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By Betsy Marrwith Kevin Marr

Photos byEric Stephenson

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038 REIGN • RESORT 2013

IT’S A BIG NIGHT IN DENVER. THE BULBS are flashing against the reflection of a step and repeat and the red carpet is crowded with the city’s bold faced-names. Gowns sparkle and diamonds all but blind as guests saunter past the cameras. But this event – this night – is different from the rest. There’s an electricity in the air that says, “this is big.”

It’s the Be Beautiful Be Yourself fashion show, which in just four short years has become the most sought-after ticket in town, attracting more than 1,200 well-heeled guests annually and rais-ing more than $3 million for its beneficiary, the Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

To understand how the event has gained so

much ground in such a short time, one needn’t look further than its roots – roots that stem from Starz Entertainment founder John Sie and his wife Anna. After their granddaughter Sophia was born with Down Syndrome, the couple took action, creating the Sie Center for Down Syndrome at The Children’s Hospital. Soon after, they looked to their A-list friends – friends with big names and even bigger hearts. Among the crew was John’s longtime pal, Mr. Quincy Jones. And since 2009, the music legend has repeatedly graced Denver with his iconic presence, all in the name of chil-dren like Sophia.

“I’ve always enjoyed having something to share,” the illustrious Jones begins. “Call it cockeyed, but I grew up in Chicago in the Depression days. I paid my dues there – we had nothing. I’ve felt what it’s like to need and I can’t let that feeling go. It’s all about people for me.”

But despite a career than spans seven decades, 27 Grammys and the highest grossing album of all time, Quincy Jones’ life hasn’t always been charmed. As the son of a carpenter who worked for what Jones calls “the most notorious OGs of all time” he saw it all. Including a move to Seattle in the middle of the night after Al Capone ran his father’s bosses out of town. But fate had a plan, one that began when the Jones family moved to the Northwest.

“My father was working in the Navy shipyards and we spent our days on base. We thought we were baby gangsters. We knew everything – when the ice cream trucks would come in, when the pies were delivered,” he begins. “We’d break into the barracks and ravage the place – food fights, you name it.”

One particular evening in those Seattle barracks changed Jones, and the face of American music, forever. “I broke into the supervisor’s office and saw a piano in the corner. I almost closed the door but something stopped me. Something – it had to have been the voice of God – told me to go back into that room,” he says with a visible chill. “There in the dark I walked over to that piano and when I touched it I knew that’s what I would do for the rest of my life. It saved me. That one mo-ment, man. It’s astounding.”

The experience isn’t something that Jones takes lightly, admitting that it’s more than rare, it’s un-heard of. “To fall in love with music at the age of eleven and know that’s what you’re going to do the rest of your life and then somehow end up having worked with greatest musical treasures of America? It’s ridiculous. You can’t plan it. I look back on it

To fully grasp the significance of Quincy Jones’ impact on music would be impossible, as even a glimpse at the names that dot his colorful resume is mind-bog-

gling. What began as a nightclub gig with best friend and fellow legend Ray Charles at the age of fourteen

has since cemented Quincy Jones as the Renaissance man of American music. Yet working with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Ella

Fitzgerald, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Aretha Frank-lin, 2Pac, BB King, Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan and Will Smith is only the begin-

ning of the his awe-inspiring story.

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and think ‘it must have been somebody else.’ It blows my mind sometimes.”

After that fateful night, the Quincy Jones we know today began to emerge. The young boy played every instrument he could get his hands on, eventually finding the trumpet. “As soon as I picked up that horn I started hearing other instru-ments in my head. So I started arranging. From the very beginning I was hooked,” he explains. “Composing is my passion. I love it.”

That love and passion saw Jones performing in nightclubs by the age of 14, right alongside life-long pal and fellow music legend Ray Charles. A few years later, he dropped out of Boston’s Berklee College of Music to go on the road with bandlead-er Lionel Hampton, which quickly led to work as a freelance arranger – Jones’ favorite and perhaps most prominent role in music. He soon settled in New York, and a career as one of the most in-demand young writers in history began to unfurl. Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dinah Washing-ton, Cannonball Adderley and his old friend Ray Charles all called on Jones to write melodies throughout the early 1950s, eventually landing him a gig as trumpeter and music director for the Dizzy Gillespie band.

By the end of the decade, Jones found his way to Paris where he studied under Nadia Bou-langer, his self-admitted mentor. “She took me there,” he explains. “She told me ‘I have to treat you differently though. Jazz musicians shack up with the music first. They court and marry it later.’ It’s true,” he laughs.

While in Paris, Jones received a phone call that he’ll never forget. It was Frank Sinatra (Frances, to Jones), asking him to bring his house band to Monaco and play for Princess Grace. Naturally, he obliged, assembling a group of 55 musicians in-cluding greats like Lucky Thompspn and Kenny Clark. For Jones, the night was epic. Six hours passed like minutes, ending with a pat on the back from Sinatra. “Great job, kid,” he said as he left.

Fast-forward four years and Jones receives an-other unforgettable phone call – this one career-changing. “I remember it like it was yesterday. ‘Hey Q (coining Jones’ now proverbial nickname)! This is Frances. I’m in Hawaii and I just heard that thing you did with Basie. It was a waltz,’ dum dada da dum” Jones begins to hum a recognizable tune. “Frances continued, telling me this was the way ‘he wanted to do it’ and asked me if I’d consider doing a record with him.”

That record ended up being the Sinatra-Basie

collaboration It Might as Well Be Swing and the fa-miliar humming Fly Me to the Moon, a song that stands as one of America’s most epic pieces of mu-sic and the first notes ever played in space as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969.

That was only the beginning for Q and Franc-es. The pair continued to work together until Sinatra’s passing in 1998, producing more than twenty albums together over the years. “He had no gray. He either loved you or forgot you. He was such a friend – I can’t even begin to tell you.” But Jones tries anyway. “When my son was born, he sent him a card that said ‘let Uncle Frank welcome you to this world with an educa-tion knowing that you’ll make it a far better place than the one we screwed up.’ Inside that card was a bond for his entire college education. That’s just the kind of man he was.”

It was relationships like this that allowed Jones to produce the 1985 single, We are the World, sell-ing more than 20 million copies and raising more than $63 million to benefit USA for Africa. The tune also garnered Jones three Grammys, but it was no small task. “You get that many stars to-gether and you are playing with fire, man,” he re-calls. “We were smart enough to record all of the solos first. Otherwise, it would have been over. Then, I had to tell 46 people, all stars, that only 21 solos would be in there. That wasn’t easy. Boy, some of them went crazy,” he laughs. But the pro-

040 REIGN • RESORT 2013

Page 38Quincy Jones recording in the studio.

Page 39, from topQuincy with Michael Jackson, accepting one of his eight 1984 Grammys for Thriller.

Frank Sinatra and Quincy Jones – the pair recorded more than 20 albums together throughout their careers.

Quincy recording with legend Sammy Davis, Jr.

This Page, Top to bottom, left to rightMr. Quincy Jones chats with Reign Magazine about his storied career and work with Denver’s Global Down Syndrome Foundation.

Jones with Anna Sie and her granddaughter Sophia, the inspiration behind the Be Beautiful Be Yourself charity fashion show.

DeOndra Dixon (sister to Jamie Foxx), Quincy Jones, Anna Sie, John Sie and Jamie Foxx in Denver to celebrate and support GDSF. Jamie portrayed Jones’ lifelong friend Ray Charles in the 2004 hit, Ray.

The sign Jones famously hung on the recording studio door when making the 1985 hit, We are the World.

Jones assembled 41 superstars to perform and record We are the World, the benefit for Ethiopia that raised $63 million and won three Grammys.

Quincy Jones and close pal Ray Charles, who first played together as teens in a Seattle nightclub.

Opposite Page, from topJones and Frank Sinatra playing with the Count Basie Orchestra in Las Vegas.

Jones recording with artist and friend Stevie Wonder.

One of the most award-winning music men of all time, Jones counts 27 Grammys amongst his accolades.

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ject proved successful, in no small part due to the sign Jones famously hung on the recording studio entrance reading ‘Leave your ego at the door.’ “We hung that sign, but they didn’t need it. These peo-ple came in willing to give everything they had to help Ethiopia and boy did they ever. It was incred-ible. Truly incredible.”

Surprisingly, We are the World was not Jones’ most ornamented work of the 80s. Three years ear-lier, he had produced Thriller – the highest gross-ing album of all time and the record that turned Michael Jackson into the King of Pop. The nine hit songs nabbed Jones a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards and remains today as the best-selling album in history at more than 65 million copies. Regardless of the album’s success, Jones maintains that he wasn’t after acclaim, he was after great songs. “You don’t think about that when you make a record. You go after songs. I learned a long time ago that this whole business is about a song and a story,” he explains. “A great song can make a terrible singer a star but the greatest singers in the world can’t save a bad song.”

It was this philosophy that helped Jones sift through 800 songs to get to the nine that eventu-ally became Thriller. But Jones didn’t stop there. “There’s a little trick that I use at the end of mak-ing an album. We take all the songs and pick the four weakest. Ray (Charles) always helped me be very honest with that. Then we try to make them the strongest. It turns the whole album on its head,” he explains. “That’s when we added Lady in My Life, wrote PYT and did Beat It and Human Nature. You mix that with tunes like Billy Jean and

Thriller – Lord have mercy! It was like lightening. You could feel it.”

The album also counts one of the greatest gui-tar solos of the century amongst its accolades with Eddie Van Halen’s legendary performance on the Beat It track. “There’s a funny story there,” Jones says with a grin. “The first five times we called (Ed-die) he didn’t believe it was me. ‘Eff off man! ’ he’d say. So we kept calling. When he realized I was legit, he couldn’t stop apologizing,” he recounts. “I remember when he came into the studio. We got two six packs of beer and two Gibsons and let him go to town. Michael was in the other room record-ing, but I stayed with Eddie. We had it nailed in no time. I told him ‘I called you because I want you to be you. Respond to this like anything else you play. Get your personality out.’ And it was perfect.”

Despite enough stories like these to fill thousands of pages, nine movies and six albums on his schedule, Jones says he has unfinished business. “I’ve always wanted to do something on Broadway and we’re go-ing to. I’m producing four shows – one on Michael Jackson’s life, one on Stevie Wonder’s life, one on my life and one I have been working on for thirty years – Afro Glam. It goes through the entire evolution of jazz and blues,” he reveals. “But you cannot rush it. It’s complex and it fascinates me.”

Jones, who turns eighty years young this year, will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in April, an honor that’s been a long-time coming. And while he acknowledges that he should be re-tiring about now, he knows himself all too well to call a wrap on his 65-year career. “I’ll never stop working. Music is who I am. It’s my heart.”

“There in the dark I walked over to that piano and when I touched it I knew that’s what I would do for the rest of my life. It saved me. That one moment, man. It’s astounding.”