Quincy Jones is an American music conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer, television producer and trumpeter. Over five decades in the entertainment industry Jones has earned a record 79 Grammy Award nominations and 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is best known as the producer of the album Thriller, by the late pop icon Michael Jackson - which has sold over 110 million copies worldwide - and as the producer and conductor of the charity song "We Are the World," which featured dozens of personalities from every field of entertainment.
At 18 (1951) Jones won a scholarship to the Schillinger House (now Berklee College of Music) in Boston. He set his studies aside when he received an offer to tour as a trumpeter with bandleader Lionel Hampton. Jones quickly displayed a gift for arranging songs, relocated to New York, and charted for jazz artists Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and Ray Charles. A tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band in the Middle East and South America (1956) followed.
Jones studied composition (1957) in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen (teacher of Pierre Boulez) and then directed an 18-piece big band that toured in Europe and the U. S. He learned that survival as a musician demanded understanding the difference between music and the music business.
He helped discover "teen queen" singer Lesley Gore (1963), and produced some of her biggest hits, including "It's My Party". At the invitation of film director Sidney Lumet (1964) Jones began composing for The Pawnbroker - the first of 33 major motion picture scores he would eventually write.
Settling in Los Angeles, he began a prolific career as a film score composer. Among his film scores were Walk Don't Run, The Slender Thread, In the Heat of the Night, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, and The Color Purple. He also scored for television, including the shows Roots, Ironside, Sanford and Son and The Bill Cosby Show. He worked as an arranger for some of the most important artists of the 1960s, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Dinah Washington. Jones's solo recordings also garnered acclaim.
Jones is well known for his song "Soul Bossa Nova" (1962), which was revived in the Woody Allen film Take the Money and Run and the Mike Myers movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
His social activism began in the 1960s as a major supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After Dr. King's passing, Jones served on the board of Rev. Jesse Jackson's People United to Save Humanity (PUSH). An ongoing concern throughout Jones's career has been to foster appreciation of African-American music and culture : He helped form IBAM (the Institute for Black American Music). Proceeds from IBAM events were donated toward the establishment of a national library of African-American art and music. Jones is also one of the founders of the Black Arts Festival in his hometown, Chicago. He has worked closely with Bono of U2 on a number of philanthropic issues, and is the founder of the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, a nonprofit that connects youths with technology, education, culture and music.
Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Song category (1968). He received the honor of becoming the first African-American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony (1971).
Jones is the first (and so far only) African-American to be nominated as producer in the category Best Picture (1986, for The Color Purple). The film won eleven Oscar nominations and introduced Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to movie audiences. He is the first African-American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1991). Jones is tied (at seven) with sound designer Willie B. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African-American. He was presented with the Humanitarian Award at the 2008 BET Awards.
Quincy Jones and David Saltzman staged the concert spectacular "An American Reunion" to celebrate the inauguration of President Bill Clinton (1993). The pair formed a partnership called Quincy Jones/David Saltzman Entertainment (QDE), which encompasses multi-media programming for current and future technologies - including theatrical motion pictures and television. QDE also publishes VIBE magazine and produced the popular NBC-TV series "Fresh Prince of Bel Air."
At the same time, Jones runs his own record label - Qwest Records - and is Chairman and CEO of Qwest Broadcasting, one of the largest minority-owned broadcasting companies in the U.S. He has continued to produce hit records, including Back on the Block and Q's Jook Joint. His life and career were chronicled in the critically-acclaimed Warner Bros. documentary film Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones (1990). Q: The Autobiogaphy of Quincy Jones was published in 2001.