Hikky-Burr by Quincy Jones

Album: The Original Jam Sessions 1969 (1969)

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Songfacts®:

This horn-centric tune was penned by Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby for the theme tune of the latter's first Bill Cosby Show in 1969. Jones recalled penning this song with his life-long friend in a 2010 interview with Billboard magazine: "So we're shooting out at Warner Brothers, he's shooting the show and I'm doing the music. I said I'd like to improvise the scoring. We had a regular band of great musicians, Ray Brown and Paul Humphrey and all these guys. And [then] we'd have Oscar Peterson, Cannonball Adderly. It was astounding. They'd play all the themes together so it was different at the end of each show. In the middle of this, all of the sudden I hear all of this gobbledy-gook in my earphones and I look up there and there's Cosby on a bassoon trying to play some Coltrane. [laughs] I'll never forget, we got the bassoon away from him and I handed him a cowbell. It came out of a bond and we wrote a tune around it. They're beautiful memories."
Jones did an updated version of this tune for his 2010 album Q Soul Bossa Nova aided by Three 6 Mafia and David Banner.
Did you know that Bill Cosby had a hit song? Yep. In 1967 he went to #4 in the US with "Little Ole Man." Not quite Quincy Jones credentials, but not bad for a comedian.

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