How Quincy Jones owned the 1980s

Quincy Jones’s enormous success in the 1980s was the culmination of an extraordinary career that would continue for many more decades. A classically trained musician who grew up in Seattle, Washington, he was a gospel singer at age 12, a jazz arranger in New York City in his early 20s, and musical director of Barclay Records in France soon after. In the 1960s he worked with Ray Charles, oversaw the artists-and-repertoire department at Mercury Records, and began his long career as a composer for film and television. In the 1970s he produced hits for Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan. It was his collaboration with Michael Jackson in Los Angeles in 1979, however, that drew together all those strands and brought Jones international acclaim.

Working with English songwriter Rod Temperton, Jones created a new, sophisticated, dance-based sound for Jackson, who at that point in his career was little more than a former child star. Spending lavishly and recording in a variety of Los Angeles studios, Jones combined what he called “ear candy” (odd instruments playing half-buried melody lines) with rhythms that were both elastic and simple enough to convince almost anyone they could dance. With three blockbuster albums—Off the Wall (1979); Thriller (1982), the best-selling album of all time; and Bad (1987)—Jones and Jackson charted a route from innovation through overwhelming success to what some saw as self-parody.

Jones became the consummate African American maestro of 1980s Los Angeles. Moreover, he established the Black music magazine Vibe, became a television producer, organized and produced the “We Are the World” (1985) single to raise money for hunger relief in Africa, and founded the Qwest label, which had hits not only with the sophisticated adult rhythm and blues of Patti Austin and James Ingram but also with a remixed version of New Order’s classic 12-inch (long-playing) dance single “Blue Monday,” which became the best-selling 12-inch single of all time.