Gula Matari - Quincy Jones (1970)
Ideated from: a Black History Month reminder that black artists largely built the modern world of music
Quincy Jones was a jazz trumpeter. That’s a true statment, but nowhere near the whole story. From a very young age, he was a trumpeter but also an arranger and music director for some of the biggest names in 50s jazz.
From there, he started to branch out and never stopped, composing jazz-but-not-really-jazz orchestral film music, arranging pop songs, recording his own records with a wide cast of players, and producing and arranging for a few people you might have heard of: Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Miles Davis.
He produced film and television, including The Color Purple–which he also scored–and Fresh Prince of Bel Aire. He got a few of his friends together to do a charity single called We Are The World. He was the producer and musical factotum who helped Michael Jackson create Thriller and Bad, two of the most successful records in history.
You couldn’t possibly sum up everything the man has done with a single record, but this one has a little of each of the things he was very good at. It starts with a soulful R&B arrangement of Bridge Over Troubled Water. Then we get a 13 minute instrumental piece inspired by African and African-American musical traitions. It’s dramatic, emotional, and worth every second. The second side is some of the loose, head-bobbing jazz that originally made him famous, with an all-star cast of players.
