They Call Me Mister Tibbs soundtrack album art

Quincy Jones was born in Chicago and raised in Seattle. At fourteen, he met sixteen-year-old Ray Charles, fresh in from Florida. The two young hotshots formed a band, playing everything from schottisches at weddings to rhythm and blues, with Charles on piano, Quincy on trumpet, and both singing. Quincy got curious about arranging. “So I asked Ray and he went over to the piano and, BANG. He showed me a couple things and suddenly it made sense. From that moment on I was permanently hooked on music. A whole new world started.” That world led Quincy Jones, at seventeen, to the Berkelee School of Music in Boston on scholarship, taking ten subjects a day and playing in strip joints at night to pay his lodging. His name got around. Oscar Pettiford asked him to come to New York and write two arrangements for an album. “I got $17.00 an arrangement, and was thrilled!” In one weekend, Quincy fell in love with the jazz side of New York. Jazz led Quincy all over the world, with Lionel Hampton’s band, later on the first U.S. State Department Tour with Dizzy Gillespie. He took a job as Musical Director for Barclay Disques in order to go to Paris and study classical composition with the venerable Nadia Boulanger. He wrote for Harry Arnold’s Swedish All Stars in Stockholm. In nearly every country in Europe, Quincy won awards as “Best New Arranger and Composer.” Back in New York, Quincy began a seven-year association with Mercury Records, becoming the first black vice president of a major record company. As successful as he proved himself in business, Quincy Jones always remained above all a musician. Through the fabric of his caree rare woven uncountable album-arranging credits, including such artists as Sammy Davis Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and nearly every name in jazz.

But how did Quincy Jones the big band jazz arranger make the leap into filmscore composing? “I always wanted to get into films,” he says. “By the time was fifteen I’d read the back off of Frank Skinner’s book on film music, Underscore. Had to buy another copy. At that age I could listen to the main titles in a movie and know what studio it came from just from the style.” Quincy’s first big film break was The Pawnbroker, a powerful New York-based movie which won an Academy Award nomination for its star, Rod Steiger. The second picture came a year later, Mirage, starring Gregory Peck. Another year passed. “I was nervous,” Quincy says. “With those long breaks between pictures, I said to myself, ‘I just don’t know if I can wait that long between meals.’” Things started rolling with Sidney Poitier’s The Slender Thread, followed by a Cary Grant film, Walk Don’t Run. Quincy Jones has not stopped running since. Nor has his music stopped contributing to successful films. Hollywood was quick to notice. Three times in three years it has honored him with Academy Award nominations-twice for movie songs (“The Eyes of Love” from Banning; Title Song from For Love of Ivy) and once for movie score (In Cold Blood). “They Call Me Mr. Tibbs” is Quincy Jones at peak performance.

The peak of success was yet to come. Nine years later, in 1979, Jones produced Off the Wall, Michael Jackson’s breakthrough as solo artist, followed by Thriller (1982), the highest-selling album of all time, and Bad (1987), which spawned a record-breaking five US number one hit singles – and those are just the collaborations with Jackson.

Quincy Jones died on November 3, 2024, at the age of 91. RIP.