Jones got his start in the late nineteen-forties as a trumpeter, but he soon mastered the art of arranging jazz—turning tunes and melodies into written music for jazz ensembles. He also mastered the art of turning great musicians into close friends, and, in time, the art of turning close friends into great musicians.
He has been a musician, a record executive, and a Hollywood mogul, and every few years he has brought together famous musician friends to make the kind of slick, funky pop music that taught a generation of listeners to dislike jazz. Quincy Delight Jones, Jr.
Sarah, his mother, was a schizophrenic, and was institutionalized for a time when Quincy was eight. He and his younger brother, Lloyd, were shuttled to Louisville to stay with their grandmother, a former slave whose culinary specialty involved a rat and a skillet.
In , the boys moved back to Chicago to live with their father, Quincy, Sr. The Joneses lived in a South Side neighborhood known as the Bucket of Blood, and Quincy fondly remembers a childhood of knife fights and petty theft. Sarah never again lived with the Jones family, but she followed them around the country, surfacing every few years, like an obsessed fan.
Quincy, Sr. There, at the age of eleven, Quincy stumbled upon a piano at a local recreation center. Behind them sat the potheads—that was our group. On the other side sat the drinkers. In the back sat the mainliners. Jones spent the next decade in and around New York City, establishing himself as a gifted bandleader, but after an unsuccessful European tour with his ensemble in he decided that he needed a change. He got an A. While at Mercury, Jones developed a reputation for versatility, discovering the pop singer Lesley Gore as he was writing charts for Count Basie.
