Quincy Jones had a sterling jazz career in the 1950s, arranging and conducting for top jazz recording artists. He also recorded leading his own band. By 1959, Jones decided to invest in a touring production of Harold Arlen's jazz musical Free and Easy. He assembled a band and created arrangements for 18 musicians instead of a full orchestra. Jones's Free and Easy premiered in Amsterdam on December 7, 1959 and continued pre-opening performances in Brussels, Amsterdam again and Sweden in late 1959 and early 1960. On January 15, 1960, the musical had its official premiere in Paris at the Alhambra Theatre to rave reviews. But marketing efforts flopped and attendance died off fast. The production folded in February.
Feeling enormous guilt over miscalculating and stranding so many American player-friends abroad, Jones formed a big band with the show's musicians. Stuck in Paris, the band was featured on French TV in two separate programs. Late last year, Trent Bryson-Dean untied the two halves into one. Here's the Quincy Jones Big Band in Paris shortly after Free and Easy folded and Jones repurposed the group as a concert band.
The personnel featured Clark Terry (flg hrn); Floyd Standifer, Lennie Johnson and Ernest Vally (tp); Melba Linston, Quentin Johnson, Ake Persson and Jimmy Cleveland (tb); Julius Watkins (Fr hrn); Phil Woods and Porter Kilbert (as); Budd Johnson and Jerome Richardson (ts); Sahib Shihab (bs); Patti Bown (p); Les Spann (g); Buddy Catlett (b) and Joe Harris (d). The tracks are Birth of a Band, Moanin', The Gypsy, Cherokee, Walkin', Big Red, Ghana, The Phantom's Blues, I Remember Clifford and Doodlin'.
Talk about a comeback. In 1961, Jones returned to the States and became vice president of Mercury Records, arranged and conducted for Frank Sinatra on two albums and became an in-demand studio arranger-producer and prolific movie soundtrack composer-arranger before pivoting to soul-pop in the late '60s.
Here's the Quincy Jones Big Band in Paris in early 1960...