Quincy Jones was at his peak when he gave The Wiz its soul

The film that helped kill Blaxploitation was driven by the Oscar-nominated music of a man who transcended the genre.

By Craig D. Lindsey | November 20, 2025 | 11:00am

Photo: Universal Pictures

Film Features Sounds Of Blaxploitation

Quincy Jones was at his peak when he gave The Wiz its soul

In the year-long series Sounds Of Blaxploitation, Craig D. Lindsey plays the hits that defined a genre, drawing connections between the music of the moment and the films that gave it a platform.

The soundtrack to The Wiz is really just another funky-ass Quincy Jones album dropped in the ’70s. People forget that, back in the day, the Grammy-winning producer and Oscar-nominated film composer was also a successful recording artist. He reached his soul/funk/jazz fusion peak during the Me Decade, releasing such studio albums as Smackwater Jack, You’ve Got It Bad Girl, and Body Heat. Jones often rounded up a heavy stable of veteran jazz artists, session musicians, and singer-songwriters for these joints, which were filled with scintillating, instrumental covers of hit singles and badass movie/TV themes Jones composed. Jones went the same route when he arranged the music for 1978’s The Wiz, the adaptation of Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown’s Blackified, Broadway-musical spin on The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, which fizzled at the box office so badly that studios backed away from Black film projects in its wake.

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“I really did not want to work on that movie,” Jones admitted in his 2001 memoir Q: The Autobiography Of Quincy Jones. He wasn’t feeling many of the tunes Smalls created for the 1974 stage show, but he took the job as a favor to the film’s director (and Jones’ frequent collaborator) Sidney Lumet, who gave Jones his first break as a movie composer with the 1964 drama The Pawnbroker. “I felt I owed [Lumet] more than one; I owed him a lot,” Jones wrote.

Lumet and screenwriter Joel Schumacher (who, before becoming a director in his own right, previously scripted Blaxploitation faves Sparkle and Car Wash) rebooted the plot of The Wiz. In their version, a brown-skinned Dorothy (Diana Ross, notoriously miscast) and her dog Toto getting whisked away from her Harlem neighborhood on Thanksgiving night to Oz, which is really a gaudy, funhouse-mirror version of The Big Apple (their cabs also don’t pick up Black folk). Similarly, Jones put his own souped-up spin on the soulful score. Although he cut several selections from the original production, he still collaborated with Smalls on the extravagant, disco-infused “Emerald City Sequence,” which takes place outside the World Trade Center. (Jones makes a wink-wink cameo playing a lengthy piano.)

Jones also corralled many of his most valuable players for the score. His main orchestra included such jazz/session vets as drummer Steve Gadd, keyboardist Richard Tee, and percussionist Ralph MacDonald, with other pre-recorded contributions from guest musicians like fellow jazzmen-turned-composers Dave Grusin and Bob James.

Famed singing/songwriting duo Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who previously co-wrote singles for Jones and Jones discoveries The Brothers Johnson, was called on to pen two leaky-eyed numbers for Ross: “Can I Go On?” a woeful ballad for Ross’ permed-up Dorothy at the beginning; and “Is This What Feeling Gets? (Dorothy’s Theme),’ which Ross sings on the album, but not in the movie.

Dorothy isn’t the only one who gets to sing about hard luck. We also get some pity-inducing introductory themes for the Tin Man (Nipsey Russell), the Cowardly Lion (Tony-winning Broadway show alum Ted Ross), and of course, the Scarecrow (Michael Jackson, in a role once considered for Jimmie Walker). The record-breaking creative partnership between Jones and Jackson began on The Wiz, specifically with the bopping track “You Can’t Win”—originally cut when Wiz hit Broadway—which Jackson’s Scarecrow sings on a pole near a cornfield, accompanied by some heckling, jive-ass crows. (Jones and Jackson later went back and re-recorded it as a single.)

When Dorothy and the Scarecrow meet up with the Tin Man at an abandoned Coney Island, the talk-singing Russell hits them with the bluesy, melancholy “What Would I Do If I Could Feel?” before he gets some lubrication and goes all ragtime to “Slide Some Oil To Me,” complete with harmonica from Jones regular Toots Thielemans. As for the Cowardly Lion, whom they catch up with on the steps of—you guessed it—the New York Public Library, Ross puts on a blustery act with “I’m A Mean Ole Lion” before getting scared by Toto.

The stage version had some rousing numbers that became hit songs for the movie, like the immortal traveling music “Ease On Down The Road.” While The Hues Corporation and Consumer Rapport recorded previous versions, this one has Ross and Jackson on lead vocals, bopping along on the linoleum-covered Yellow Brick Road, en route to the wizard (Richard Pryor, barely there). By the way, when that single dropped on 45, the B-side was the funk-heavy instrumental “Poppy Girls Theme,” composed by bassist Anthony Jackson. The down-and-dirty music that plays when Dorothy and the crew meet up with some powder-sprinkling floozies, the tracks sees six-string bass pioneer Jackson practically lay down the same nasty bass groove that made the O’Jays’ “For The Love Of Money” (which he also co-wrote) such a classic jam.

There’s also “Everybody Rejoice / A Brand New Day,” penned by future R&B great Luther Vandross (who recorded his own version with his group in 1976). This is performed by Dorothy and the gang—an off-camera Vandross does get to sing the opening line—after Dorothy literally does wetwork on resident Wicked Witch Evillene (Mabel King, another holdover from the show). Her liberated minions shed their skin, get half-buttbald-nekkid, and start singing and dancing.

Finally, The Wiz reaches its grand finale, “Home,” which Dorothy tearfully belts after Glinda The Good (Lumet’s then-mother-in-law Lena Horne) tells her she can go back to Harlem by clicking her heels three times. (This happens before Horne puts her whole foot into the ultra-uplifting “Believe In Yourself,” mere minutes after Ross somberly sings the song to her new friends.) “Home” was a defining hit not for Ross, but for Stephanie Mills, who played the original Dorothy on Broadway. Mills may have not gotten the chance to play Dorothy on the big screen, but she definitely got the last laugh with “Home.” Her 1989 midtempo revamp not only topped the Billboard Hot Black Singles that year, but became something of a showstopping standard for Mills. The internet is filled with countless videos of her bringing crowds to her feet with the track.

Whether you consider The Wiz to be the movie that “killed” Blaxploitation, a misunderstood cult/hood classic, or just the most fucked-up movie ever to be rated G (I’m sure that deranged subway sequence scarred a few kids), it can’t be denied that Lumet assembled some top-notch talent for this ambitious New York fantasy, from makeup whiz Stan Winston, to elite wardrobe designers like Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, and Norma Kamali, to Jones himself. Though Jones wouldn’t win the Oscar for Best Adaptation Score for his work on The Wiz (he’d lose to The Buddy Holly Story), the nomination alone showed that, even when he took on a project he wasn’t enthusiastic about—that he was doing just as a favor—Jones couldn’t help but deliver some classics.

Next time: A pair of pimps. A pair of soundtracks. Ho, ho, ho.