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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.
Climate
Black
Business
People
Atrocious
Performers
Entertainment

More quotes by Quincy Jones

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The people who make it to the top - whether they're musicians, or great chefs, or corporate honchos - are addicted to their calling ... [they] are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid.
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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.
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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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Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit
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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.
Quincy Jones
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Communications are making this one world. Back in the day, 400-500 years ago, nobody knew what anyone else was doing. It's on the 6 O'Clock news now. Now we can say, Oh, that's the way they live. Oh, they do that!! Opportunities, the chance to bring about change, it's all based on communication. Communication and jet planes.
Quincy Jones
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I'm just a musician and a record producer.
Quincy Jones
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You have to know that your real home is within.
Quincy Jones
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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.
Quincy Jones
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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.
Quincy Jones
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I go to the favelas in Brazil. It's the same in the South Side of Chicago. It's the same, or just more violent. We're trying to get them to stop selling dope. You see kids with AK-47s, and nine-year-olds with nine millimeters. You know, they don't play. They make us look like nuns.
Quincy Jones
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You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.
Quincy Jones
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Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'
Quincy Jones
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My son is a hip-hop producer.
Quincy Jones
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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!
Quincy Jones
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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.
Quincy Jones
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I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.
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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A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that's the bottom line.
Quincy Jones
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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