Good morning, it's Nov. 15, 2024. Friday is the day of the week when I pass along a quotation intended to be elucidating or uplifting. Today, I'm going for the latter, with inspiring words of wisdom from legendary musician, composer, and producer Quincy Jones, who died the Sunday night before Election Day at 91 years of age.
Quincy Jones came out of Chicago's South Side and spent World War II and half his youth in Washington state. A gifted jazz trumpeter from an early age, he left Seattle for music school in Boston, toured with Lionel Hampton's band as a teenager, wrote music for Count Basie and others during the Big Band Era, and settled in New York where he made his reputation as an impresario and record label president. He later gravitated toward Los Angeles where he attained even more fame and fortune as a composer of movie soundtracks.
For all that he accomplished – and the New York Times had a comprehensive account of his career in Ben Ratliff's Nov. 4 obituary – one line in that story struck me: Quincy Jones may have made his most lasting stamp on the musical history of this country "by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of connecting."
He connected people, continents, and art forms. He also left us with this gem, which anchorman David Muir passed along in ABC's Nov. 4 evening broadcast. It's a sentiment with broad application – even, perhaps, a source of solace if your preferred candidates didn't prevail on Election Day.
"It's all about hills and valleys," Quincy Jones said. "Everybody can handle the hills, but you find out who you are when you hit the valleys. Love, laugh, live and give, that's what it's about."
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on X @CarlCannon.
