NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of the most prolific and revered producers in music history” (Rolling Stone) recounts his moving life story and decades working alongside superstars like Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and dozens of others.
“[Jones] was orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. . . . His music opens one of the most-watched television events ever broadcast (Roots) and his production is behind the best-selling album ever recorded (Thriller).”—Wesley Morris, The New York Times
Quincy Jones grew up poor on the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side, brushing against the law and feeling the pain of his mother’s descent into madness. But when his father moved the family west to Seattle, he took up the trumpet and was literally saved by music. A prodigy, he played backup for Billie Holiday and toured the world with the Lionel Hampton Band before leaving his teens.
Soon, though, he found his true calling, inaugurating a career that included arranging albums for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Count Basie; composing the scores of such films as The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and The Color Purple; producing the bestselling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and the bestselling single “We Are the World”; and producing and arranging his own highly praised albums, including the Grammy Award–winning Back on the Block.
His musical achievements, in a career that spans every style of American popular music, yielded an incredible eighty Grammy nominations and twenty-eight wins, and are matched by his record as a pioneering music executive, film and television producer, tireless social activist, and business entrepreneur—one of the most successful black business figures in America.
Q is an impressive self-portrait by one of the master makers of American culture, a complex, many-faceted man with far more than his share of talents and an unparalleled vision, as well as some entirely human flaws.
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