Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones grew up in Depression-era Chicago, where he later said every street seemed to have a gang. His father worked as a carpenter for the Jones Boys, a powerful Chicago gang. Young Quincy admired their guns, clothes, and command. With adults away at work and his mother in an institution, Jones and his brother spent long days in the street. He described the daily choice as running from gangs or with them.

Those circumstances explain the danger around him; they are not the behavior this story labels as trouble. Jones’s own conduct is the narrower issue. He stole, fought, carried a switchblade after the family moved to Washington, and said he and his brothers got into every kind of trouble they could imagine. At eleven, they broke into a neighborhood recreation center. Jones found a piano in a side room and stopped to touch it.

The instrument caught his attention. Discipline came from people. Jones joined school music groups, took up the trumpet, and practiced every day with a small band of friends. He also cut class to watch touring musicians at Seattle’s Palomar Theatre. Instead of admiring men for controlling a block, he began studying how musicians carried themselves, worked together, and mastered a room.

Older players let him close enough to learn. Trumpeter Clark Terry, coming home from performances at two or three in the morning, taught Jones at the only time the boy had available before school: 6:30 a.m. Terry corrected how he held the horn and taught him what not to do. Count Basie went further. Jones said Basie practically adopted him at thirteen. The bandleader became, in Jones’s words, manager, mentor, father, and brother.

The adults did not confuse access with readiness. At fifteen, Jones slipped onto Lionel Hampton’s band bus after Hampton invited him to tour. Hampton’s wife and business manager, Gladys, ordered him off: he was a child and had to return to school. She said they would call later. Jones was devastated. They did call, after high school and a scholarship had given him more time to prepare.

Basie remained in Jones’s life, found him work, and corrected him when disappointment clouded his judgment. Jones became an arranger, composer, record executive, film producer, and the producer of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Exceptional talent and relentless practice mattered, as did access to school instruments and Seattle’s musical community. The lasting family-like support was neither rescue nor indulgence. These adults gave Jones a demanding group to belong to, enforced its gates, and stayed long enough for him to grow inside it. He later connected his own mentoring of young people directly to what they had done for him.