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Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Photo: Rebecca Sapp/Stringer via Getty Images

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How Quincy Jones Architected Black Music mogul-moment-how-quincy-jones-architected-black-music

Mogul Moment: How Quincy Jones Became An Architect Of Black Music

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In his work, which spans seven decades and counting in the business, Quincy Jones has proved time and time again that Black music is America's music
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Mar 4, 2021 - 3:51 pm

Ahead of Quincy Jones' appearance at the Inaugural Black Music Collective GRAMMY Week Celebration during GRAMMY Week 2021, GRAMMY.com explores how the producer, composer and arranger built a launchpad for some of the most revolutionary voices in Black American music.

Quincy Jones has the stories of a townful of people put together. He's eaten rats to survive, attended his own funeral and claims to know who actually shot JFK. He can show you a scar on his temple where an icepick nailed him—and another on his hand thanks to a switchblade. In between, he's helped Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, George Benson, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer and scores of others make some of the most beloved music of the 20th century.

All those artists happen to be Black, and Jones understands profoundly their work's vitality to the American fabric. Between working on classic films like 1966's Walk, Don't Run, 1967's In The Heat of the Night and 1969's The Italian Job; producing bubblegum hits like Lesley Gore's "It's My Party"; and co-producing the celebrity smorgasbord "We Are The World," Jones has spearheaded quintessential Black American albums like Ella Fitzgerald’s and Count Basie’s Ella and Basie, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and George Benson’s Give Me the Night.

In his work, which spans seven decades and counting in the business, Jones has proved time and time again that Black music is America's music. For his trouble, he's collected 28 GRAMMY Awards, 80 nominations and a GRAMMY Legend Award. Ahead of his appearance next at the Inaugural Black Music Collective Event, a virtual event focused on amplifying Black voices, during GRAMMY Week 2021, it's worth noting how Jones helped architect Black music throughout his career.

"I believe that a hundred years from now when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among [other] elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens," Jones told NPR's “Fresh Air” in 2001. (He worked or hobnobbed with all five of those Black geniuses.) "I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music—gospel, blues, jazz and R&B—is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you."

That elevation of Black expression is the headline of Jones' life and work. Here's how it became that way.

For Quincy Jones, Music Changed Everything

On March 14, 1933, Jones was born on the wrong side of town during the worst economic downturn in history. "I wasn't born in Bel Air, man. I'm from the South Side of Chicago," he told Dr. Dre in the 2018 Netflix documentary Quincy, citing an area with a history of violence and poverty. "In the '30s, man, during the Depression, damn, you kidding? We lost my mother when I was seven, and my brother and I, we were like street rats." At first, he didn’t have musical dreams, but those of a life of crime: "I wanted to be a gangster 'til I was 11. You want to be what you see, and that's all we ever saw."

With his mother was in and out of mental institutions, Jones and his brother Lloyd stayed at his grandmother's—a former slave’s—house without electricity or running water. According to his 2001 autobiography Q, they were so impoverished that she fed the boys "mustard greens, okra, possum, chickens and rats, and me and Lloyd ate them all."

Jones’ mother, who often sang religious songs, introduced a young Jones to music. "When I was five or six, back in Chicago, there was this lady named Lucy Jackson who used to play stride piano in the apartment next door, and I listened to her all the time right through the walls," Jones told PBS in 2005. Plus, a next-door neighbor, Lucy Jackson, played stride piano next door; Jones kept an ear to the wall.

When Jones was 10, the family moved to Bremerton, Washington. In his early teens, they relocated to Seattle, where Jones caught word of a skinny, Black 16-year-old kid in town with frightening musical talent. "[He] played his ass off. He played piano and sang like Nat 'King' Cole and Charles Brown," Jones remembered in Q. "He said his name was Ray Charles, and it was love at first instinct for both of us."

Despite Charles' blindness, he was utterly self-reliant, renting an apartment, going steady with a girlfriend and shopping, cooking and laundering for himself. His independence and creativity were galvanizing to Jones, illuminating a path he would follow for the rest of his life.

"Ray was a role model at a time when I had few. He understood the world in ways I didn't," Jones wrote in Q. "He'd say, 'Every music has its own soul, Quincy. It doesn't matter what style it is, be true to it.' He refused to put limits on himself."

Soon after, Jones enrolled at Garfield High School, where he honed his craft as a trumpeter and arranger. He earned a scholarship at Seattle University, transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston, traveled with the future GRAMMY Special Merit Award Honoree Lionel Hampton's band at age 20. From there, he was off to the races.

Of course, Charles went on to live up to his maxim of artistic limitlessness, cross-pollinating R&B, soul, blues, gospel, jazz, and even country music, on 1962's Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. And Jones remained an integral part of his story, writing and arranging "The Ray" for 1957's The Great Ray Charles. Heavy, bluesy and swinging, the tune telegraphs Jones' admiration for The Genius.

Jones Alters Rock ‘N’ Roll

Fast-forward five years: Jones was in the midst of a fruitful stint as a writer and arranger for the Count Basie Orchestra, on albums like 1959's Basie One More Time and 1960's String Along With Basie. 

Meanwhile, over in rock 'n' roll, an extinction event had hit. Buddy Holly was dead, Chuck Berry was in prison, Jerry Lee Lewis was in the hot seat for a marriage scandal, and a post-service Elvis Presley was flailing from one lightweight flick to the next. Little Richard, for his part, had become born again and forsaken rock 'n' roll, pivoting to Jesus with 1960's austere Pray Along With Little Richard.

Understanding that his earlier, cat-in-heat hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally" had a lot in common with gospel music, Jones lit a fire under Richard by way of 1962's The King of the Gospel Singers, a project he joined via Richard’s old producer Bumps Blackwell. 

Over Jones’ revved-up arrangements, Richard sounded less self-righteous and more tapped into the wild, frenzied heart of holy devotion.

Deeper Into Jazz…

Ever since he was a kid, Jones had been a fan of bebop, a harmonically advanced, blisteringly fast form of small-group jazz. The virtuosic trumpeter, composer and educator Dizzy Gillespie was one of the style's principal architects.

Come 1963, and Jones would produce his hero's excellent 1963 album New Wave!. The album braids American mainstays (W.C. Handy's "Careless Love") with bossa nova standards (Antônio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba"). As a whole, it provides as effective a gateway as any into Gillespie's innovations in the Afro-Cuban sphere.

...And Soul & Pop

For the rest of the decade, Jones arranged for Black vocal dynamos Shirley Horn, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. 

In 1973, Jones produced Aretha Franklin's Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), which is neither as muscular as her peak work nor as luxurious as '80s albums like Jump To It. Regardless, that in-betweenness—and the strength of its material—makes Hey Now Hey an intriguing look at the Queen of Soul in a state of transition.

At the time, two members of Jones' band were George "Lightnin' Licks" and Louis E. "Thunder Thumbs" Johnson, known as The Brothers Johnson. Jones went on to produce four successful albums for the brothers. Three singles in particular—1976's "I'll Be Good to You," 1977's Shuggie Otis cover "Strawberry Letter 23" and 1980's "Stomp!"—all topped the Hot R&B Charts and remained classic examples of Jones’ contributions to Black music.

Enter Michael Jackson

Around this time, Jones was highly active in film. While working as a music supervisor and producer on 1978's The Wiz, a film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name, he was impressed by the precocious co-star Michael Jackson, who had already made waves in The Jackson 5.

After filming wrapped, Jackson told his label, Epic Records, and managers, Freddie DeMann and Ron Weisner, that he wanted Jones to produce for him.

"[T]his was 1977 and disco reigned supreme," Jones wrote in Q. "The word was, 'Quincy Jones is too jazzy and has only produced dance hits with The Brothers Johnson.' When Jackson approached Jones about this, he laid the young singer's anxieties to rest: "If it's meant for us to work together, God will make it happen. Don't worry about it." (In the meantime, Jones produced 1979's funk-soul gem Masterjam by Rufus and Chaka Khan.)

The music the pair made together may prove the existence of a higher power: Jones produced 1979's Off The Wall, 1982's Thriller and 1987's Bad.

"[W]orking with Quincy was such a wonderful thing," Jackson told Ebony in 2007, 25 years after Thriller’s release. "He lets you experiment, do your thing, and he's genius enough to stay out of the way of the music, and if there's an element to be added, he'll add it."

By now, all three albums have been codified into pop culture. "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" could compel a corpse to cut a rug, everyone who's watched TV has seen the "Thriller" video, and the exuberant "The Way You Make Me Feel" can still lift one out of a bedridden depression. Together, the three albums won more than a dozen GRAMMYs and were nominated for a pile of others.

Give Him The Night

While Jackson ascended in the pop world, the jazz guitar great George Benson began singing more and hewing more commercial, with Tommy LiPuma-helmed albums like 1976's Breezin', 1977's In Flight and 1979's Livin' Inside Your Love. In 1980, Jones partnered with Warner Bros. to form Qwest, a subsidiary label that gave him extraordinary creative freedom.

"Much to my luck, he still wanted to make a George Benson record," Benson said in 2014's Benson: The Autobiography. "Let me ask you this: Do you want to go for the throat?" Jones asked Benson. "Quincy, let's go for the throat, baby," he responded. "Let's go for the throat."

The result was 1980's career-making Give Me The Night, which garnered three GRAMMYs at the ceremony that year: Best Jazz Performance, Male for "Moody's Mood"; Best R&B Instrumental Performance for "Off Broadway"; and Best R&B Performance, Male for the title track.

Jones has been wildly active ever since. In 1993, he convinced Miles Davis to take a rare look back at his modal-jazz years with Miles and Quincy Live at Montreaux, recorded mere months before Davis's death. In the ensuing decades, he's produced concerts and TV, given no-holds-barred interviews, and soaked up his stature as a titan in the music industry.

In 2018, when Vulture asked Jones if he could snap his fingers and fix one problem in the country, one word flashed in his mind. "Racism," he responded. "I’ve been watching it a long time—the ’30s to now. We’ve come a long way but we’ve got a long way to go. The South has always been fucked up, but you know where you stand. The racism in the North is disguised. You never know where you stand.

"People are fighting it," he added, with Charlottesville in the immediate rearview. "God is pushing the bad in our face to make people fight back."

America may remain in the thick of a racial reckoning, but all the while, Jones has tirelessly facilitated and championed artists of color. He’s seemingly lived a hundred lifetimes and been a force for good in numberless ways. 

But when he brought the best out of his fellow Black American visionaries, that’s when he really went for the throat.

Recording Academy Announces Official GRAMMY Week 2021 Events

Chaka Khan performs at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game

Chaka Khan performs at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game

Photo: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

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Chaka Khan Performs At The 2020 NBA All-Star Game watch-chaka-khan-sing-national-anthem-2020-nba-all-star-game

Watch Chaka Khan Sing The National Anthem At The 2020 NBA All-Star Game

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The 10-time GRAMMY winner nodded to her native Chicago, where this year's event is being hosted, and NBA legend Michael Jordan
John Ochoa
GRAMMYs
Feb 16, 2020 - 6:44 pm

R&B and soul icon Chaka Khan opened the 2020 NBA All-Star Game today (Feb. 16) with a fiery rendition of the U.S. national anthem.

The 10-time GRAMMY winner and celebrated Queen Of Funk was decked out in a custom basketball jersey that nodded to her native Chicago, where this year's NBA All-Star Game is being hosted, and NBA legend Michael Jordan. 

Khan joins previous GRAMMY winners like Fergie, Anthony Hamilton and Marvin Gaye who have performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the big game.

Khan has kept busy on the music and live front over the past two years. In 2019, she toured with Michael McDonald, performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, dazzled fans at the Bulova Brunch during GRAMMY Week and released her 12th album, Hello Happiness.

Read: Jennifer Hudson Delivers Touching Tribute To Kobe Bryant At The 2020 NBA All-Star Game

She received her most recent GRAMMY wins at the 50th GRAMMY Awards, held in 2008, when she took home two golden gramophones for her 2007 album, Funk This: Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals for album single "Disrespectful," featuring Mary J. Blige.

Khan's performance is part of a stacked musical lineup at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game and Weekend, which includes performances from: Jennifer Hudson, who's paying tribute to the late NBA icon Kobe Bryant; Queen Latifah, who covered Stevie Wonder; and Chance The Rapper, who's delivering a star-studded halftime show later tonight alongside DJ Khaled, Migos rapper Quavo and Lil Wayne. 

Read: Chance The Rapper, DJ Khaled, Quavo and Lil Wayne Deliver Star-Studded Halftime Show At The 2020 NBA All-Star Game

Other artists who performed and appeared throughout the weekend include Common, Chance The Rapper's brother and fellow rapper, Taylor Bennett, Megan Thee Stallion, Normani, Jeremih and others. 

Queen Latifah Delivers Soulful Performance Of Stevie Wonder's "Love's In Need Of Love Today" At NBA All-Star 2020 Weekend

Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey

Photos: WireImage.com

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25 GRAMMY Records Set By African-Americans michael-jackson-beyonc%C3%A9-jay-z-25-grammy-record-setters-black-history-month

Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Jay-Z: 25 GRAMMY Record Setters | Black History Month

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From wins and nominations to momentous firsts and incredible feats, take a look at 25 GRAMMY records set by African-Americans
Paul Grein
GRAMMYs
Feb 8, 2018 - 3:50 pm

African-American artists have been making history at the GRAMMYs since the awards were first presented on May 4, 1959. Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie each took home two awards that night.

Watch: Kendrick Lamar Wins Best Rap Album

And they have continued to be at the forefront right through this year, when Kendrick Lamar scooped up five GRAMMYs (bringing his total to date to an even dozen).

To help celebrate Black History Month, here are 25 GRAMMY records set by African-American artists. Note: This isn't just a list of the first African-American winners in various categories — though those milestones are meaningful in their own right. These are instances where an African-American artist or producer set a record in competition with everybody.

1. Michael Jackson

The first artist to win eight GRAMMYs in one night: Michael Jackson (1983). In that Thriller of a year, Jackson also became the first artist to amass 12 nominations in one night.

Michael Jackson Wins Record Of The Year

2. Quincy Jones

Artist with the most GRAMMY nominations: Quincy Jones (79). Jones landed his first noms in 1960; his most recent in 2001.

3. Beyoncé And Jay-Z

The only couple where both individuals have received 20 or more GRAMMYs: Beyoncé and Jay-Z. At last count, she has amassed 22 GRAMMYs. He has won 21.

Beyoncé wins Best Urban Contemporary Album GRAMMY

4. Beyoncé

The youngest artist to amass 20 career GRAMMYs: Beyoncé, who was 33 when she picked up her 18th, 19th and 20th GRAMMYs at the 2014 awards. She broke a record that was held by Kanye West, who was 35 when he collected his 19th, 20th and 21st GRAMMYs at the 2012 awards.

5. Mariah Carey

The youngest artist to receive nominations in each of the four General Field categories (Record, Album and Song Of The Year and Best New Artist): Mariah Carey, who was 20 when she was nominated in all four categories for 1990. She won for Best New Artist.

Mariah Carey Wins Best New Artist

6. Stevie Wonder

The only artist in GRAMMY history to win Album Of The Year with three consecutive studio albums: Stevie Wonder. He achieved this extraordinary three-peat with Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) and Songs In The Key Of Life (1976).

7. Stevie Wonder

The first artist to win Album Of The Year with an entirely self-produced album: Stevie Wonder (Innervisions).

8. Stevie Wonder

The youngest artist to win his third GRAMMY for Album Of The Year: Stevie Wonder, who was just 26 when he won for the third time with Songs In The Key Of Life.

9. Ray Charles

The artist with the longest span of Album Of The Year nominations: Ray Charles. His noms in the category span 43 years, from Genius + Soul = Jazz (1961) to Genius Loves Company (2004).

10. Ella Fitzgerald

The first woman to receive an Album Of The Year nomination: Ella Fitzgerald, who was nominated in 1958, the awards' first year, for Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Irving Berlin Song Book.

11. Roberta Flack

The first artist to win back-to-back awards for Record Of The Year: Roberta Flack ("The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," 1972, and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," 1973).

Roberta Flack Wins Record of the Year

12. The 5th Dimension

The first group or duo to win twice for Record Of The Year: The 5th Dimension. The vocal quintet won for "Up, Up And Away" (1967) and "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures)" (1969).

13. Ray Charles

The artist with the longest span of Record Of The Year nominations: Ray Charles. His noms in the category span 44 years, from "Georgia On My Mind" (1960) to "Here We Go Again," a collaboration with Norah Jones (2004).

14. Thom Bell

The first producer to win for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Thom Bell (1974, the first year the award was presented).

15. Quincy Jones

The first producer to win twice for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Quincy Jones. He shared his second award with Michael Jackson. Jones was also the first producer to win three times in the category.

Quincy Jones Wins Producer Of The Year

16. Babyface

The only producer to win four times for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Babyface. He shared the first of these awards with his partner, L.A. Reid.

17. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis

The producer(s) with the most nominations for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. The hit-making team amassed 11 noms from 1986–2005. They won the award for 1986.

18. Aretha Franklin

Most consecutive awards in any category: Aretha Franklin, eight consecutive awards for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female (1967–1974). The streak kicked off with the immortal "Respect." They don't call her the "Queen Of Soul" for nothing.

19. Ella Fitzgerald

The first woman to receive a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award: Ella Fitzgerald (1967).

20. Lauryn Hill

The first woman to win five GRAMMYs in one night: Lauryn Hill (1998). Her awards included Album Of The Year for The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.

21. Beyoncé

The first woman to win six GRAMMYs in one night: Beyoncé (2009). Her awards included Song Of The Year for "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)."

22. Ray Charles

Most posthumous GRAMMYs in one night (five): Ray Charles (2004). His awards included Album Of The Year for Genius Loves Company.

23. Pinetop Perkins

The oldest artist to win a GRAMMY: Pinetop Perkins, who was 97 when he won Best Traditional Blues Album for Joined At The Hip (2010).

24. Elizabeth Cotten

The oldest female artist to win a GRAMMY: Elizabeth Cotten, who was 90 when she won Best Ethnic Or Traditional Folk Recording for Elizabeth Cotten Live! (1984). (She was 26 days older than Betty White was when she won the 2011 award for Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling). Hey, days count in GRAMMY record-setting.)

25. Deleon Richards

The youngest individual artist to receive a GRAMMY nomination: Deleon Richards, who was just eight when she was nominated for Best Soul Gospel Performance — Female for her album Deleon (1985).

(Paul Grein is a veteran music journalist and historian whose work appears regularly at Yahoo.com and Hitsdailydouble.com.)

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Behind The Board: Sevn Thomas

Sevn Thomas

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Behind The Board: Sevn Thomas Discusses His Roots As A Producer & Why "A Good Mix Is Make-Or-Break"

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Canadian producer Sevn Thomas, who is one of the producers and composers on Giveon's 2020 debut EP, 'Take Time,' discusses his background as a beatmaker
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 22, 2021 - 3:12 pm

Ever a cross-disciplinary thinker, the celebrated producer Sevn Thomas likens his craft to filmmaking. "My philosophy for making music is like making movies," he says. 

But this has less to do with a sense of cinema than the number of chefs in the kitchen: "There’s so many people that are on the credits after the movie," he continues. "These are all important components to what makes a movie."

This week’s episode of Behind The Board is all about synergy and collaboration in all its forms. Thomas, who's influenced by highly cooperative genres like reggae and dancehall, is one of a number of producers and composers on Giveon's 2020 debut EP, Take Time, which is nominated for Best R&B Album at the 2021 GRAMMYs Awards show. 

Watch Sevn Thomas explain his process as a producer and beatmaker below.

Behind The Board: Sevn Thomas

Behind The Board: Producer-Engineer David Greenbaum On His Musical Beginnings & Capturing Happy Accidents

Chick Corea in 2014

Chick Corea

Photo: Leon Morris/Redferns via Getty Images

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In Remembrance: Chick Corea Played In More Ways Than One

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The through-line of Chick Corea, a 23-time GRAMMY-winning pianist, and his body of work was a sense of childlike joy and discovery
Morgan Enos
GRAMMYs
Feb 16, 2021 - 7:11 am

Chick Corea was one of the most advanced thinkers ever to grace the piano, but he rarely spoke in terms of minor-third intervals or the Mixolydian scale. Drop into virtually anything the man said about his art, and it’ll probably hinge on two words: fun and games.

"Trust yourself to say, 'I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm just going to do it because it's fun,'" Corea advised in a YouTube clip in 2020 while talking about his old colleague, Miles Davis. That year, when speaking to JazzTimes, he continually circled back to the phrase, "That's not the game I'm playing." "Oh, would you call that music?" he asked in the 2019 documentary Chick Corea: In the Mind of a Master, between virtuosic runs on the keyboard. "I don't know; I don't care what it is. It's just a lot of fun, you know?"

Corea's fealty to fun made him into a boundless, filterless fount of ideas—great ones. They're all over his boundary-busting 1970s band Return to Forever, his luminous albums with vibraphonist Gary Burton, his Akoustic and Elektric Bands, and beyond. Talk about a batting average: across almost 90 albums, he won 23 GRAMMYs and was nominated fo/r 67. Currently, he's in the running for the 63rd GRAMMY Awards for his trio album Trilogy 2, featuring bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade.

Sadly, Corea won't find out if he'll add a 24th GRAMMY to his shelf. After a brief battle with recently-diagnosed cancer, the piano titan died Tuesday, Feb. 9, at his home in Tampa Bay, Florida. He was 79. "It is my hope that those who have an inkling to play, write, perform or otherwise, do so," he said in a statement. "If not for yourself, then for the rest of us. It's not only that the world needs more artists; it's also just a lot of fun."

And fun was arguably Corea's entire MO, from his stylistic interplay to his pianistic touch to the way he dealt with his audiences.

Armando Anthony Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1941. "Chick" came from "cheeky," his aunt's baby-name for him due to his chubby cheeks. His trumpeter father sat him in front of a piano at four; at eight, he began taking lessons from the Boston concert pianist Salvatore Sullo. After high school, he moved to New York City to study at Columbia and Julliard but soon drifted from academia into the nightclub circuit. Initially steeped in bebop artists like trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, Corea soon became enamored with music from south of the border.

The music of [the bebop] era was quite demanding. You had to be into it to really grasp it," Chick told All About Jazz in 2020. "Whereas when I heard Latin music, that beat I heard coming out of New York and out of Puerto Rico and out of Cuba—Eddie Palmieri and Machito and these bands—that gave me a whole other emotional outlook to music. I thought, 'Wow, this is uplifting, happy music, and it struck something.'" Corea touched on this sense of exuberance in his work with Latin-adjacent artists, like saxophonist Stan Getz, trumpeter Blue Mitchell and flutist Herbie Mann.

Corea's interest in this sphere also led him to the guitar master Paco de Lucía, a close friend and collaborator for decades; Corea wrote "The Yellow Nimbus" as a duet with him. "When we played together, I thought I would see a yellow cloud around his head, like a circle," he explained in his 2020 live, solo album Plays. ("Paco inspired me in the construction of my own musical world as much as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, or Bartok and Mozart," Corea said six years prior upon de Lucía's death.)

Latin influences also permeated Return to Forever, Corea's enchanting fusion band that always seemed to hover a few inches above the ground. But even though albums like 1972's Return to Forever and 1973's Light as a Feather were commercial successes, this wedding of musical hemispheres wasn't to court crossover success, but chase that ineffable feeling of freedom.

"It's the media that are so interested in categorizing music," he told The New York Times in 1983, a year after "The Yellow Nimbus" came out. "If critics would ask musicians their views about what is happening, you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts taking place. All this means is a continual development—a continual merging of different streams."

Genre aside, Corea spent his life combing through every mood and format he could think of, from starlit, quasi-ambient duets (1973's Crystal Silence, with Gary Burton, to classically-minded post-bop (1981's Three Quartets, with tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker). The last few years of Corea's life marked an explosion of diversity and prolificity. In 2016, he underwent a six-week stand at New York's Blue Note club with more than 20 different groups. 

Three years later, his Latin interest crescendoed with Antidote, a jubilant collaboration with the eight-piece Spanish Heart Band. "The game I like is where we become a unit," Corea said in In the Mind of a Master, released concurrently with Antidote. "Everyone's giving and taking, and all [are] creating the music."

No matter which context he was in, Corea's effervescence is evident in his playing itself. His fluid phrasing and jewellike tone, which appeared almost fully-formed with his first two albums, 1968's Tones for Joan's Bones and Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, made even his knottiest material pleasing to the ear. About his way with a Fender Rhodes, "It's almost like his fingers bounce off the keys," WBGO's Nate Chinen told NPR in 2016. "His touch on that instrument is really distinctive. You know it's him within a note or two."

This accessibility and distinctiveness are testaments to Corea's emphasis on communicating to the listener, and he couldn't have done so if the music flew over peoples' heads. This became a primary value to Corea in the mid-'70s, when he converted to Scientology and underwent an auditing system that set him on a lifelong psychospiritual journey.

"A very simple thing happened to me right in the very beginning," Corea told The Village Voice in 1977. "I experience this in live hundreds or thousands of people in front of me—I now have the ability to give across a musical communication with clear intent. I know what I'm doing and who I'm communicating to, and I give the communication across, and I see what happens in front of me." (Corea dedicated myriad albums to Hubbard and remained a highly visible member of the controversial religion until the end of his life.)

In what would be Corea's final album, Plays, he eschews a superstar's trappings: no backing band, no staid reverence, no canned commentary. "Here I am with my piano," he declares at the top, alone onstage. "The piano's tuned up all nice, but now we have to tune up. Yeah, we." At first, it's an awkward moment. He plays a middle A; the giggling crowd tentatively sings it back to him. One note becomes two; two becomes three, and so on.

But by the time Corea lays into a medley of Mozart's Piano Sonata in F, and George Gershwin's "Something to Watch Over Me," the gag reveals itself to be something much more profound. Suddenly, the barriers vanish. His game opens up to everyone. His fun becomes ours.

10 Essential Cuts From Jazz Piano Great McCoy Tyner

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