• MUSIC • Happy Birthday, Quincy Jones!

This is the second (of four) blog entries for the month of March noting the milestone birthday of a person in music who I greatly appreciate.


Quincy Jones—spectacularly versatile and experienced—turns 85. He was born March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. Wikipedia describes “Q” as follows: “[Quincy Jones is] an American record producer, actor, conductor, arranger, composer, musician, television producer, film producer, instrumentalist, magazine founder, entertainment company executive, and humanitarian.”

When it comes to all that—why go on?!

There has been a whole lotta living in Quincy Jones—at least from what we know of his career, which dates back a good six decades—and he used to be married to Emmy nominated actress Peggy Lipton of the 1968–1973 ABC drama series The Mod Squad. They are the parents of actress Rashida Jones.

As you can see, from the below videos, Quincy Jones composed the opening theme music for the NBC comedy series The Bill Cosby Show (1969–1971) and Sanford and Son (1972–1977).

We know Quincy Jones perhaps most especially from his period of producing albums for the late Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (the 1983 Grammy winner for Album of the Year), and Bad (1987, another Album of the Year Grammy nomination). But, he also produced commercially successfully albums in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s under his name: Sounds…and Stuff Like That!! (1978); his 1981 Grammy nominee for Album of the Year, The Dude; and his 1990 Grammy winner for Album of the Year, Back on the Block. Jones won Producer of the Year Grammys for The Dude, Thriller, and Back on the Block.

Quincy Jones has received Oscar nominations for scoring In Cold Blood (1967), The Wiz (1978), and The Color Purple (1985), among his overall count of seven. Although he never won a competitive Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awarded Jones the 1994 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Quincy Jones won the 1976–77 [prime-time] Emmy for Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore) for the landmark ABC miniseries Roots.

Quincy Jones was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001.

To read up further on Quincy Jones: Wikipedia — Quincy Jones.


In the meantime, I will present ten [10] selections of music from Quincy Jones. (Although they are separate, the opening and closing theme to The Bill Cosby Show should really count as a two-part.)