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The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

Quincy Jones

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Quincy Jones
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: March 14
Actor
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Producer
Humanitarian
Instrumentalist
Jazz Musician
Jazz Trumpeter
Music Arranger
Chicago
Illinois
Q
Quincy
Quincy Delight Jones Jr.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr
Quincy Jones Jr.
People
Atrocious
Performers
Entertainment
Climate
Black
Business

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I'm just a musician and a record producer.
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My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.
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Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.
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A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.
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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.
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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.
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There's power in the collective. If you don't believe me, just watch a symphony orchestra with a conductor and 120 people who are thinking about exactly the same thing at the same moment - no babies, no stock markets, no mortgages. Just 32nd notes.
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To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.
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You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
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A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
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I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.
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After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.
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When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.
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China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right.
Quincy Jones
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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.
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Michael (Jackson) was so shy, he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat with my hands over my eyes-and the lights off.
Quincy Jones
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Every day you must be able to say, I have to get up because I'm needed by someone. As long as you have that, you're healthy.
Quincy Jones
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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.
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The only music I don't like is bad music.
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I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.
Quincy Jones