OPINION Rewind and Revisit: Ep. 1 (Quincy Jones - The Dude)

[Water Ur Seeds]

I thought I would try doing a weekly or monthly thread/series called ‘Rewind and Revisit’ which shines a light on a random older album or project (pre 90s) and see how it does…

Theres no specific genre or rhyme or reason, just a random album I like, which maybe a little under appreciated, with a little unexpert breakdown with some background info on it... So the project could be from a range of genres such as soul, R&B, blues, jazz, soft rock and so on…

Folks can drop their opinions on the album or artist, their own interpretations of songs and any info and insight they may have…

I’ll try and add some Wiki or Discogs links too, so if you want you can go down a rabbit hole and see who an artist, writer or producer etc worked with and find some common links etc

 

[Water Ur Seeds]

So the first album I picked is Quincy Jones - The Dude ...

Released in 1981, Quincy's 'The Dude' is a stone cold classic for me, a masterpiece... At the 24th Grammy Awards it received a record breaking 12 Grammy nominations (including an Album of the Year nomination) and took home three of those nominations...

With it being released just a year before Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', Ive often thought 'The Dude' was sonically pretty similar to ’Thriller’ at times and could even be seen as a precursor to it, with touches of soul, pop, jazz and funk all infused into the album it feels (looking back) like a warm up for what was to come with ’Thriller'… And with this year being Thriller’s 40th anniversary, I thought ’The Dude’ was a good album to kick this series off with...

As we know Quincy Jones has the incredible gift of being able to bring together his pick of musicians, writers and vocalists etc and create magic… Like how a world class chef picks and mixes ingredients into a pot and cooks up something special and this album was definitely special...

Masterfully directed and arranged by Quincy, he bought in an all star/dream team of greats or rather legends, with writers such as Rod Temperton and Stevie Wonder… on the keyboard he bought in Herbie Hancock and Greg Phillinganes and other musical legends show out throughout such as Ernie Watts, Louis Johnson and Toots Thielemans… The vocals on the album were mainly performed by the incredible Patti Austin and James Ingram, their voices blending and complementing eachother perfectly throughout the whole album … MJ did some backing vocals too (not a bad artist to have as backing singer!!!)…

For me ’The Dude’ is one of those albums that is damn near perfect to sit and listen to from start to finish and also knowing that every instrument on the album is expertly played and meticulously arranged and not sampled for me just makes you appreciate the greatness of it even more...

Check it out below: