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After graduating from high school, Jones received a scholarship from Seattle University, but knowing that staying in Seattle wouldn't help him accomplish his musical goals, he applied for and accepted a scholarship to Schillinger House of Music in Boston, later known as Berklee College of Music. He did not stay there long, however-he yearned for New York, the center of bebop.
While in Boston, Jones met bassist Oscar Pettiford, who hired him to write arrangements. In 1950 he went with Pettiford to New York. "See, I was spending a lot of time at the Hi Hat across the street [from where he stayed]. That's where I met Horace Silver, G.G. [sic] Gryce, and Oscar Pettiford, who were so kind to me," he told Nelson George in Billboard. "Pettiford heard a couple of my things and he said, 'I want you to write two things for me and come to New York,' Lord have mercy!" And there, through Pettiford, he met Charlie Parker, the most talked-about jazz musician of his generation; Miles Davis; Dizzy Gillespie; and the other young lions of bebop. He returned to Boston for a spell, but when Lionel Hampton called, he jumped immediately at the opportunity to work with him again.
In New York and up close, Jones saw another aspect of the bebop world: heroin addiction. That he was never seduced by drugs is another striking aspect of his temperament. He experimented, "tried a little of everything," as he said, but never developed any sort of habit. Despite his youth, Jones remained levelheaded. His composure earned him such respect from Lionel Hampton that when Jones suggested the bandleader hire Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, and Clifford Brown from Tadd Dameron's band, Hampton did.
Jones especially admired trumpeter Brown, not only for his musicianship but also for his character: "In this generation where some well-respected and important pioneers condemn the young for going ahead, Brownie has a very hard job," wrote Jones in a tribute shortly after Brown's fatal automobile accident on June 26, 1956. "He constantly struggled to associate jazz . . . with a cleaner element, and held no room in his heart for bitterness about the publicity-made popularity and success of some of his pseudo-jazz giant brothers, who were sometimes very misleading morally and musically. As a man and a musician, he stood for a perfect example and the rewards of self-discipline."
Since he was mostly trying to make it as an arranger and composer, Jones' livelihood, as it unfolded, depended on this reliability. It may have been possible for a player to enjoy a long career and also be a drug addict-as was the case with pianist Bill Evans, Miles Davis, drummer Art Blakey, and saxophonists Charlie Parker and Stan Getz-but addiction in the late 1940s and early 1950s damaged lives and careers with incredible voraciousness. It was impossible for an arranger and composer to indulge in drugs and be successful in the long run. The nature of the work required a certain precision and sobriety and efficiency in often hurried, stressful circumstances. No drug addict could be counted on to have these qualities. And if one developed a reputation for sloppiness or lateness, there was virtually no hope of ever thriving. The drug-free Jones, however, developed such a sense of responsibility and maturity that when Dizzy Gillespie did his 1956 U.S. State Department tour of the Middle East and South America, he hired the 23-year-old as his musical director and arranger. "He took care of organizing the band, the arrangements. All I had to do was play," said Gillespie.
After leaving Hampton's band, he became a freelance arranger, working with singer Helen Merrill, Sonny Stitt, Billy Taylor, Ray Charles, Milt Jackson, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, James Moody, King Pleasure, and Dinah Washington. He also worked with such rhythm & blues performers as Brook Benton, Chuck Willis, and Big Maybelle.
But if New York opened certain doors for him to establish himself as an arranger, composer, and producer, and exposed him to the best young jazz innovators, Europe offered even more opportunity. In addition to freeing him from the racial tensions of the United States, the Continent offered him a place where jazz was more appreciated, even if it was not necessarily more lucrative.
The 1950s were Jones' European years. He first visited Europe in 1953 with Hampton's band. Soon after, he recorded some arrangements with Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, and The Swedish All Stars in Sweden, which established his reputation in many quarters overseas. From 1957 to 1958 he returned as musical director for Barclay Records, owned by Eddie Barclay and Nadia Boulanger, the famous composition instructor whose students included Darius Milhaud and Aaron Copland. Jones became one of the few jazz musicians to study under Boulanger, largely to learn counterpoint, orchestration, and composition, knowledge that would become essential to him as a film scorer.
One of the main reasons Jones accepted the job with Barclay was to learn how to work with strings. "In New York, they wouldn't let blacks write for or arrange the strings. The record companies figured you could write for horns or rhythm sections but strings were from another domain," he said. Actually, there were a few blacks writing for strings-Sy Oliver and William Grant Still, for example-but they were scarce. In general, black composers were largely limited to the musical palette they could work with. (The success that Barry White achieved with his Love Unlimited Orchestra and hits like "Love's Theme" in the early 1970s demonstrated how far black popular composers had come since the 1950s.)
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