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
I am committing myself to doing everything possible to pull the resources together to aid the children of not only Cambodia, but the children of all the countries in the world.
It's worth about a half-billion dollars now. He had magazine publishing, too, with Liberty. It's ironic because I ended up being the founder of Vibe magazine. There are just a few people who will teach you what that's about.
Ray Charles is a giant. He was one of my mentors. He would write arrangements in Braille, and translate it to me. At 14 and 16 we used to sit in Seattle on those rainy days and dream about what would happen.
You Make Your Mistakes To Learn How To Get To The Good Stuff
There’s nothing in the world worse than having an opportunity that you’re not prepared for. Good luck usually follows the collision of opportunity and preparation - it’s a result of that collision. You’ve got to be prepared. So, make your mistakes now and make them quickly. If you’ve made the mistakes, you know what to expect the next time. That’s how you become valuable.
If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.
Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.
Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'
I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.
I'd been in love before - I was always in love.
I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'
Seattle is like a global gumbo, a melting pot with all kinds of people - the rich, the poor, white people, some Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and black people - they're all here.