Photo: Bremerton pays tribute to Quincy Jones with this downtown mural and other development. (Josh Farley / The Seattle Times)

 

By The Seattle Times editorial board

Quincy Jones gave the Puget Sound region more than just his musical talents; he gave Seattle and Bremerton bragging rights.

Jones was born in Chicago but spent eight years in Washington — four each in Seattle and Bremerton. After a stellar career that spanned more than a half century, Jones died Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Among his vast accomplishments, Jones gave the world the celebrity singalong “We Are The World”; Michael Jackson’s record-setting album “Thriller”; the soundtrack to the first “The Color Purple” movie; and the score for the movie “The Wiz” starring Jackson and Diana Ross. He executive-produced “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and the musical scores for “In the Heat of the Night,” the groundbreaking 1970s television series “Roots” and the sitcom “Sanford and Son.” He arranged Frank Sinatra’s popular 1964 rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon,” all of which helped garner Jones 28 Grammy Awards.

Though he achieved international fame, Jones never forgot his upbringing. He gave generously to Seattle causes, including recently to the Seattle Public Schools to keep it from losing its jazz program. Jones graduated from Garfield High School, which named its performance arts center in his honor in 2008.

He received the Northwest African American Museum’s first Lifetime Achievement Award at its grand-opening gala in 2008.

But Bremerton is where Jones first fell in love with music.

It started with a fateful encounter with a spinet piano in Bremerton, where Jones’ father had taken a carpenter job at the naval shipyard. After the family settled in Sinclair Heights, a segregated housing area for a booming war workforce, 11-year-old Quincy and some friends broke into an armory’s kitchen for lemon meringue pie late one night. In another room, he found the piano.

“I touched it, and every cell in my body said this is what you’re going to do the rest of your life,” he told “The Late Show’s” Stephen Colbert in 2016. The city has created a mural of his likeness.

A public square dedicated to the music legend will soon be constructed in Bremerton’s downtown. Jones gave his blessing to the project in 2019. Along with murals and art sculptures, a new concert stage and plaza will immortalize his nearly incalculable contributions to music.

But among the many gifts Jones gave the world are the words he left on Facebook to Garfield students after a visit in 2017:

“Moving to Seattle forever changed me for the better. And finding music here showed me that I can be more than a statistic. My hope and prayer is that these kids know they can too. The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary, and that’s the TRUTH!

The Seattle Times editorial board; members are editorial page editor Kate Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Melissa Davis, Josh Farley, Alex Fryer, Claudia Rowe, Carlton Winfrey and William K. Blethen (emeritus).

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