Quincy Jones The Dude

The Dude is a 1981 album by American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter Quincy Jones. The album featured the debut of vocalist James Ingram on the singles "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways". This album is a milestone in contemporary music!

An enormous commercial success, 1981's The Dude is a cross-cultural success blending jazz, Latin music, soul ballads, and straight pop into an admittedly slick but never over-produced or soulless stew. The album opens with a surprise: "Ai No Corrida" is a synthesizer-driven yet still funky Latin dance track written by Chaz Jankel of Ian Dury & the Blockheads, suggesting that unlike a lot of musicians his age, Quincy Jones kept his ears open to new music. The proto-rap title track accomplishes the same thing. The rest of the album is more conventional, with James Ingram and Patti Austin trading vocals on a smooth collection of tracks highlighted by the masterful love ballads "One Hundred Ways" and "Just Once," staples of adult contemporary stations, and the haunting Stevie Wonder-penned instrumental "Velas." The Dude is an outstanding collection that was massively influential on the '80s R&B scene.

The Dude is a 1981 album by American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter Quincy Jones. The album featured the debut of vocalist James Ingram on the singles "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways," which reached no. 17 and 14, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. It also contained "Razzamatazz", which reached no. 11 in the UK Singles Chart, one of his few hits there. He won the Grammy award for best R&B vocal performance for his work on the album.

On July 14th, 2008, a very special event took place at the Stravinsky Auditorium in Montreux, Switzerland. A number of musicians who have had the opportunity to work with Jones during the years gathered to celebrate his 75th birthday. For well over two hours, they sang, played, joked and thanked a living legend.
The actual concert is truly impossible to describe with simple words. Even a quick glance at the names of the musicians who took the stage should immediately reveal to you how incredibly influential Jones has been. In fact, one could argue that many of them have been just as influential as Jones – years from now, people will still talk about Chaka Khan, Herbie Hanckok, Al Jarreau, James Moody and Toots Thielemans.