Back on the Block

Back on the Block is a 1989 Grammy Award-winning studio album produced by the American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter Quincy Jones. It features many famous and important musicians and singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Prince, Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau and Ray Charles. Fitzgerald had ... more

Back on the Block is a 1989 Grammy Award-winning studio album produced by the American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter Quincy Jones. It features many famous and important musicians and singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Prince, Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau and Ray Charles. Fitzgerald had previously recorded with Jones on her 1963 album Ella and Basie!, which is revered as one of her greatest recordings. She is featured on the tracks "Jazz Corner of the World" (where she is introduced in rap style by Big Daddy Kane), "Birdland" and "Wee B. Dooinit", where she scats alongside Sarah Vaughan and Bobby McFerrin. This was to be the last studio recording that Ella Fitzgerald made, a milestone not lost on her biographer Stuart Nicholson, who noted that Ella had come full circle with this album, her last recording echoing the throwaway... less