Quincy Jones: whats so great about this?

[Teasing the Korean]

...and Nelson Riddle reportedly covered Les Baxter's ass with neither verbal or financial acknowledgement, Baxter reportedly having much better personal skills than musical ones (and Riddle being the exact opposite)...

Not to change the subject of the thread, but I have bolded and italicized the key word in this sentence. This version of the story was peddled by a particular musician with an axe to grind. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

Ok, give me a list of the five worst Ethical Sins Of Quincy Jones, and show me how any of them are inconsistent with any other Highly Ambitious Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics.

And for Bonus Points, tell me how many of them were actually illegal (breach of contract, etc).

And for Final Righteous Justification, tell be why the actions of Quincy Jones, Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, are any worse than those of any other Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, apart from that Quoincy Jones was once a Talented (Enough) Jazz Musician, and Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians should not ever become Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climbers With Flexible Ethics because it is not there place to do so.

And then tell me whose place it is to be Highly Ambitious Corporate Successful Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics. It must be somebody's, because there sure are a hell of a lot of them, and nobody seems to be all THAT upset about it, even the Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians whose business ends up being run by them (if they are to have any business of any scope, that is).

[JSngry]

...and Nelson Riddle reportedly covered Les Baxter's ass with neither verbal or financial acknowledgement, Baxter reportedly having much better personal skills than musical ones (and Riddle being the exact opposite)...

Not to change the subject of the thread, but I have bolded and italicized the key word in this sentence. This version of the story was peddled by a particular musician with an axe to grind. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Fair enough. I've heard it both ways, and I'd not be surprised either way, or to any degree.

[fasstrack]

Ok, give me a list of the five worst Ethical Sins Of Quincy Jones, and show me how any of them are inconsistent with any other Highly Ambitious Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics.

And for Bonus Points, tell me how many of them were actually illegal (breach of contract, etc).

And for Final Righteous Justification, tell be why the actions of Quincy Jones, Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, are any worse than those of any other Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, apart from that Quoincy Jones was once a Talented (Enough) Jazz Musician, and Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians should not ever become Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climbers With Flexible Ethics because it is not there place to do so.

And then tell me whose place it is to be Highly Ambitious Corporate Successful Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics. It must be somebody's, because there sure are a hell of a lot of them, and nobody seems to be all THAT upset about it, even the Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians whose business ends up being run by them (if they are to have any business of any scope, that is).

I'll let Mr. Sangrey be the Last Angry Man here and be glad not to take the heat, but I do agree with much of what he says. For another example: I remember Cecil Taylor slamming Donald Byrd in DB for being 'full of shit' and maybe saying 'But Donald has his (read 'material') things. So what? Did Taylor know what Byrd might have gone through before starting the bitchfest? I remember Pepper Adams talking also in an interview about the hell he and Byrd caught trying to keep a jazz band together. He, at least, was more of a gentleman while still candid: 'Maybe that explains Donald's later aberrations'.

Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....

Well, you get it.....

Edited January 30, 2012 by fasstrack

[Big Beat Steve]

Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....

Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...

[JSngry]

Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....

Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...

I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.

The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be hugely successful. They see what it takes and say, "uhhhhh....no thanks", and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it "really big", and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.

And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.

Otherwise, you either have an "industry" and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.

[Christiern]

BS

[BillF]

Yes, Quincy's link with that one has always been tenuous, to say the least. I have most of those tracks on this album, and they're completely out of character with the main session, a great big band date. That said, I like those West Coast tracks, too:

i've had this album since i was a very young girl, which is a very long time ago!! LOL

I had the vinyl album, too. Bought it used about 1970. But the CD version with the West Coast tracks added doesn't make a harmonious whole.

[fasstrack]

Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....

Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...

I never defended his actions. I repeat: I'm neither God nor Freud. Have enough tsuris figuring out my own f-ing life. Just trying to look at the big picture. It's so rare that anyone makes it in music w/o singing or being a complete jerk---artistically, I mean here---(or pretending to be one for lucre.) Speaking as a musician that actually would like to be successful, I have to, one, acknowledge said success and, two, figure out what that guy/gal might be doing right that I'm not. I think that might be a better expenditure of energy than taking easy 'emperor has no clothes' shots. It might help a lot of talented musicians get rewarded for their work. Or not. But where there's life there's hope.

There are some NY area musicians who have given very useful talks on navigating the (ugh) jazz business. Two are Hal Galper and Jimmy Owens. Both took the bull by the horns and did OK---and as far as I know did it on the square. Why not have more threads on guys/gals like that instead of always pulling covers off the well-heeled looking for dirt (if you'll forgive an extremely messed-up mixed metaphor ).

[Larry Kart]

Ok, give me a list of the five worst Ethical Sins Of Quincy Jones, and show me how any of them are inconsistent with any other Highly Ambitious Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics.

And for Bonus Points, tell me how many of them were actually illegal (breach of contract, etc).

And for Final Righteous Justification, tell be why the actions of Quincy Jones, Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, are any worse than those of any other Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, apart from that Quoincy Jones was once a Talented (Enough) Jazz Musician, and Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians should not ever become Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climbers With Flexible Ethics because it is not there place to do so.

And then tell me whose place it is to be Highly Ambitious Corporate Successful Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics. It must be somebody's, because there sure are a hell of a lot of them, and nobody seems to be all THAT upset about it, even the Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians whose business ends up being run by them (if they are to have any business of any scope, that is).

What Q did was somewhat or notably different in kind than what Irving Mills, Goodman, Kenton, you name it, did. Their motives were largely a matter of money -- if their names were on the songs, they got royalties, often a whole lot of money if the song was a hit. Also, for someone like Kenton, who assiduously shaped the style of his bands, a chart in the Kenton style that was not actually his or all his but was credited to him was in effect a Kenton chart. See Ellington in this respect, of course, not in terms of arranging per se but in assembling compositions from strains and licks that came from band members.

Now, Q, as I mentioned above, had a quite distinctive arranging style, yet after a certain point (and I'm confining myself only to the period when he was writing for big bands, not his later "pop" period) very few if any charts that were said to be Q's were written by him or even SOUNDED one bit like they were written by him. This, I submit, is a different sort of thing than the ones mentioned above and implies that his motive was not primarily (or even at all) money per se (because no, or no significant, royalty income probably would be involved) but was instead some manifestation of Q's ego. That is, it was important to him that he continue to be KNOWN for doing something that he no longer was willing or chose to do, and that his way of accomplishing that goal was take away the "ego income" of his colleagues in the business.

Was this merely a matter of convenience on Q's part or something a fair bit stranger, even pathological? I don't know. But I do know that his peers regarded his behavior as strange and (depending on their own temperaments and degree of involvement) more than a fair bit ugly. Also, again, they found it different than the old Mills, Goodman, etc., type of thing, where the bandleader or manager put his name on a tune to garner a share of the royalties.

P.S. FWIW, when Q was doing things like M. Jackson's "Thriller," it probably was the case the was the "author" of those albums as much as Jackson was.

[fasstrack]

Ok, give me a list of the five worst Ethical Sins Of Quincy Jones, and show me how any of them are inconsistent with any other Highly Ambitious Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics.

And for Bonus Points, tell me how many of them were actually illegal (breach of contract, etc).

And for Final Righteous Justification, tell be why the actions of Quincy Jones, Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, are any worse than those of any other Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics, apart from that Quoincy Jones was once a Talented (Enough) Jazz Musician, and Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians should not ever become Highly Ambitious Successful Corporate Ladder Climbers With Flexible Ethics because it is not there place to do so.

And then tell me whose place it is to be Highly Ambitious Corporate Successful Ladder Climber With Flexible Ethics. It must be somebody's, because there sure are a hell of a lot of them, and nobody seems to be all THAT upset about it, even the Talented (Enough) Jazz Musicians whose business ends up being run by them (if they are to have any business of any scope, that is).

What Q did was somewhat or notably different in kind than what Irving Mills, Goodman, Kenton, you name it, did. Their motives were largely a matter of money -- if their names were on the songs, they got royalties, often a whole lot of money if the song was a hit. Also, for someone like Kenton, who assiduously shaped the style of his bands, a chart in the Kenton style that was not actually his or all his but was credited to him was in effect a Kenton chart. See Ellington in this respect, of course, not in terms of arranging per se but in assembling compositions from strains and licks that came from band members.

Now, Q, as I mentioned above, had a quite distinctive arranging style, yet after a certain point (and I'm confining myself only to the period when he was writing for big bands, not his later "pop" period) very few if any charts that were said to be Q's were written by him or even SOUNDED one bit like they were written by him. This, I submit, is a different sort of thing than the ones mentioned above and implies that his motive was not primarily (or even at all) money per se (because no, or no significant, royalty income probably would be involved) but was instead some manifestation of Q's ego. That is, it was important to him that he continue to be KNOWN for doing something that he no longer was willing or chose to do, and that his way of accomplishing that goal was take away the "ego income" of his colleagues in the business.

Was this merely a matter of convenience on Q's part or something a fair bit stranger, even pathological? I don't know. But I do know that his peers regarded his behavior as strange and (depending on their own temperaments and degree of involvement) more than a fair bit ugly. Also, again, they found it different than the old Mills, Goodman, etc., type of thing, where the bandleader or manager put his name on a tune to garner a share of the royalties.

P.S. FWIW, when Q was doing things like M. Jackson's "Thriller," it probably was the case the was the "author" of those albums as much as Jackson was.

Wow.

Ego goes with talent, also the desire for power. I met a few egotists in the music biz---to the point of being truly obnoxious. They usually fell more in line with the talented child trip than those wanting power. But I've never known any one of those capaciously egotistical guys to resort to stealing. They didn't have to, they had the goods already.

What I do see is a couple of jazz players, ay least in NY trying to control scenes and get their boys in their clique in places with the winking understanding that their own backs will be scratched. This can be obnoxious, but it still comes under the survival rubric and humans are mostly herd animals anyway.

Issues of plagiarism and credit-swiping are serious, though. I've had it happen to me and I know. More complicated is the issue of farming out work. Arrangers are afraid if they say no the contractor won't call again---and ghostwriters have to eat, too. I don't find that practice particularly egregious. Again, survival in one of the world's tougher rackets.

[.:.impossible]

<br />

<br />

<br />Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....<br /><br />

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br />

<br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in.

[fasstrack]

<br />

<br />

<br />Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....<br /><br />

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br />

<br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in.

Bravo. You said a mouthful, brother. Musicians are no different---we just think we are.

[JSngry]

Now, Q, as I mentioned above, had a quite distinctive arranging style, yet after a certain point (and I'm confining myself only to the period when he was writing for big bands, not his later "pop" period) very few if any charts that were said to be Q's were written by him or even SOUNDED one bit like they were written by him. This, I submit, is a different sort of thing than the ones mentioned above and implies that his motive was not primarily (or even at all) money per se (because no, or no significant, royalty income probably would be involved) but was instead some manifestation of Q's ego. That is, it was important to him that he continue to be KNOWN for doing something that he no longer was willing or chose to do, and that his way of accomplishing that goal was take away the "ego income" of his colleagues in the business.

Uh, yeah, to be known as a "manager who can deliver product". A very corporate thing to be, and what you do if you want to climb that ladder. The more of a "high level" view you can take and still deliver, the bigger role you get "rewarded" with. That's how an industry works!

Was this merely a matter of convenience on Q's part or something a fair bit stranger, even pathological? I don't know. But I do know that his peers regarded his behavior as strange and (depending on their own temperaments and degree of involvement) more than a fair bit ugly. Also, again, they found it different than the old Mills, Goodman, etc., type of thing, where the bandleader or manager put his name on a tune to garner a share of the royalties.

Pathology? Unless you call good, old-fashioned "me first" American corporate ambition/careerism a pathology (and if you did, I don't know if you'd be wholly wrong...), then...are you serious?

P.S. FWIW, when Q was doing things like M. Jackson's "Thriller," it probably was the case the was the "author" of those albums as much as Jackson was.

First of all, two words - Greg Phillinganes.

Second of all - if Quincy Jones had been a Well-Behaved Ethical Musical Citizen like so many other of his peers, how the fuck do you think he would ever have been in the position to produce Michael Jackson in the first place? Would not have happened. He'd have been another Lalo Schiffrin or Oliver Nelson of Pat Williams or on and on and on, some guy who was well-respected and well employed, but never somebody who was in the boardroom making decisions about how the next album by The Hottest Thing Ever was going to sound. He'd be a guy getting the calls, not the guy making them.

Quincy figured early on that he wanted to be one of those guys in that room at that time, and he became one. I don't call that pathology, I call it The Real American Way Of Doing Business. It's not what I want, it's not what most of us here want, but it's something that Quincy Jones wanted, and he figured out how to get it.

The American Dream baby, the American Fucking Dream.

Edited January 30, 2012 by JSngry

[JSngry]

<br />

<br />

<br />Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....<br /><br />

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br />

<br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in.

Bravo. You said a mouthful, brother. Musicians are no different---we just think we are.

Word.

The whole Nicholas Payton #BAM thing is dead in the water because he's only looking at who's gonna "own" the music, not who's gonna own the business. Yeah, MF, own your music all you want to, own your masters, and all this and all that, call it whatever you want to. At some point, if you want to be more than a cottage industry (of whatever size), you gonna have to do business with somebody who is not you, not like you, and not really all that concerned about you. Shake hands and come out swinging!

To expect a musician to get into the business, I mean all the way in, I mean to get into it to win, and not expect them to screw other musicians along the way, hell, that's crazy talk! Who else is there to screw, at least if you want to live?

[fasstrack]

<br />

<br />

<br />Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically).....<br /><br />

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br />

<br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in.

Bravo. You said a mouthful, brother. Musicians are no different---we just think we are.

Word.

The whole Nicholas Payton #BAM thing is dead in the water because he's only looking at who's gonna "own" the music, not who's gonna own the business. Yeah, MF, own your music all you want to, own your masters, and all this and all that, call it whatever you want to. At some point, if you want to be more than a cottage industry (of whatever size), you gonna have to do business with somebody who is not you, not like you, and not really all that concerned about you. Shake hands and come out swinging!

To expect a musician to get into the business, I mean all the way in, I mean to get into it to win, and not expect them to screw other musicians along the way, hell, that's crazy talk! Who else is there to screw, at least if you want to live?

Milton Hinton never screwed anyone. Barry Galbraith, Clark Terry. The list goes on. The business changed, and America is mostly a fickle, shallow place culturally. Those guys probably couldn't get arrested now.

Personally I really don't give a shit about Nicholas Payton's opinions. (I mean on 'jazz is dead' and such) More palaver, and there's plenty already. I like to hear the music. He's got a really nice sound. Isn't that enough? Why make yourself an oracle? Like, get over yourself, dude.

Aaahh, why bother..........

Edited January 30, 2012 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

Milton Hinton never screwed anyone. Barry Galbraith, Clark Terry.

And they became well-rewarded employees, not full-bore owners.

Nothing wrong with that at all, hell, it's more than I aspire to, I'd love to reach that level, that's for sure.

I'm just saying, there are many "opportunities" in this business, and like any other business, when you decide to cross the line into full-time management, if you want to "reach the top" and become "ownership", then...that's a whole 'nother game with a whole 'nother set of rules.

You know why there's so few people at the top in any business? Because most folks don't want to do what it takes to get there.

Thank god.

[fasstrack]

Milton Hinton never screwed anyone. Barry Galbraith, Clark Terry.

And they became well-rewarded employees, not full-bore owners.

Nothing wrong with that at all, hell, it's more than I aspire to, I'd love to reach that level, that's for sure.

I'm just saying, there are many "opportunities" in this business, and like any other business, when you decide to cross the line into full-time management, if you want to "reach the top" and become "ownership", then...that's a whole 'nother game with a whole 'nother set of rules.

You know why there's so few people at the top in any business? Because most folks don't want to do what it takes to get there.

Thank god.

I wrote a song with a very talented guy named Jimmy Norman. He was in the R&B end of it and a hell of a songwriter. The first time I went over his place he played me a ballad of his that was so good I said I thought it was as good as anything Curtis Mayfield ever wrote. He said 'that's a hell of a compliment'. It was a hell of a song. Jimmy wrote lyrics with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley and the well-known lyric to Time is On My Side.

But few people know his name (he died in November) and---more to the point---his heirs will see little royalty money. He didn't watch his back. Curtis Mayfield's heirs, OTOH, will do just fine. Curtis owned all his songs---no ifs, ands, or buts. So two artistic equals IMO, but only one watched the store. In this business you want to be like Curtis, not Jimmy. Especially now, since thieves are even more fearless and are aided by the Web.

[JSngry]

And Curtis ended up with his own label with a lot of "questionable quality" releases by other folks that were made and released...who know why? Tax breaks? Somebody's girlfriend? Somebody owed favors? Who knows? I doubt that everything that was released on Curtom was a cradle-to-birth labor of love, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure that Curtis made sure his business was being handled in that regard as well.

And yet...would Curtis Mayfield been called to produce Michael Jackson? To be the musical coordinator (or whatever it was) for Roots? Etc, etc. etc. No, those are high-level corporate executive positions based on delivering product that delivers a return by any means necessary You think that some studio head gives a shit about who's doing what, a slong as it's getting done and delivering a return? On this planet?

Point being - if I look a Quincy Jones as "one of the guys", then yeah, I think he's a creep, albeit still a pretty talented one. But if I look at him as a Driven Corporate-oid, all I can say is that he played the game pretty damn well. And if the object of that game is not to indeed play that game, then what is it, exactly?

You gonna blame a snake for being a snake? I'm not.

Edited January 31, 2012 by JSngry

[fasstrack]

You gonna blame a snake for being a snake? I'm not.

Maybe we oughtta check with Eve.....

[JSngry]

Or Al Wilson...

[Larry Kart]

Now, Q, as I mentioned above, had a quite distinctive arranging style, yet after a certain point (and I'm confining myself only to the period when he was writing for big bands, not his later "pop" period) very few if any charts that were said to be Q's were written by him or even SOUNDED one bit like they were written by him. This, I submit, is a different sort of thing than the ones mentioned above and implies that his motive was not primarily (or even at all) money per se (because no, or no significant, royalty income probably would be involved) but was instead some manifestation of Q's ego. That is, it was important to him that he continue to be KNOWN for doing something that he no longer was willing or chose to do, and that his way of accomplishing that goal was take away the "ego income" of his colleagues in the business.

Uh, yeah, to be known as a "manager who can deliver product". A very corporate thing to be, and what you do if you want to climb that ladder. The more of a "high level" view you can take and still deliver, the bigger role you get "rewarded" with. That's how an industry works!

Was this merely a matter of convenience on Q's part or something a fair bit stranger, even pathological? I don't know. But I do know that his peers regarded his behavior as strange and (depending on their own temperaments and degree of involvement) more than a fair bit ugly. Also, again, they found it different than the old Mills, Goodman, etc., type of thing, where the bandleader or manager put his name on a tune to garner a share of the royalties.

Pathology? Unless you call a pathology (and if you did, I don't know if you'd be wholly wrong...), then...are you serious?

P.S. FWIW, when Q was doing things like M. Jackson's "Thriller," it probably was the case the was the "author" of those albums as much as Jackson was.

First of all, two words - Greg Phillinganes.

Second of all - if Quincy Jones had been a Well-Behaved Ethical Musical Citizen like so many other of his peers, how the fuck do you think he would ever have been in the position to produce Michael Jackson in the first place? Would not have happened. He'd have been another Lalo Schiffrin or Oliver Nelson of Pat Williams or on and on and on, some guy who was well-respected and well employed, but never somebody who was in the boardroom making decisions about how the next album by The Hottest Thing Ever was going to sound. He'd be a guy getting the calls, not the guy making them.

Quincy figured early on that he wanted to be one of those guys in that room at that time, and he became one. I don't call that pathology, I call it The Real American Way Of Doing Business. It's not what I want, it's not what most of us here want, but it's something that Quincy Jones wanted, and he figured out how to get it.

The American Dream baby, the American Fucking Dream.

Q's behavior, as described in my previous post, had little or nothing to do with "good, old-fashioned 'me first' American corporate ambition/careerism." Q still would have gotten the bigger and better industry gigs he was going to get if the charts that weren't his that he put his name on had been credited to Billy Byers, Melba Liston, et al. Why would anyone who had the power to give Q a seat at the big-boys' table have cared one bit whether he or Byers wrote a particular chart on a damn jazz album? As you say, he still would have been "known as a 'manager who can deliver product.' A very corporate thing to be, and what you do if you want to climb that ladder. The more of a 'high level' view you can take and still deliver, the bigger role you get 'rewarded' with. That's how an industry works!"

The point, though, as I said before, is that Q wanted/needed to do what he did here not in order to advance in the industry -- which again couldn't have cared less if Q actually wrote those charts he put his name on as long as the product was delivered -- but rather (so it would seem) for personal ego reasons. The American Dream had nada to do with it, unless I suppose one needs to prove to oneself that one can be a---hole when it isn't necessary to be one before one can be a--hole when it is necessary to be one.

[JSngry]

Yeah, Mercury Records would have had Quincy Jones producer Leslie Gore based on the strength of his big band charts and him being a nice guy.

Sure.

And yeah, ego. Take the ego out the boardrooms of America (then and now) and what do you have left?

Jesse Stone?

The American Dream had nada to do with it, unless I suppose one needs to prove to oneself that one can be a---hole when it isn't necessary to be one before one can be a--hole when it is necessary to be one.

You do realize, don't you, that in most corporate cultures, your first firing of somebody is a Rite Of Passage?

[Larry Kart]

Yeah, Mercury Records would have had Quincy Jones producer Leslie Gore based on the strength of his big band charts and him being a nice guy.

Sure.

But isn't that exactly the point I made above?

[JSngry]

I was not agreeing with that point. The "sure" thing was "ironic".

I know, I know, you don't like irony. Sorry.

Still waiting on that Top 5 list of Quincy Jones' Most Egregious Sins Against Mankind, btw. So far we've got cold-blooded careerism and taking credit for other people's charts (although in the past, it's often been said here that on the albums that Byers wrote the charts for there was often some kind of "fine print" saying "arranged by Billy Byers, which to me just circles back to cold-blooded careerism),

What else we got here? Ruined lives? Illegitimate children living in poverty? Limbs severed by gangsters? Just how bad is this guy that in an industry filled (past the point of breaking, in fact) with egos and at best loose ethics that Quincy Jones comes in for this particular revulsion?

I suspect it's because he was once an Humble Musician Who Should Have Known Better.

Yeah, well, who shouldn't have known better? And yet, there they were, there they are. If Quincy Jones is Evil, then the whole Business is Evil (not the music, but The Business).

Which it essentially is, sooner or later, who are we trying to kid, but we all live with that, don't we now...

America is a Gangster nation, and if Quincy Jones is one of its Gangsters, yeah, so what? Why not? Somebody gonna be.

Believe that.

Which makes me want to ask - does the Mosaic set deal with this issue at all? Or does it even credit the arrangers correctly?

And if not, why?