This weekend's "Cinema Sundays" film — the next-to-last picture scheduled for the Reichhold Center for the Arts program's first year (although that could change) — is Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones.
Note that it's Lives, plural. The promotional material coming out of the Reichhold had it Life, whereas a major emphasis of the 1990 documentary is that Jones is a man of many lives, most of them very successfully lived: instrumentalist, composer, arranger, conductor, publisher and producer of recordings, television programing and films. He has received more Grammy nominations than anyone else — 76 — and has composed the scores for more than 50 major motion pictures and television programs. He produced and conducted the singing for "We Are the World" (1985), the best-selling single in recording history, which helped raise more than $100 million for famine relief in Africa, and Michael Jackson' "Thriller"(1982), the best-selling album ever.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones studied trumpet as a child and was playing and arranging music professionally while still in his teens. His gained recognition as a trumpeter in the Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands, then moved to Paris, to work for a record company, study classical music composition and lead a jazz band. In 1962, he became one of the first black senior executives of a major American recording company, a vice president with Mercury Records. In 1982, he formed his own record company, Qwest Records, and eight years later he started Qwest Broadcasting, a minority-owned company.
The breadth of his musical influence can be seen in the roster of celebrities whose comments are crammed into the nearly two-hour-long film: Richard Brooks, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, El DeBarge, Kool Moe Dee, Sheila E., Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Flavor Flav, Dizzy Gillespie, Alex Haley, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Ice-T, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jackson, Big Daddy Kane, Sidney Lumet, Bobby McFerrin, Melle Mel, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey.
Jones has been recognized not only as a musician and music impresario, but also as a social activist. Just last month, he received the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award for promoting "global unity through cultural diversity." At the request of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and U2 singer Bono, he campaigned for the eradication of debts owed by developing nations to major industrial countries. His efforts "helped persuade the International Monetary Fund to cancel $27 billion in debt," the Associated Press reported.
One critic hailed his Grammy-winning 1989 album "Back on the Block" as "a virtual crash course in black popular music of the 20th Century." His 1995 CD, "Q's Jook Joint," put the spotlight on the roadhouses that cropped up on the outskirts of Southern U.S. towns from the time of slavery, giving birth to many of those musical styles. "The jook joint was the anvil on which so much music was forged — boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, ragtime, stride, fast and slow blues, and jazz," Jones says. And a lot of it was synthesized into rock 'n' roll.
The man's lives are, without question, worthy of documentary attention. Whether the documentary Listen Up, directed by Ellen Weissbrod, who was also the screenwriter, is worthy of the man may be another question. As it's a decade old, reviews are hard to come by on the Internet. A search turned up only three, none of them by "name" critics. (Roger Ebert reviewed it, but his web page was out of circulation this week.)
A CheckOut video site editor described the film as an "offbeat, free-form documentary tribute" to Jones. "With little regard for formal timelines and traditional documentary biography methods," the reviewer wrote, "the film is an amazing patchwork of personal insights featuring a constellation of music stars." Hollywood.com's movie reviewer Leonard Maltin pronounced it "not so much a documentary as a visual and musical collage." While "sometimes effective," he said, it "too often plays like a music video."
Deseret News critic Chris Hicks had more to say, and not much of it was positive: The many cameo guests, he wrote, get "to say a few words in a beautifully lit studio with shadows on their faces and the camera moving in and out to get shots of the interviewee from every angle (except for Michael Jackson, who insisted on giving his interview in the dark)." But the testimonials, Hicks said, add up to "a smoke screen for a movie that is at best frustrating and at worst irritating." With five editors, he said, the result "is more about what you can do in the editing room than it's about Quincy Jones."
Despite interview segments with Jones and his daughter, Jolie, and the impression conveyed that Jones "has sacrificed his personal life for his career," Hicks said, "everything that approaches any real information is merely hinted at. . . What's missing is a cohesive sense of Jones' life, much less [any] probing insights into the man and his incredible musical talent." And most frustrating of all, he said, "is the refusal by the filmmakers to finish a single song until we get to the closing credits."
That doesn't mean don't go see it, especially if you are a Quincy Jones fan. But keep your expectations in tow.
Listen Up is the third in a series of four pictures having to do with accomplished musicians that the Reichhold scheduled for "Cinema Sundays" in observance of March as Music Education Month. The first was Spike Lee's jazz-format Mo' Better Blues; last week's was The Buena Vista Social Club, documenting the resurgence of old-time son musicians in Cuba; and next week's is Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser. Show time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 general admission and $2.50 for students. The gates open at 7. Popcorn, candy and cold drinks are available.
