Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones, born in 1933, American popular musician, composer, arranger, producer, and entertainment executive. Jones is best known as the producer of two of the top-selling records of all time: the album Thriller (1982), by pop music superstar Michael Jackson, and the charity song “We Are the World” (1985). Jones's work has earned him more than 70 Grammy Award nominations, more than 25 Grammy Awards, and a Grammy Legends Award (1991). As one of the most successful black American entrepreneurs in the history of popular music, Jones has been credited with helping break down racial barriers in the music industry.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Seattle, Washington, Jones studied the trumpet as a child. He began playing and arranging music professionally as a teenager, forming a band with rhythm-and-blues singer and pianist Ray Charles. At the age of 16 Jones attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, on a scholarship. He moved to New York City in 1951 to perform with the jazz big band of drummer and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. In 1957 Jones relocated to Paris, France, working as an executive for European record company Barclay Disque and leading a big band. While in Paris he studied classical music composition with French teacher Nadia Boulanger, whose other students included Russian American composer Igor Stravinsky and American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

In 1962 Jones became one of the first black Americans to hold a senior executive position at an American record company, landing a job as a vice president at Mercury Records in New York City. While at the label Jones produced hit songs for pop singer Lesley Gore. He left Mercury in 1965 to work full time on motion-picture scores. In 1969 Jones began recording and producing for A&M Records in Los Angeles, California.

As an arranger and producer, Jones has worked with hundreds of performers, including popular singers Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, and Frank Sinatra; big band leaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington; jazz trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis; R&B music stars Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and the Brothers Johnson; and rap artists Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane. He has composed the music for more than 50 motion pictures, including The Pawnbroker (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and In Cold Blood (1967), and for many television productions, including the series Ironside (1967-1975) and the blockbuster miniseries Roots (1977). He also has produced his own albums over the years, including The Dude (1981), Back on the Block (1989), and Q's Juke Joint (1995).

An entrepreneur, Jones founded his own record company, Qwest Records, in 1980. He coproduced the motion picture The Color Purple (1985), directed by Steven Spielberg, and the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1990-1996). In 1993 he began publishing the rap magazine Vibe and a year later he formed Qwest Broadcasting, a minority-owned broadcast company with television stations in Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Jones has won Emmy Awards and Academy Awards for his musical scoring, has received numerous honorary doctorate degrees, and was awarded France's Legion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor, 1990). In 1990 he was the subject of the motion-picture documentary Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. In 2000 Jones was awarded the National Humanities Medal by U.S. President Bill Clinton.