The Cover Uncovered: Quincy Jones’ farmyard inspiration for ‘The Dude’
Few figures within the American music industry are as accomplished as Quincy Jones. The songwriter, composer, producer, and arranger has won 28 Grammy Awards within a career spanning over seven decades. However, it is his 1981 studio album The Dude that stands out as one of his greatest efforts within his illustrious discography.
Rising to fame within the world of jazz in the 1950s, Quincy Jones eventually found fame as a writer of film scores and pop tracks. A truly pioneering figure within American music, Jones worked with a variety of legendary artists, from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra. By the time the 1980s rolled around, the composer had already boasted one of the most impressive careers the industry had ever seen. In addition to his extra-curricular work as the president of Mercury Records and founder of Qwest Productions – with which he produced the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller – Quincy managed to find time to record The Dude in early 1981.
A stunning exploration of pop and R&B, with a sound that harks back to his roots within jazz, The Dude was an incredibly successful effort by Jones. Containing the top 20 hit ‘Ai No Corrida’, the album witnessed a great deal of commercial success and won Jones three Grammy Awards for ‘Best Instrumental Arrangement’, ‘Best R&B Performance’, and ‘Best Instrumental Arrangement’.
Almost as iconic as the album itself, the album cover for The Dude features a strange figure appearing to be in outer space, as endearingly dated neon graphics swirl behind him. According to Quincy, the cover, along with the album’s contents, came from the unlikely setting of a South African farm.
The Shona sculpture scene hails from Zimbabwe, with roots going back hundreds of years, but rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Characterised by unique, often surrealist, stone sculptures, the movement succeeded both in its homeland and Europe. This is where The Dude comes in, as a failing farm in South Africa had its workers taught by one of the movement’s premier sculptors, Fanizani Akuda, how to create artwork in order to make a living. From this farm came the sculpture of The Dude.
Sharing the story behind the album’s cover on social media, Quincy revealed that he had seen the sculpture that appears on the front of The Dude at a museum. “I’m tellin’ ya…it kept saying, “my brother take me home!” So I bought it right then and there,” the songwriter shared. For Quincy, the sculpture was much more than a fine piece of artwork to display within his mansion; it was a genuine source of inspiration, “It had an attitude like I’d never seen before…I mean, just look at that puffed out lip, arched back, and cane!!”
It was the attitude of the sculpture that inspired Quincy to create the masterpiece that is The Dude. “It might sound crazy,” he writes, “But this dude spiritually spoke to me and I’m glad it did or else that album would’ve never been made!” So, although that South African farmyard might have failed to turn a profit, its artistic endeavours were certainly not in vain.
