Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones
Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

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Quincy Jones
Music: East side of the 1500 block of Vine Street
Composer | Musician | Record Producer
Born March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Ill.

One of pop music's most versatile and influential figures, Quincy Jones has excelled as a musician, composer, arranger, producer and executive. He started in jazz, learning trumpet as a teen in Seattle and studying in Boston at what would become the Berklee College of Music. In New York City, he did arrangements for Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey and others in the early '50s, then played in the bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie before releasing the first of his more than 55 albums. In 1961, he became the first high-ranking African American label executive when Mercury Records made him a vice president.

Other Jones collaborators included Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon, and he moved into film scoring with his work on “The Pawnbroker.” His most prominent projects involved Michael Jackson, for whom he produced “Off the Wall” and “Thriller,” as well as the USA for Africa session that yielded “We Are the World.” He was a different kind of producer for movies (“The Color Purple”) and television (“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”), and at the 1995 Academy Awards he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

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    Academy Awards

    Year Category Work
    1967 Best Original Score In Cold Blood Nomination
    1967 Best Song "The Eyes of Love" from Banning Nomination*
    1968 Best Song "For Love of Ivy" from For Love of Ivy Nomination*
    1978 Best Original Song Score and/or Adaptation The Wiz Nomination
    1985 Best Original Song "Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)" from The Color Purple Nomination*
    1985 Best Picture The Color Purple Nomination*
    1985 Best Original Score Quincy Jones, Jeremy Lubbock, Rod Temperton, Caiphus Semenya, Andrae Crouch, Chris Boardman, Jorge Calandrelli, Joel Rosenbaum, Fred Steiner, Jack Hayes, Jerry Hey, Randy Kerber Nomination*
    1994 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Win
    * A joint nomination shared with other people.

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