Quincy Jones’ Austin Powers Role, Explained

It is impossible to overstate Quincy Jones’ influence on music and the music business throughout the second half of the 20th century. There wasn’t a genre that Jones, who passed away yesterday at the age of 91, couldn’t master as a composer, producer, performer, or all three. He kicked off his career playing trumpet for vibraphone god Lionel Hampton, served as trumpeter and music director for Dizzy Gillespie, and produced effervescent pop hits like “It’s My Party” for Lesley Gore while expanding his range compositionally via jazz LPs and, perhaps most importantly, film music — a field where the African-American artist stood out among a sea of white men.

Curiously, there isn’t as much serious scholarship on the work of Jones, which is rather astounding considering his seismic 1970s and ’80s impact as a producer for Michael Jackson on two of the top-selling LPs of all time (“Off the Wall” and “Thriller”), as well as his pivotal role in bringing together some of the world’s most famous (and, in some cases, egotistical) musicians for “We Are the World.” Keep in mind we’re just faintly scratching the surface of Jones’ accomplishments over his astonishing seven-decade career. There’s also his legendary collaborations with Frank Sinatra (that arrangement of “Fly Me to the Moon” you sing in the shower? That’s Quincy), Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. And don’t forget he brought “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” a vitally important Black sitcom, to America’s living rooms.

As for Jones’ own music, there are so many brilliant albums boasting a wide variety of soundscapes, and so many film and television scores bursting with mood-enhancing cues and irresistible hooks. As far as I’m concerned, he composed the greatest sitcom theme song of all time with “Sanford and Son,” but for many the theme for which he’ll always be most fondly remembered was used in a couple of films prior to providing the groovy backdrop for the most incorrigibly rambunctious secret agent to ever shag his way across the silver screen.

The moment that rescued Mike Myers’ career arrives a little over a minute into “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” The star, who’d rocketed to fame in the early 1990s via his portrayal of basement dwelling headbanger Wayne Campbell, had disappeared from the popular culture after the wholesale rejection of “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and “Wayne’s World 2.” Four years after those failures, Myers was poised for a comeback with a hirsute, horndog British superspy with yellowy teeth. The attitude and catchphrases were all there. What he needed was an introduction. What he got was Quincy Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova.”

Music fans were acquainted with Jones’ three-minute blast of lounge lizard cool from his 1963 album of the same name. It’s an ineffable composition, more likely to score a Pink Panther cartoon than the onscreen entrance of a hard-partying James Bond. But Austin Powers was a sui generis creation who was seemingly born to the cue.

It’s important to remember that “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” was not a blockbuster success in 1997. Audiences were leery of Myers, and not exactly in the mood for a space-age spy spoof. The film did fine commercially, but it didn’t become a sensation until it hit the home entertainment window. And I don’t think there would’ve been a trilogy of Austin Powers movies without Jones’ “Super Bossa Nova.”

Jones had used the cue in his score for Sidney Lumet’s 1964 drama “The Pawnbroker,” while Marvin Hamlisch inserted an arrangement of the track a few years later into Woody Allen’s zany “Take the Money and Run.” Thereafter it was mothballed for the most part, which made it seem insouciantly of the moment when it popped up at the outset of Myers’ first Austin Powers foray. As those flutes sing like songbirds over the bossa nova percussion, a smile explodes across your face. Is this the happiest music you’ve ever heard? Pair this with Myers strutting, bounding and dancing with garishly costumed mods and cops on a crowded city street, and you’d have to be the worst kind of killjoy to not give yourself over to the overpowering glee.

How did the song’s creator feel about its turn-of-the-millennium rebirth? Jones was pleased enough about it to cameo as the conductor of a new arrangement over the opening credits of 2002’s “Austin Powers in Goldmember” (a sequence so delightful that we’ll forgive the film’s unfortunate Osbournes cameo). For Jones, whose business savvy was a key component of his success and longevity, rediscovery was as important as discovery. And as a keeper of the jazz flame, he knew that kids could easily find a way to his brilliant mentors like Duke, Basie, and John Coltrane through his music.

Curiosity is crucial to leading a good, long life, and Jones, as evidenced by this turn of events, was as interested in looking forward as he was looking to his remarkably eventful history. We were so very blessed to have him, none more so than Mike Myers. So, when you’re playing “Soul Bossa Nova” on a loop today, tip your cap to Q and let loose a “Yeah baby!” on his behalf.