The bassist Quincy Jones refused to work without
Quincy Jones would have likely never achieved the legendary status he did were it not for jazz. But he probably also wouldn’t have been able to reach the level of creative intuition he sought after were it not for one of the biggest heroes in bass.
Through learning the ins and outs of emotional intellect through jazz alongside pioneers like Dizzy Gillespie and Harold Arlen, Jones eventually became a major industry monolith. It all started when he landed the job as Vice President of Mercury Records, becoming one of the first Black people in America to have a senior position in the American recording industry.
But it wasn’t until he started working on film scores that he cemented his place as one of the most driven, hardheaded creatives in the entire industry, working from the heart to create music that brought stories to life with only the best in the business. With names like Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra under his belt, Jones earned his name based on gut instinct, seeing magic in others and knowing exactly where to press the right buttons.
This is also likely why, when he first started working with Carol Kaye, it was like a light went off. As one of the biggest heroes in music and one of the most prolific bassists in history, Kaye’s collaboration with Jones seemed inevitable from the get-go, a marriage made in heaven where innovation couldn’t just thrive but become something truly inventive, which is exactly what Kaye brought to everything she did, particularly with Jones.
According to Kaye, Jones was enamoured from the off. “Quincy Jones said, ‘Carol, I won’t do a movie without you,'” she told Ernie Ball. “I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, you get the sounds and you can invent lines if I need you to do that.’ When I taught bass, most players came to me to do the filmwork because I took their jobs from them. I was glad to teach them! I taught them the right skills.”
She also explained how most people didn’t know at the time that most of Hollywood used “a pick on flatwood strings” and that there were “bass players who rip people to death for playing with a pick”, but that these people also didn’t understand the history and how “that was the sound” of the 1960s. And it was a sound that was still good, where exercising the right nuances was the difference between one thing and another: “If you turn the knob, you’ve got Motown on one end and Boots on the other end. You have to play it right.”
Clearly, the ideal camaraderie for Jones, Kaye’s expertise was completely unmatched, which is also something she saw in her fellow musical partner. They eventually came together on projects regularly, and she even once said he “wrote some of the most beautiful themes I’ve ever heard in my life”. She also likely satisfied that deep-seated desire he had to make music that transcended everything anyone ever knew about art, bridging the gap between emotion and intuition in a way that exceeded expectation.
For Jones, therefore, Kaye wasn’t just a collaborator but someone else who truly understood the magic of music. And like Jones, Kaye also had the quiet confidence to know it, too. Not only was she intensely schooled in the art, she also had the innate push to try things out and be a true inventor, even when everybody seemed to be occupied elsewhere with tried and tested sensibilities.
