{"product_id":"q-isbn-9780767905107","title":"Q","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER • “One of the most prolific and revered producers in music history” (\u003ci\u003eRolling Stone\u003c\/i\u003e) recounts his moving life story and decades working alongside superstars like Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and dozens of others. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“[Jones] was orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. . . . His music opens one of the most-watched television events ever broadcast (\u003ci\u003eRoots\u003c\/i\u003e) and his production is behind the best-selling album ever recorded (\u003ci\u003eThriller\u003c\/i\u003e).”—Wesley Morris,\u003ci\u003e The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQuincy Jones grew up poor on the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side, brushing against the law and feeling the pain of his mother’s descent into madness. But when his father moved the family west to Seattle, he took up the trumpet and was literally saved by music. A prodigy, he played backup for Billie Holiday and toured the world with the Lionel Hampton Band before leaving his teens. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSoon, though, he found his true calling, inaugurating a career that included arranging albums for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Count Basie; composing the scores of such films as \u003ci\u003eThe Pawnbroker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eIn Cold Blood\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eIn the Heat of the Night\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Color Purple\u003c\/i\u003e; producing the bestselling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s \u003ci\u003eThriller\u003c\/i\u003e, and the bestselling single “We Are the World”; and producing and arranging his own highly praised albums, including the Grammy Award–winning \u003ci\u003eBack on the Block\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHis musical achievements, in a career that spans every style of American popular music, yielded an incredible eighty Grammy nominations and twenty-eight wins, and are matched by his record as a pioneering music executive, film and television producer, tireless social activist, and business entrepreneur—one of the most successful black business figures in America. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eQ\u003c\/i\u003e is an impressive self-portrait by one of the master makers of American culture, a complex, many-faceted man with far more than his share of talents and an unparalleled vision, as well as some entirely human flaws.“Undeniably fascinating.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An appealingly convivial blur of deal-making celebrity anecdotes and professional   comebacks . . . Jones is so open that he seems transparent: You can see a whole world   of popular music in him.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Jones’s richly anecdotal autobiography . . . is   a well-orchestrated memoir.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eQuincy Jones \u003c\/b\u003ewas an impresario in the broadest and most creative sense of the word. His career encompassed the roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record company executive, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur, and humanitarian. He died in November 2024.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Promise\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I remember the cold. It was a stinging, backbreaking, bone-chilling   Kentucky-winter cold, the kind of cold that makes you feel like you're freezing from   the inside out, the kind of cold that makes you feel like you'll never be warm again.   I had no music in me then, just sounds, the shrill noise the back door made when   it creaked open, the funny grunts my little brother Lloyd made while we slept together,   the tight, muffled squeals that rats made when the rat traps snapped them in half.   My grandmother did not believe in wasting anything. She had nothing to waste. She   cooked whatever she could get her hands on. Mustard greens, okra, possum, chickens,   and rats, and me and Lloyd ate them all. We ate the fried rats because we were nine   and seven years old and we did what we were told. We ate them because my grandma   could cook them well. But most of all, we ate them because that's all there was to   eat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My mother had gone away sick one day and she never came back. That's all we   knew. That's all my father told us. \"She's gone away sick and she'll be back soon,\"   was what he said, but \"soon\" turned into months and years, so the two of us had left   Chicago and gone to Louisville to stay with Grandma. Laying in bed at night in my   grandma's house, I could remember the night before my mother left us. We were downstairs   in the living room back home in South Side Chicago during the Depression, Lloyd and   Daddy and me, and we heard a crash and the noise of a window breaking, and we ran   upstairs and I felt the rush of cold air and saw my mother at the broken window looking   out into the street. She was wearing only a housedress, standing in the freezing   nighttime air, the snow blowing in on her face, and she was singing, \"\u003ci\u003eOhh, ohh, ohh,   ohh--oh, somebody touched me and it must have been the hand of the Lord.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As a young   boy, I thought it was odd for my mother to sing out the window. She played piano   and sang in church, but my mother was a private woman, solid and proper. She never   spoke out of turn like that. She did not like loud things or loud people, but her   behavior had become more and more strange. She had frequent fainting spells. She   would yell at us for no reason. She quoted the Bible and scribbled notes endlessly.   The lines around her eyes seemed to grow tighter and tighter every day. Her angry   outbursts were crushing affairs, sometimes lasting for days.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My daddy never knew   what to do when my mother had spells like this. He was not a complicated man. He   was a carpenter for the Jones Boys, the black gangsters who ran the ghetto back in   Chicago -- the policy rackets, the Jones five-and-dime stores -- the V and X, as   they were known in the 'hood. When my Aunt Mabel asked him once why he worked for   hoods and hustlers, he made a funny face and said, \"Gangsters need carpenters, too.   They're no worse than the gangsters who won't give me jobs.\" He grew up in Lake City,   South Carolina, so I was told, but to be honest I never knew exactly where he was   really from. I'd heard his father was a white man-- either Irish or Welsh-- who had   killed somebody, and Daddy had to get out of the South because of this, which made   as much sense as anything else in my life, because since my mother left us, nothing   seemed solid except the black space in my stomach. Daddy was a quiet man, with smooth   straight hair, soft brown eyes, and firm face. His shoulders were broad, his arms   were thick and muscled, and his hands were gigantic, huge iron fists with fingers   as thick as cigars. He'd been a catcher with the Metropolitan Baptist Church team   in the Negro Leagues -- he even caught the great Satchel Paige once -- and all those   years of catching baseballs with a thin mitt had smashed his fingers and made them   flat and crooked. He could bend the first knuckle of each hand and hold them out   like claws. His fingers were so strong that he could make a circle with his forefinger   and thumb and pop you upside the head so hard it felt like a bullet smashing through   your skin. My brother and I called that \"the Thump Bump,\" and when he thumped you,   it stung for hours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He tried to talk to my mother as she stood by the window singing.   He said, \"Get ahold of yourself, Sarah,\" but she ignored him and kept singing, so   he turned away and went downstairs. As he swept past me I heard him mutter something,   so I ran to my mother and told her what he said: \"Daddy's gonna send you away,\" I   said, but she didn't hear me. She stood with her back to me, staring out the window,   and the next morning my daddy came back upstairs with two ambulance attendants in   white and one of them said, \"Mrs. Jones, you wanna come get your luggage and things?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She looked over at him without a word, so he said, \"Either you come or we'll carry   you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She said, \"Can I take my Bible?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He said, \"You can take it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She slowly   picked up her Bible, then suddenly darted for the door to escape, but the two men   grabbed her and threw her down on the bed, spread-eagled. She kicked and screamed   as they threw a straightjacket on her and carried her out. We followed her downstairs   and sat on the steps. Lucy Jackson held Lloyd on her lap and covered his eyes with   her hands. I sat next to them, crying, and covered my eyes too, singing the same   song, \"\u003ci\u003eOhh, ohh, ohh, ohh -- oh, somebody touched me and it must have been the hand   of the Lord.\" \u003c\/i\u003eAnd just like that she was gone -- for days, weeks, months, who knows   how long. Soon after, my daddy packed us up and the three of us headed to St. Louis   to stay with relatives, then back to Chicago, then back to St. Louis again, till   Daddy finally gave up and took us to Louisville to stay with his mother. Then he   left.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We didn't hate it in Louisville. We didn't like it either. My grandma's house   was a shotgun shack near the Ohio River with no electricity. We drew our water from   a well in her backyard. We got our heat from a black potbellied coal stove. We used   kerosene lamps and bathed in a big tin washtub. We slept in the kitchen on a cot   next to the back door, which was held closed with a rusty bent nail. When the door   was closed in the daytime, you could see daylight all around the doorframe. At night   we slept with socks on our hands and feet so the rats wouldn't nibble our fingers   and toes. In the wintertime, the floor was frozen and wet in the morning. In summer,   it was like fire and the smell of old pee stung my nostrils constantly. Breakfast   was grits, lunch was nonexistent, and dinner was whatever my grandmother would find   that would fry. The teachers at the Samuel T. Coleridge Colored School wanted to   make examples of us as strangers and would march Lloyd and me to the back of the   classroom every morning and make us take our shoes off and scrub the dirt off our   feet and faces with commercial Lifebuoy soap while the other kids cackled. We had   no hot water for washing. They seemed to have no idea who we were. My grandmother   didn't understand the 1940 Jefferson County school system either, only the notion   that we had to go there. Grandma was a proud, strong woman, a former slave; she was   thin, rangy, coal-black, wise, and old. She had African beliefs, like hanging asafetida,   a horrid-smelling gumlike bark-and-garlic concoction, on a string around our necks   to ward off colds, fever, and bad spirits. She led us to the Baptist church every   Sunday and spoke in a tongue that me and Lloyd could barely understand. She had been   born a slave and used African words we never heard of, like \"mwena\" for \"kids.\" She'd   say, \"Mwena, come over here and lift this tub,\" or \"Mwena, go down yonder to the   river and catch me some rats.\" She told us that the more the rats wiggle their tails,   the better they'd taste, so we'd wait by the river, snatch up the biggest ones we   could find by the tail, and stuff them in a burlap sack. We were free to roam in   Kentucky, that part we liked, but at night it was cold and lonely in that dark shotgun   shack and it was too much for me, because I wanted my parents. I was mad at them   both, but more mad at my daddy, because he was the one who kept it together. Daddy   was the one who was solid. Daddy was the one who said we'd always be together. My   brother Lloyd, 16 1\/2 months younger than me, would cry at night for his daddy, and   one night as we lay in bed, he asked, \"Did Daddy go away 'cause he's mad at us?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Stop whining,\" I said. \"He'll be back.\" I had a faint recollection of Daddy promising   to come back, but I wasn't sure. He'd been gone a long time. We'd been there a year.   Nothing seemed certain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I didn't hear him sayin' nothin' about coming back,\" Lloyd   said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He'll be back,\" I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Well, if he's coming back, he oughta come on them.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Who needs him anyway?\" I said. \"Stop crying' like a kindygarden baby.\" But deep   inside I was scared and nervous, and each night I fell asleep with my teeth chattering   from cold and my heart buried someplace near my feet, until that winter night in   1941 when I heard the back door creak open and I saw a huge shadow blocking the entrance,   the breath coming from his mouth in clouds as he moved inside, lit a kerosene lamp,   which Grandma called coal oil, and sat down, sighing. My fear and anger dissipated   like water as me and Lloyd scrambled out of the bed and landed in his lap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"You   promise me you won't go away and leave us no more,\" I sobbed. \"Promise.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I promise.\"   My daddy said. And he kept his word.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233497329893,"sku":"NP9780767905107","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767905107.jpg?v=1767735253","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/q-isbn-9780767905107","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}