the director of Ring 0: Birthday. Which all builds towards the only film written and directed by Umezz, 2014's semi-autobiographical horror, Mother.

[Orlac]

Jonathan Haze from LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS - https://deadline.com/2024/11/jonathan-h ... nE9XA-mdpA

I'm surprised he didn't get a second wave of cameos from the 80s onwards, following the Little Shop musical. I feel Dick Miller eclipsed him there - to the extent that I have two 1980s sci-fi reference books that credit Miller as playing Seymour!

[ex-cowboy]

It's unfortunately behind a paywall, but the QJ Ringo anecdote (true or not) is from a 2018 Vulture article - https://www.vulture.com/article/quincy- ... ation.html. I've read it a few times over the years and it always cracks me up - some great lines. He apparently subsequently retracted some of the comments (calling the Beatles 'no talent motherfuckers', for example), but it's still worth a read.

[jazzo]

RIP Kazuo Umezz, one of the greatest manga artists. The Drifting Classroom is necessary reading for anyone vaguely interested in horror manga.

A true outsider artist who somehow found a long, storied career making groundbreaking nightmares for mainstream young readers. I fucking love it.

[beamish14]

British painter Sarah Cunningham

[GaryC]

June Spencer, aged 105. She had a couple of television acting roles in her IMDB entry but she was best known on radio as Peggy Archer in The Archers. She played the role from 1950 to 1953 and 1962 to 2022. The nine-year gap was due to her raising a family, two children, and the role was recast during that time.

[fdm]

Elwood Edwards… You've got mail!

[beamish14]

Tony Todd. One of the greatest character/horror actors ever

[GaryC]

Dorothy Allison, aged 75. Her semi-autobiographical novel Bastard Out of Carolina was filmed in 1996, directed by Anjelica Huston.

[flyonthewall2983]

A tough watch, I hope she found peace

[hearthesilence]

Per social media, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson at the age of 98. He was prolific, recording a string of popular albums for Blue Note, most notably Blues Walk, and he appeared on quite a few classics for other Blue Note artists, like Thelonious Monk (whose Blue Note recordings are collectively some of the most important jazz records ever made) and the Art Blakey Quintet's A Night at Birdland recordings (arguably the beginning of Blakey's celebrated proving ground for up-and-coming talents, the Jazz Messengers).

[hearthesilence]

Ella Jenkins, a self-taught musician who defied her industry’s norms by recording and performing solely for children, and in doing so transformed a marginal genre into a celebration of shared humanity with songs like “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” (perhaps her signature recording).

Had the pleasure of seeing her perform and talking with her afterwards at Beth Eden Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2008. (Did a write-up for my school paper.)

[thirtyframesasecond]

I see a lot of people lamenting that too many obits concentrate on his producing work for Michael Jackson and "We Are the World," but at least with Jackson's records you have arguably his best and most influential work in the pop realm. ("We Are the World" is unimpeachable as a cause, but musically and lyrically it's a terrible record.)

Outside of that, his musical legacy feels less tangible, possibly because his most lasting accomplishments beyond the Jackson albums may have been outside of actual record-making (as described by the New York Times). No denying he was an excellent arranger though.

If I had to pick one album to listen to, I'd go with his first, This Is How I Feel About Jazz, the highlight of which is "Stockholm Sweetnin'."

But Quincy's dry-run for WATW was Donna Summer's 'State of Independence', taking the Jon and Vangelis track and turning it into something euphoric. And Quincy compiled the greatest set of backing singers imaginable - Lionel Richie, Dionne Warwick, Michael Jackson, Brenda Russell, Christopher Cross, Dyan Cannon, James Ingram, Kenny Loggins, Peggy Lipton, Patti Austin, Michael McDonald, and Stevie Wonder.

Of QJ's pop albums, The Dude is very good, and as you'd expect from his rolodex, he gets some musical greats to perform - Steve Lukather, Herbie Hancock, Greg Phillinganes, and Stevie Wonder - and that's before you mention Patti Austin and James Ingram taking care of the vocals.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Tony Todd. One of the greatest character/horror actors ever

Candyman is a great film and has aged very well, I think - and Todd's performance is iconic. He was excellent in The Rock of course ('Excuse me general but where's the f-----g money!'), which remains the best of the Simpson/Bruckheimer high-concept action films.

[agnamaracs]

First Quincy, then Lou Donaldson, now we've lost Roy Haynes.