Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr., also known as "Q", is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, composer, musician, television producer, film producer, instrumentalist, magazine founder, entertainment company executive, and humanitarian. His career spans six decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusic Producer
Date of Birth14 March 1933
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
My brother died of cancer two years ago (1998), renal cell carcinoma. He was my only real brother and I didn't know what to do. I'd never been so desperate in my life.
A lot of the guys were like that - Oscar Pettiford - they just took me under their wing, and that's why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.
Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.
Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.
I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!
It was messed up, because in 1947 my family moved to Seattle and I had to get up at 5:00 o'clock in the morning to catch the ferry back to Bremerton every morning because I was Boys Club president.
The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.
Benny [Carter] opened the eyes of a lot of producers and studios, so that they could understand that you could go to blacks for other things outside of blues and barbecue. He's a total musician. He was the pioneer, he was the foundation. He made it possible for that doubt to be taken away.
A person's age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.
I'm just a musician and a record producer.
Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.