Quincy Jones on Vinyl: A Guide to the Mercury and A&M Solo Years

Quincy Jones spent seventy years being the person other musicians called when a record had to be built, not just played. Born in Chicago in 1933 and raised in Seattle, he was playing trumpet in Lionel Hampton's orchestra before he was twenty, studying orchestration in Paris with Nadia Boulanger by 1957, and running a major label's A&R department by 1961, when Mercury made him its vice president and the first African American to hold a senior executive post at a major American label. He died in November 2024 at 91.

That resume is really three careers stacked on top of each other. There is the big-band arranger who could write for forty players and make it swing like a quartet. There is the Hollywood composer who scored The Pawnbroker in 1963 and kept scoring for two decades. And there is the producer who sat behind the glass for Michael Jackson's Off the Wall in 1979, Thriller in 1982 and Bad in 1987, work so large it tends to swallow everything that came before it.

What gets lost in that shadow is the stretch of albums Jones released under his own name, and that is exactly the part of the catalog worth owning. The six records below cover the Mercury big-band years and the long A&M run that took him from Rudy Van Gelder's studio to Westlake. Read them in order and you can hear a jazz arranger teaching himself to make pop records without giving up a single thing he knew about horns.

Quincy Jones - Big Band Bossa Nova (Yellow Color) Vinyl LP

Cut at A&R Studios in New York across the summer of 1962 and released by Mercury that December, Big Band Bossa Nova is Jones pointing a full American orchestra at the Brazilian songbook. The set runs through Jobim twice, Luiz Bonfa once and a Lalo Schifrin original, but it opens with "Soul Bossa Nova," a Jones composition built on two minutes and forty-four seconds of flutes, cuica and brass that has outlived every other track here by a mile. This is the yellow vinyl edition on Ermitage.

• The best single document of Jones the big-band arranger, before film and pop pulled him away
• Opens with "Soul Bossa Nova," one of the most recognizable instrumentals of the last sixty years
• Colored pressing of a 1962 Mercury session that stays in demand with DJs and crate diggers

Quincy Jones - Walking In Space Vinyl LP

His 1969 arrival on A&M, recorded at Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs with Creed Taylor producing, is where the jazz-funk Jones really starts. Walking in Space stretches the title track past twelve minutes with Hubert Laws on flute, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Roland Kirk on reeds and Valerie Simpson singing, then hands Benny Golson's "Killer Joe" the definitive big-band reading it has carried ever since. Bob James is on piano, Ray Brown on bass, Grady Tate and Bernard Purdie on drums.

• The pivot record: the moment Jones' writing turns from swing toward electric soul
• A session cast of Hubbard, Laws, Kirk, Brown, Gale and Bob James, all at their peak
• "Killer Joe" here is the version samplers and DJs keep coming back to

Quincy Jones - Smackwater Jack Vinyl LP

Recorded at A&R Studios in 1971, Smackwater Jack is the one that collectors chase for its screen music. The Carole King title song and "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" sit next to Jones' own "Ironside" theme and "Theme from The Anderson Tapes," and the center is a ten-minute Marvin Gaye "What's Going On" treated like a suite. Jimmy Smith, Milt Jackson, Toots Thielemans and Jim Hall all turn up.

• Holds the "Ironside" theme, one of the most sampled pieces of television music ever written
• The ten-minute "What's Going On" is the deepest arrangement Jones ever committed to a cover
• Peak A&M-era personnel: Jimmy Smith, Milt Jackson, Toots Thielemans, Freddie Hubbard

Quincy Jones - You've Got It Bad Girl Vinyl LP

You've Got It Bad Girl from 1973 is the most openly R&B record he had made to that point, and it leans on Stevie Wonder twice: the title track comes off Talking Book, and "Superstition" gets reworked with Billy Preston, Bill Withers and Wonder himself in the room. The side-opening "Summer in the City" is the reason this one has a second life, since The Pharcyde built "Passin' Me By" on it. Valerie Simpson sings lead there, with Bob James on electric piano and Phil Woods on alto across the record.

• Home of the "Summer in the City" break that runs under one of hip-hop's most loved singles
• Two Stevie Wonder readings cut while Talking Book was still new, with Wonder on one of them
• The clearest bridge between Jones the jazz arranger and Jones the soul producer

Quincy Jones - Body Heat Vinyl LP

From May 1974, co-produced with Ray Brown, Body Heat is the warmest and most quietly influential album in this run. Benard Ighner sings "Everything Must Change," Leon Ware and Minnie Riperton take "If I Ever Lose This Heaven," and the band behind them stacks Herbie Hancock, Bob James, Billy Preston and Dave Grusin on keys against David T. Walker, Wah Wah Watson and Phil Upchurch on guitars. Jones suffered a cerebral aneurysm a few months after it came out, which gives its easy mood a strange weight.

• "If I Ever Lose This Heaven" and "Everything Must Change" are both standards now, and both start here
• A who's who of 70s Los Angeles session players, three keyboard greats deep
• The most reached-for Jones album among soul and quiet-storm diggers

Quincy Jones - The Dude Vinyl LP

Cut at Westlake in Los Angeles in 1980 and released by A&M in March 1981, The Dude is Jones' solo album as a producer's showcase, made in the gap between Off the Wall and Thriller. James Ingram sings "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways," Patti Austin takes "Razzamatazz" and "Betcha' Wouldn't Hurt Me," Rod Temperton wrote a third of it, and "Ai No Corrida" opens the whole thing as a disco-funk statement of intent. This is our most asked-for Quincy record, and it earns that.

• The entry point for anyone who came to Jones through his Michael Jackson productions
• James Ingram and Patti Austin on lead across a Rod Temperton-heavy songbook
• "Ai No Corrida" is still a floor-filler forty years on

Those six cover the shape of it, though the A&M shelf ran deeper: Gula Matari in 1970, Mellow Madness in 1975 and Sounds ... and Stuff Like That!! in 1978 are the next names to learn. His production work sits elsewhere in the shop, and the essential disco guide picks up the Off the Wall end of that story.

If You Like Quincy Jones

• Herbie Hancock played on Body Heat, and his own 70s electric run is the closest thing to Jones' jazz-funk from the player's seat.
• Roy Ayers worked the same jazz-into-soul territory with vibes instead of horn charts, and our Roy Ayers guide is the companion read to this one.
• Bob James sat at the piano on three of the six records above, then built a sample-canon catalog of his own at CTI.
• Patrice Rushen carried the arranger-plus-singer model into the 80s with the same attention to how a rhythm section breathes.
• Earth, Wind & Fire is where the big-band horn section and the pop single meet on the other side of the aisle from The Dude.

Six albums, two decades, and a straight line from a 1962 bossa nova session to the biggest pop records ever made. Browse everything we have by him in the Quincy Jones collection, then keep digging in jazz and funk, soul and disco. The essential soul starter guide is the shelf next door.