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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.
Atrocious
Performers
Entertainment
Climate
Black
Business
People

More quotes by Quincy Jones

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It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.
Quincy Jones
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Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn't wait to get out of there.
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All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying Nobody can put a boundary around me.
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I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.
Quincy Jones
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Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.
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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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All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.
Quincy Jones
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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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Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.
Quincy Jones
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Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit
Quincy Jones
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I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.
Quincy Jones
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Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.
Quincy Jones
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Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.
Quincy Jones
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I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.
Quincy Jones
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Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.
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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Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.
Quincy Jones
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Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.
Quincy Jones
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Im probably the only one in the world you can name thats worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. Fly Me to the Moon was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. Im the only one.
Quincy Jones
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I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.
Quincy Jones