European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 17, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                M us i c amp entertainment recording artist and composer Quincy Jones with the heritage award he received during the soul train music awards in los Angeles in March. He also received an award for the Best jazz album for his a Aback on the Block. A by Richard Harrington Washington Post Isten up the lives of Quincy Jones sounds like an exaggerated title for a film biography but when the two hour synopsis of Quincy Delight Jones a or s 50-year affair with music is Over it does no to seem at All strange that there is no Quot the end Quot at the end. Quincy Jones is an unfinished symphony. Certainly his is a life you  invent Start at 13, when Jones plays in a band with 15-year-old Ray Charles and fast Forward to the entertainment Empire that a producing no cd a fresh Prince of Bel air and turning old pal Jesse Jackson into a journalist producing four movies and All the while continuing to pull hits off. Then do a search for count Basie Dinah Washington Frank Sinatra dizzy Gillespie Michael Jackson roots Sarah Vaughan we Are the world Lesley Gore the pawnbroker and Jones is there connected beatific a creative Magnet seducing the Best out of everyone. Years ago Jones Laid claim to a Large Supply of hyphens gradually inserting them so that now his Job description reads something like this musician composer Arranger producer educator executive in the record television film Fields. And yet. There have been three failed marriages two aneurysms that nearly killed him a nervous breakdown troubled relations with his children. Quincy Jones is a Puzzle. Listen up dumps out the pieces and tries to put them together. Quot because people have seen me on the scene for so Long they think i was born in Buckingham Palace or something Quot Jones said during a Washington visit where a Benefit screening of listen up was a highlight of the congressional Black caucus week. Listen up was produced by longtime Friend Courtney Sale Ross and directed by Ellen Weissbrod. It is no simple biography Jones life is offered in the context of the past 50 years of african american history politics and music. Quot All of Black music is sociology Quot Jones said. A it really is. Since Back to spirituals its about  listen up is also about psychology delving honestly into Jones difficulties As a husband and Parent. There is the Joy of returning to his Birthplace in Chicago for the first time in 50 years and the gut wrenching transformation As images of poverty racism and mental illness a his Mother was in and out of institutions a flood Jones memory. Quot with All the pain involved going Back to the old neighbourhood and everything else it ended up being very cathartic Quot Jones said. Quot i started to understand the listen up Quincy Jones is Back with a new album and movie situation about my Mother because when you have nine years that Are Cloudy shadows and demons and everything else you can t really put your Finger on it. When you re 5 years old everything looks real big the size of emotions feels big. A lot of things came up that were blocked out and that a what scared me about doing  listen to his oldest daughter Jolie talking in the film about Jones the family Man Quot we just thought he had this Genius in him and everything else was second which Wasny to right for us but that show it  Jones who had no financial participation in listen up said his five children saw the finished film just a few Days before the Benefit and Quot i think they were shocked about a lot of stuff things in be never talked to them  they Hadnot understood the poverty their father was born into or the racism he endured. Quot i think it pulled us  even As a child Jones embraced the masters of jazz watching learning absorbing their knowledge and experience developing into a promising trumpeter and establishing himself As a Fine Arranger while still in his teens. Eventually he would arrange for play in and even Lead big bands. He became the first Black vice president at a White owned record company Mercury where he turned Lesley Gore into a Star and soon after moved to Hollywood and became the first Black composer accepted by the musical establishment infusing both film scores and television themes with jazz and soul elements they a been lacking. A i fought my Way out of All that stuff Quot he said of a career that has paid no attention to an artists race age or gender. Quot i hate categories. That a somebody telling you that you can to do anything else. Well you fight your Way out of  in the last decade Jones toughest Battles have often been with Success. For instance in 1980 he released the dude. Like most of Jones album projects it featured a Host of Talent performing with Jones in the directors chair it earned 12 grammy nominations and won five awards. But it took Jones almost a decade to make his next album the aptly titled Back on the Block. Not that he Wasny to Busy there were hit albums for Donna summer Frank Sinatra James Ingram and Michael Jackson whose thriller album became the bestselling up of All time. Jones also put together the biggest Selling single of All time a the All Star choir on we Are the world and produced the film version of Alice Walker s the color purple. Just As the dude came out Jones signed a Deal with Warner Bros. Records establishing his own Label West. No one least of All Warner Bros., could have known it would take so Long to get a Quincy Jones record out of Quincy Jones. Back on the Block became a Celebration of african american culture embracing african roots and brazilian extensions connecting jazz legends like Ella Fitzgerald Sarah Vaughan Clark Terry and Billy Eckstine with ramp a singers like Al b. Sure and James Ingram gospel singers take 6 and rappers ice to big daddy Kane and Kool Moe Dee. Sometimes seemingly diverse artists ended up on the same song. Quot i just went with the impulse Quot Jones explained. Quot you be what happens happen and go with it and that a really How i like to work. All my life i d wanted to hear Miles Davis and dizzy together a they re my biggest influences a and so i just did  Jones won t venture As to How Long fans will have to wait for another album but the Mothballs remain on the evolution of Black music a project for which he a been gathering material for decades. There a a Bio film about the Black russian poet Alexander Pushkin a co production with soviet filmmakers. There Are four other films on the drawing Board including one about the kind of bus Tours Jones and other jazz musicians made in the South in the �?T40s and 50s, when racism was blatant and where Quot the band bus was the Center of  there a another mini series no details and eventually Jones will Settle Down to write his autobiography with Amiri Baraka. There is already a Book version of listen up a sort of syllabus that includes additional commentary by Jones and a wealth of historical pictures. What this does no to suggest is that Quincy Jones is slipping into the past tense. Quot if there a anything you learn from the film Quot said producer Ross Quot its that he s not going to slow  after All the line Between ambition and achievement traced in listen up is not cluttered with rest stops. Page 16 a a a the stars and stripes wednesday october 17,1990