Part 1 - "Quincy Jones - A Morning Light" by Raymond Horricks

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“I have to consider the individual personalities of the guys I'm writing for; but I still like to have the feeling of an improvisation in the writing. Form alone is not enough in jazz writing. Ellington has always impressed me with the improvised feeling he writes into his work.

"The only way to write this feeling into a score is to let the head and the heart work together. If the head works alone then the score usually sounds contrived, even with the best craftsmanship. If the heart works with the head, though, the score becomes more of a living thing. All your feelings are able to flow freely. All your thoughts too. In effect, you tell the truth about yourself, and the truth doesn't need to hurt. Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself."

- Quincy Jones

“Usually, the ideas for a melody come to him suddenly, at the precise moment when he least expects them. He prefers this: a free and not a forced imagination. "Ideas are unusual in that they never come when you sit down and try to have them," he says. "They come when you're walking down the street, or drinking a cup of coffee, and then you have to reach for a newspaper or a menu card to note them down." But with the selection from these ideas, and the shaping of them, he prefers to take his time. Often he will spend six months thinking about a melody before he is satisfied with it.” 

- Quincy Jones

"Quincy Jones - A Morning Light" is one of 15 essays which can be found in Raymond Horricks, These Jazzmen of Our Times, which was published in 1960 by the London Jazz Book Club by arrangement with Victor Gollancz. Joining Mr. Horricks as guest authors are Alun Morgan, Max Harrison, Charles Fox, Nat Hentoff, Benny Green and Martin Williams.

From this compilation, we’ve previously posted Gil Evans’ approach to compositional texture and orchestral sonority by Charles Fox which you can locate by going here.

Written in 1959, Quincy affectionately called “Q” by those who know him is still with us as of this feature which will be posted in four parts beginning on November 3, 2021.

As is the case with all of the writings in this compendium, Mr. Horricks' is literary criticism in which he puts forth what he thinks is worthwhile in Quincy’s work while also taking him to task by what he perceives as “Q’s” shortcomings.

Given it’s vantage point in the late 1950s, this “take” on Quincy’s abilities is largely unaware of how he would go forward to make his mark in commercial music primarily outside the Jazz World and develop into one of the most successful music producers in the history of the business. But that's obviously a story for another time. 

“QUINCY JONES is a compact, finely featured young man, almost an eagle, with bright eyes, a determined mouth, and quick, animated gestures. His talk about music, once started, is a fast flow, touching on many shores, and all the time carrying with it the remarkable flotsam and jetsam of his experience. However, as with other odysseys, there is a single determining idea behind this and Quincy always returns to it.

"I'm sure," he says, "that jazz will not be furthered by long analytical speeches of accomplishment. It will always be sparked by emotion, warmth, heart and a certain intellectual content that is not overdone. Without emotional and rhythmic feeling, jazz is not jazz. Borrowing classical techniques to further this feeling is progressing jazz, but trying to put it on the same level as these techniques is retarding it. There has been a tendency in America of late to stress classical airs in many of the jazz works. 

In doing this, a lot of musicians have missed the message altogether. In short, when we stop swinging, we're competing with Ravel, Bartok, Stravinsky and a lot of other brilliant musicians on their own ground . . . musicians who easily outdo us there. Jazz must develop its own language."

In Quincy Jones' own jazz works, this is not only an ideal but a reality. He is an arranger and composer. He is also a pianist, and at one time or another has played all the brass instruments, but he doesn't let this divert him from what he single-mindedly considers his raison d'etre. Although, for instance, he has played in several of the greatest trumpet sections in jazz, he doesn't look back on this experience as a trumpeter usually does (that is, thinking of the extra command and confidence it gave to his personal playing); instead, he looks back on it for the extra insight it gave him into the ways of brass players — how they think, how they feel, how they are best utilized in written passages.

As a result, of course, he writes particularly well for brass, Wendell Culley, a trumpeter who has worked with many big bands, and recently Count Basie's, singles out Quincy from all the arrangers he has known for this. "Quincy is a young man," he says, "but he has such a vivid imagination that he can scare you with his brass writing at times. And yet, when you get down to playing it, you find he's written things which appeal to the trumpeter. It's because he plays the instrument himself and fully understands the physical problems of it. Some writers, who only know the theory side of the trumpet, will demand that you play vicious shock notes all the time and that can soon wear your lip out. Quincy doesn't do it that way. He actually notates a passage as the trumpets would naturally feel it."

Always, then, Quincy's understanding of instruments is the servant of his arranging and composing. "The orchestra is the most fascinating instrument I've played," he says. "It has more dimensions than a solo instrument."

On the other hand, he has approached the orchestra with something of the head-and-heart wisdom of the great users of solo instruments in jazz: of Armstrong, of Hawkins, of Parker.

"I like to look on the orchestra as my personal instrument, the same as the soloist looks on his, and I like to improvise with it," he explains. "I like it to describe my feelings, my moods and my thoughts, so that writing becomes the same as improvising a solo for me. Of course, I have to consider form too, even more than the soloist does; also, I have to consider the individual personalities of the guys I'm writing for; but I still like to have the feeling of an improvisation in the writing. Form alone is not enough in jazz writing. Ellington has always impressed me with the improvised feeling he writes into his work.

"The only way to write this feeling into a score is to let the head and the heart work together. If the head works alone then the score usually sounds contrived, even with the best craftsmanship. If the heart works with the head, though, the score becomes more of a living thing. All your feelings are able to flow freely. All your thoughts too. In effect, you tell the truth about yourself, and the truth doesn't need to hurt. Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself."

In Quincy's writing, where intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, there is a thoroughly emotional verve; a verve which erupts into existence as soon as the musicians play over their parts and which recalls the spontaneous combustion of a big band 'head' arrangement at its best (and, after all, what is a 'head' arrangement if it isn't a suddenly desired and conceived ensemble improvising?). It is, of course, the attacking attitude in his scores which most clearly expresses this verve. The attacking attitude in the ensemble passages, which are designed to speak in a very definite way, and in the underlying pulsation, which is always forceful and freely flowing without ever careering along like some clumsy coach out of control. "He writes with such a natural swing," the Swedish altoist Arne Domnerus has said, "that it seems like his compositions more or less play themselves."

However, the actual content in his scores also expresses this verve. As an orchestrator he is invariably direct. He notates his passages with an orderliness and a sense of proportion that is diametrically opposed to the trundling masses of Bill Russo's writings. Of this he is aware; it is an affair of the head, and, as John Steinbeck says, "It is good to know what you are doing." At the same time, though, he notates his passages with an instinctive strength, enough to encourage the ensemble to shout out energetically, and with an instinctive timing, enough to encourage it to swing without inhibition. Of this he is again aware; but it is an affair of the heart, and he knows only of its existence and of its effect. "I prefer not to ask too many questions when it's an affair of the heart," he replies to questions about this instinctive strength and swing. "It's there, and I'm grateful it's there. I prefer not to ask why or when it came to be there."

Of the head's exclusive affairs he is more consciously aware. This is because he has to select from his thoughts, and then shape and stabilize them on paper. "There are the parts of jazz writing that are only arrived at as a result of knowledge," he says. "The construction and the continuity of a work. Then the orchestrating of it. In orchestrating a work, if I use a voicing that hasn't been used before, or a texture, it's a result of musical knowledge. And composing the work itself is a result of musical knowledge used with imagination."

Quincy is richly endowed with the knowledge and imagination he mentions. Remarkably so for a young man, although as the English arranger Eddie Harvey points out, "It is inevitable that at some point after Ellington there should come along another young man who, in writing jazz, has intense passion and at the same time facility and originality in the right amounts to further the cause of the orchestra in jazz, and Quincy seems to be that man."

He is a fine orchestrator, after Gil Evans perhaps the finest in modern jazz. His knowledge of the orchestra, and of its possible subdivisions, is full and far-reaching and allows him to write with an easy exactness (even when he is clearing an area of 'new ground' for cultivation). It is important, this exactness, in two essential ways: first, in telling the truth, about his thoughts, and about his attitudes; second, in taking advantage of the many possibilities in big band writing (the textures, the techniques, and so on). Also, as in Gil Evans' orchestrations, it is easily accommodated in his writing's attack. He can write a brilliantly detailed score that appears to the casual listener to have a simple spontaneity because it is easily accommodated in an excitingly emotional attack. As illustrations of this, I have only to mention the passages, so lightly but firmly ensembled, that attend Dizzy's I Can't Get Started solo; or the small, trumpet-led ensemble, set against the larger ensemble, that exposes the theme of Jessica's Day; or the few fearless outbursts of brass at the close of Night In Tunisia — all parts of Dizzy Gillespie's "World Statesman" LP recorded for Verve.

His orchestrating complements his composing. For, unlike Ellington, he doesn't consider orchestration as a part of the composition, although he considers composition vital to orchestration. He prefers to compose, and then to orchestrate; to have the melody and its harmonization settled, and then think about portraying them with the orchestra. Moreover, he orchestrates only to state and enhance the composition. Orchestration for its own sake doesn't interest him. He uses instrumentation and sound only if they are right for the composition; never for a merely pleasing effect. In view of this, it is not surprising that as a composer Quincy is essentially a melodist. Unlike Gigi Gryce, his contemporary, he hasn't concerned himself with the problems of advancing form in jazz; in fact, when composing blues and ballads, he appears quite content to work within their traditional forms. But he approaches the making of a melody with two well-defined aims.

The first, and not surprisingly, is that it must have a strong intrinsic beauty and substance — allowing it to exist as the better popular song occasionally does, facing a series of widely varied interpretations without losing its own identifiable character. The second is that it must have suppleness, and at the same time harmonic completeness; for without these combined qualities it cannot act as a life-force in jazz, inspiring an orchestra and its soloists.

Quincy selects from a rich imagination to realize these aims. It is a careful selection, though, applying an order and logic to the natural profusion of the imagination. Although a fast orchestrator, Quincy is a deliberately slower composer. Usually, the ideas for a melody come to him suddenly, at the precise moment when he least expects them. He prefers this: a free and not a forced imagination. "Ideas are unusual in that they never come when you sit down and try to have them," he says. "They come when you're walking down the street, or drinking a cup of coffee, and then you have to reach for a newspaper or a menu card to note them down." But with the selection from these ideas, and the shaping of them, he prefers to take his time. Often he will spend six months thinking about a melody before he is satisfied with it. "I have to think about the making of the composition from these ideas, shaping the melody and the chord changes that go with it," he explains. "Although the ideas for the melody may already be strong, I still have to portray them at their best, and I shape them in many different ways before I finalize them in one." At the end of this period of incubation, however, a melody of significance usually emerges. Evening In Paris and three or four other themes he has written are already classics of their kind.

Another reason perhaps for taking his time is the actual length of his melodic lines. Many jazz composers are satisfied with short, staccato-type lines, which they repeat several times with only slight alterations to make the main 8-bar phrase of a theme. Quincy's melodic lines are longer, usually requiring the entire 8-bar phrase to unfold, and they have a more flowing quality. One of his ballads, The Midnight Sun Never Sets (written in 1958, and first recorded by Arne Domnerus with a sixteen-piece Swedish orchestra), portrays this ideally; its lines are beautifully appointed, slowly and sensitively taking shape in an entirely legato way.

When he uses the 32-bar song structure, Quincy achieves a flowing quality throughout his composition, for the melody of the middle 8-bar phrase is always closely related to that of the main 8 and carefully linked to it, thereby attributing a strong continuity to the whole chorus, Stockholm Sweetnin’ (written in 1953, and first recorded by Clifford Brown, again in Sweden) portrays this; it has a smooth and uninterrupted melodic development, the key change for the middle 8 notwithstanding, and from the opening to it's deliberately effected climax in the last 4 bars is a continual tribute to the composer's will-power and reasoning.

A further point about Quincy as a melodist concerns his lyricism. Although his strong sense of melodic continuity emphasizes this, it in no way exaggerates it. For his lyricism, far from being skillful artifice, is a deep and powerful force within him. It affects all his work (even the more animated blues, where as artifice it could never be applied). It contributes immensely to the long and flowing melodic lines he writes, mellowing and enriching their shape, and adding a sense of almost joyous well-being to their statement. And yet, at the same time it is a firm lyricism, unaffected by the overt sentimentality which spoils the work of many popular songwriters. Such lyricism is rare in jazz. A handful of soloists have it (Miles Davis and Milt Jackson in particular) but fewer composers, and Quincy's already melodically distinctive work is made even more so because of it.

It isn't easy to communicate the huge suggestiveness of a spirit like Quincy Jones' in the space of a single essay. As John Cowper Powys has said about analysing an artist, "There are certain great men who make their critics feel even as children, who picking up stray wreckage and broken shells from the edge of the sea waves, return home to show their companions 'what the sea is like'."[From Visions and Revisions (Macdonald, London, 1955)]. Nor is it easy in Quincy's case because, although his greatness has been revealed, he is still a young man with perhaps three-quarters of his works still to be written. But a little can be done, if only as a modest 'advice to the reader', and I have collected a little "from the edge of the sea waves" towards this end.

One other aspect of his arranging and composing I  have to collect. Briefly here, because it has to be collected again in discussing his "This Is How I Feel About Jazz" LP later on. This is his belief that jazz music need not go outside its own resources in order to develop interestingly. Many musicians disagree with him. They believe jazz needs to integrate with European music. For in jazz, as in life, there are those who develop the existing order and there are those who despair of developing it. Quincy is on the side of the former. The natural resources of jazz, he believes, are so vast and so deep that there is little likelihood of their being exhausted. "A natural growth, and from the natural resources," he says. "It's the only way to progress in jazz. It's the only way anyone ever has progressed in jazz. It can't exist on other resources. And why should it need to, after its own have given it fifty years of creative development and the prospect of many more to come? I'm for a natural growth. I'll use all I know in music to assist it, but at the same time it has to use its own resources."