Quincy Jones Quotes
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When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.
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Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.
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When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it.
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I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.
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Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.
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Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.
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We stole a box of honey jars one time and went out in the woods and took care of the whole box. I don't think I touched honey again for 20 years. I never wanted to see honey again.
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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.
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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 lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'
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I've met every freak in the business.
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When I was 14, I would sit up in my room and write till my eyes would bleed.
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I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages.
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I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.
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I never felt like I had a mother.
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I've never been bored in my life, man. I've never been bored or lonely. Are you kidding? No way! I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to Greek to French, Swedish, Russian... How can you get bored?
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Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'
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My son is a hip-hop producer.
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Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.
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Unfortunately, America doesn't have a minister of culture, and I don't understand why. It's really bad for young people.
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I don't remember feeling love.
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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.
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Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
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I look back and say, "This must have been somebody else." I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.