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Quincy Jones on being mentor of the year.
 

Tavis: I'm honored to welcome Quincy Jones back to this program. The legendary artist, producer, and humanitarian has worked with the biggest names in music for more than 50 years now. Names like Count Basie, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, and of course Michael Jackson. As I mentioned at the top, he's been nominated for 79 Grammy awards, more than any artist in all of music history.

Next week, he's being honored by Harvard as the recipient of their mentor of the year award. But tonight, I'm pleased to have the mentor of the year here in the studio with me. The Q is with us. Q, nice to see you.

Quincy Jones: You too, (unintelligible).

Tavis: Happy New Year to you.

Jones: Happy New Year to you.

Tavis: You been all right?

Jones: Yeah.

Tavis: I'm cracking up, man.

Jones: Missed you in Africa, though.

Tavis: I missed being in Africa, on the trip with Oprah.

Jones: Yeah.

Tavis: How was it?

Jones: Incredible. Really incredible. Great group. We went to Abu Dhabi first, and then Dubai, and then we went down to Botswana for New Year's Eve party, and those fools parties. Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, everybody. Tina Turner, it was (unintelligible). (Laugh) It was just great.

Tavis: I look at the folk on her plane, and it kind of reminded me of any number of evenings at your house.

Jones: Oh, please.

Tavis: Your house, seriously. Your house, for years, has been one of the spots in the city, perhaps the spot, where the most eclectic gathering of movers and shakers get together routinely. You can drop by your house on any night and bump into just about anybody.

Jones: And get in trouble.

Tavis: And get in trouble, exactly. (Laugh)

Jones: That's most important (unintelligible).

Tavis: And bump into just about anybody. Why is your house that place?

Jones: I don't know; it's probably the last place up there. You can't go any further. (Laugh) It's the last stop; it's a cul-de-sac, right?

Tavis: It is, but it's you, though, it's you. It's your personality.

Jones: It's great. It's really like a dream, because I waited a long time. I was always in the canyon. Canyons all over (unintelligible) lives, and whether it's (unintelligible) or here, and decided to get up and take a look.

Tavis: I told one of my friends one day, if I could do a tour of your house, I'd make so much money. What you've put into that house is so unbelievable. But I get the sense that you said if this is the last house I have, I'm gonna put everything in it.

Jones: That's right. That's right.

Tavis: And it's an amazing place.

Jones: Give it up. (Laugh)

Tavis: (Laugh) Or turn it loose, yeah.

Jones: It's true. 'Cause if you don't give it up for your dream, you don't deserve it. It's true.

Tavis: You walked on set and did as I thought you might, and handed me a book. (Laugh) I'm gonna put this one up. This is John Maxwell's book 'The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player.' And one of the persons in this book that he references in making his point about the qualities of a team player is none other than Quincy Jones.

I raise that only because I have never come to hang out with you anywhere (laugh) that you did not load me up with books before I left. It's like if you ever go to Quincy's house, you're not gonna leave without him giving you one or two books to read. So you, like, have a bookstore in your house.

Jones: No, but it's just this great way to transmit information. It really is. There are lot of books that are written now I wish had been written when I was young. Now, there's something on everything, almost.

Tavis: We know your music stuff, and we'll get to that in just a second. But for you to be passing out books to people who come to visit you, all kinds of stuff you give as assigned reading.

Jones: It's the young people, yeah.

Tavis: But where did that love for reading come for you?

Jones: As a kid. When I was 13, I guess, 12 and 13, bebop was an amazing influence on your life and your way of thinking. And I guess the best symbol is when you think of the songs that I've seen in my lifetime, 'Open the Door, Richard,' 'Heidy-Heidy-Heidy-Ho,' all of those things, 'Cement Mixer, Putty Putty.' The kind of innocent things, 'cause America was innocent till 1960.

And then in the bebop era in the forties, it started when - I used to watch Charlie Parker in New York at Charlie's Tavern, listening to the jukebox. Here's Stravinsky and all this other kind of music that's seriously in the art range, and he'd come out of Jay McShann's band, which was a blues band. Dizzy came out of Cab Calloway's band.

And they all landed in Earl Hines' band, and they met Miles, and Billy Eckstein, and all of them. They all left, and all the beboppers went, 'cause it was a revolution. Musical revolution. They all ended up with Billy Eckstein's band. Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, everybody. Miles, J.J. Johnson, all of them. Sarah Vaughn, they all left.

And that was, like, the spawning ground of the new music. And once that happened, psychologically, I guess, (unintelligible) says, 'I don't want to have to dance and sing and entertain the public. We want to be artists like Stravinsky or whatever, and just worry about our music.' And so, and the difference in the titles in contrast to 'Putty, Putty,' and 'Open the Door, Richard,' it was 'Ornithology,' (laugh) 'Epistrophy,' you know what I'm saying?

So it made us very inquisitive. Very nosy. And during that time, I don't know how it happened in the northwest, but we had, me and Ray Charles always used to say, 'Not one drop of my work depends on your acceptance of me.' We had to live like that then, because it was like we didn't exist (unintelligible). Not on TV, or anywhere. In the books, it didn't exist. And I'd come from a Chicago ghetto. It was all Black. So anyway, we had to; we were into all these books. I read the Qur'an at night, and I was 13 years old.

Tavis: At 13, you were reading the Qur'an.

Jones: 'Life And Teachings of the Masters of the Far East,' all of that stuff. (unintelligible) therapy, (unintelligible) we used to make them we were kids to capture energy. Even 'Dianetics,' with...

Tavis: L. Ron Hubbard, yeah.

Jones: L. Ron Hubbard. 'Dianetics' was out then, and something happened in Salt Lake City, and I didn't see him anymore. But then he reappeared in Scientology. But we were all over all of that stuff.

Tavis: Just reading everything.

Jones: When we were little. Just reading junkies, just that hunger for knowledge.

Tavis: You said something a moment ago, speaking of a hunger for knowledge, every time I'm with you, I'm soaking up everything I can. Let me go back to something you said a few minutes ago that I want to pick up on, and the comment was that you and Ray Charles both believed, and said to others, that not a drop of my success...

Jones: Self-worth.

Tavis: Self-worth. Not a drop of my success depends on...

Jones: No, my self-worth.

Tavis: My self-worth.

Jones: Depends on your acceptance of me. It's not letting an external force determine who you are. Because back then, it could happen. Because you're talking about radio, where we had Beulah and Rochester, who were servants. And we knew that 'Amos and Andy' was White, but radio had a big effect on our creativity back then.

We'd lie on the floor in the dark and make the Lone Ranger Black, The Shadow Black. (Laugh) It was all audio; nobody could do anything about it. The FCC didn't bother you.

Tavis: Yeah, the FCC couldn't (unintelligible) for that, yeah.

Jones: They couldn't find us. But then, it stimulates your imagination, and I was, at that age, a junkie in terms of creativity. Just all the big bands coming through. Because two years before, we'd come from Chicago, and all I'd seen in Chicago were Tommy guns and stogies, man. My daddy worked for the Jones Boys. You know who they are?

Tavis: I don't wanna know.

Jones: That's like the hood Corleones, man. Those are triple (unintelligible), trust me on that. (Laugh) (unintelligible) talking about this stuff today. They started a policy racket, it's the first Black owned business. This in the thirties and forties. And really looked like Italian brothers. They were unbelievable. (Laugh) And Eddie Jones, who my father worked for as a carpenter, they were amazing.

They had five and dime stores, which they called the Vs and Xs, in Roman numerals. (Laugh) And at a birthday party, I was seven years old, and his daughter was there. And she asked me to give her a haircut, and I cut it. All off. And got my booty beat up from Daddy.

Tavis: I'm sure you did. (Laugh)

Jones: And that was a dangerous guy to do it, too, 'cause her father was, like, the head of the Jones Boys. (Laugh) And so 35 years later, I go down to Mexico on the way back from Athens. Irvin Green (unintelligible) he said, 'I got a surprise for you,' 'cause he knew about this story. Walk in, and there's Eddie Jones. I couldn't believe it. (Laugh) Thirty-some years later.

And he said, 'You that little (unintelligible) that cut my daughter's hair off?' (Laugh) And I said, 'Yeah, I guess so.' And so, three weeks ago I found her number from Nathan Thompson. He did 'The Kings.' And he had the number. And she said, 'God, what a (unintelligible).' That was real close to my heart. And she was my date down in Miami when we opened the performing arts center down there. And '71, and you think of that time, she was five years old then. And then...

Tavis: These stories in your life always seem to go, like, all the way around.

Jones: No, but it's amazing, man. She was the most delightful, six languages, beautiful kids, and just very worldly. Just a delightful person.

Tavis: I wanna go back one more time, 'cause there's a point I wanna make here about that wonderful phrase again that you and Ray Charles shared. I'm not sure that exists in today's artist. That's why I wanted to go back and get that. Most artists - I shouldn't say most, but so many artists now are trying to make stuff that people want to hear or that they think will sell or climb the charts, as opposed to making what's inside here.

Jones: Well, that was just the opposite in our day. 'Cause number one, we didn't have the gall to think about fame or money. Man, I was pitiful, (unintelligible) money was a joke. And Basie, thank God, took me on. He was my mentor, my guru, and my brother, my father, my manager, everything, at 13 years old.

And he said, 'Young blood, sit down.' (Laugh) At the theater up there, Palomar. I used to skip school and go to Billy Eckstein (unintelligible), see them every day. Sit all day, listen to that music. But two years before that, we still had that (unintelligible) thing, and it was from Seattle. So we went to northwest, man, we took that very seriously.

Said, we could really do it here. In stores, and all the things you're not supposed to be doing. And while we were in the middle of doing that one time in an armory, we heard there was some lemon meringue pie and ice cream. So we broke in, ate up all the meringue pie till we couldn't eat any more. Then we had a fight with the food.

I was 11 years old. Then we started to individually go around and break in doors in there. This was a recreation center for us right near an army camp, right next to an army camp. And they'd put all the Black people up on the hill in Sinclair Heights. Very famous place now. I broke in this one room; it was the superintendent's office. A little spinet piano over in the corner. Almost closed the door.

And thank God something told me to go back in that room, and walked over to that piano, and hit the piano. And from there on in, every cell in my body says, 'This is what you're gonna do the rest of your life.'

Tavis: So, you stopped breaking in...

Jones: Tavis:

Tavis: You stopped acting a fool.

Jones: Stopped acting ignorant. (Laugh)

Tavis: Yeah. (Laugh) And picked up the music.

Jones: And stealing cases of honey and drinking up the whole thing, and not drinking honey again for 20 years, all of that silly stuff. (Laugh) And stayed in that room 24-seven with a piano, and then in the band room with the tuba, the baritone, B flat baritone horn, E flat alto, French horn, trombone. Played trombone in the marching band so I could be up next to the girl, the majorettes, you know what I'm saying?

Tavis: I understand. (Laugh)

Jones: I know you do. (Laugh) Gotta be practical. And then I really wanted to play trumpet, but in a marching band, the trombone's where it's at, 'cause they're right up front.

Tavis: Right by the majorettes, exactly.

Jones: That's right. That's right. In the concert band, I finally got my trumpet out.

Tavis: When you've been around doing what you do for so long now, there are a couple of generations, maybe even three, but certainly a couple of generations, who know you for your composing. For the folk that you have made famous, for the music that you have produced. But my generation and the one behind me don't really know you as an artist.

That is to say, they don't know you for your playing. How good were you?

Jones: I've been out here a long time. Been in the business 60 years.

Tavis: Were you as good a player as you are a producer and composer?

Jones: Listen, I played with Lionel Hampton, with Clifford Brown, and Art Farmer, and Bennett Bailey. (Laugh) You gotta be able to play a little bit. (Laugh)

Tavis: Yeah, there's your answer right there.

Jones: No, I could play, man. I'm never gonna profess to be like a Clifford or Art and Benny. And I remember when Clifford and I used to hang out at night. Clifford was a mathematics major from the university at Wilmington, Delaware. And that was his core skill, really. A fast thinker. He said, 'I wanna write like you're writing too, but I wanna play more.'

And I said, 'I wanna play like you play, (laugh) but I wanna write more.' 'Cause as soon as I picked up the trumpet, I started to hear French horns and trombones, and all these instruments and stuff. I was a junkie before I even started.

Tavis: So you made the right decision, 'cause the money is in the writing.

Jones: Well, it wasn't then.

Tavis: Well, it is now, though.

Jones: No way, man.

Tavis: Yeah.

Jones: Please, I used to get five dollars an arrangement in New York with some of these record companies in the fifties. Oh, it was rough out there in the fifties, though. There's a joke that we always tell about in New York City, when you're starving, nobody cares. They walk right over you. That you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

Tavis: Anywhere, exactly.

Jones: And especially in the fifties. And so you see a dude being held by his ankles out of a 33-story window, and his overcoat's over his head, (laugh) and somebody says, 'What's that?' They said, 'That's Jackie Wilson, renegotiating his contract.' (Laugh) It's true, man. It was cold-blooded in the fifties. Trust me; trust me. There were no Russells and Puffys. No, there was none of that stuff going on. Jay-Z, no way.

Tavis: One of the things that defines you is your being a survivor. Out of that rough and tough childhood, even to the brain aneurisms, you get real close to you; you can see the imprint on your head.

Jones: And the switchblade in my hand from seven.

Tavis: And the switchblade in your hand.

Jones: And the icepick here. (Laugh) Chicago didn't need automatic weapons. They'd take a clothespin and a strip of inner tube, right, with a string, and put the tongue of a shoe, and put a steel aggie in there, man, it'd wipe a nine millimeter out. (Laugh)

Tavis: What do you take, Q, from having survived all of this? The switchblade attack, the icepick to the head, a couple of brain aneurisms, what do you take from your surviving all of that to still be here?

Jones: I thank God every, three times a day. And I cherish it. I think you're supposed to take your mistakes, your misfortune, whatever, and study it, and cherish it, and use it, so you could do something different next time. Because we have a strange, this is a strange apparatus we have, where we make mistake after mistake after mistake.

We get in trouble and trouble over and over again, so the band-aid's all the way up here. And if some indefinable magical point, it all metamorphosizes into experience, they call it. He's got a lot of experience, 'cause he had a chance to mess up a lot, and to make some mistakes. You have to make some mistakes to learn. And if you don't take chances, you don't make mistakes.

Tavis: Okay, I buy that. It's one thing to make mistakes, take chances, and learning. I get that. The question is whether or not your having become an icon, your being a renaissance man has more to do with the fact that you're just more gifted than the rest of us, or the fact that you've taken more risk, you've taken more chances, you've tried harder.

There are very few people, when you say their name, it becomes almost impossible to define who they are and what they do. You're, like, at the top of that list, 'cause you've done so many different things, and done them all well. Is that because you're more gifted than the rest of us, or you've taken more risk?

Jones: No, no, I don't know how to evaluate that. I just notice that there's that, in the beginning, I think you have to really put a lot of time and energy and passion into your core skill. And that, to me, was orchestrating, composing, arranging, that's all I cared about. Four trumpets, four trombones, five saxes, and bass, piano, drums, and guitar.

And when I first saw those bands, I didn't know where I was supposed to belong in the world, and that's the way it was up there. And I started to see these bands come through, and I'd see these brothers with the music that's all torn, they're playing it so much. Fantastic musicians. It was like a family, it was everybody's playing something different, but they were doing it together. And it had a family, and it had a whole unity and dignity. And I don't know, I said, 'This is the family I want to be...'

Tavis: Okay, you perfected that, Q, but then how do you explain...

Jones: Twenty-eight years.

Tavis: Okay, but how do you explain - I got you, and...

Jones: But once you understand that, Frank Gehry's a friend of mine, and we always tease...

Tavis: The great architect.

Jones: Yes, he's amazing. He's Pisces, too. (Laugh) A maniac like me.

Tavis: Who was it that you have that same birthday with? Michael Caine.

Jones: Michael Caine, Billy Crystal, and Prince Albert. And Einstein, but he's not here.

Tavis: That might be the answer, right there.

Jones: He hasn't shown up yet.

Tavis: (Laugh) That might be the answer, you and Einstein born on the same day. Maybe that's the answer I was looking for.

Jones: He didn't even finish school, man. (Laugh) But it's amazing how once you understand a music discipline, especially as a composer and arranger and an orchestrator, orchestration is really serious to me. It's Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, all of them. Alvin Berg. It's the foundation, really, of writing. If you can deal with big orchestras, the distribution of all of these instruments.

So Gehry, back to Gehry, he always says, 'Quincy, if they call architecture frozen music, then music must be liquid architecture.' And it is architecture. But it's emotional architecture.

Tavis: I got the music part, but then that doesn't explain producing movies, producing hit TV shows, starting magazines. It doesn't explain etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That's the part of that iconic status...

Jones: But the core skill teaches you how to figure it out. How does it work? That built on my curiosity. When I first started studying with Madame Boulanger in Paris, I said, 'I'd really like to get deeper in orchestration, Madame Boulanger.' And she said, 'Take the first 25 bars of Ravel's 'Daphnis Et Chloe,' which is all transposed for each instrument of the orchestra, put it all back down in concert, put it on a six-line sketch.'

'Cause the whole 120-piece orchestra all can be done in a six-line sketch, right? And once I did that, she says, 'Do that, the first 25 bars.' I brought it back to her, she says, 'Now transpose it up through all 12 keys.' And she said, 'After that, we'll talk.' You'll know what I'm talking about. And she was right; because that taught me that French horns have sustaining qualities, but no attack.

So you put two double-stop, the viola section and the cello section and the harp on the attack, and let the French horns do, all of that. And it just, all the woodwind little pyramids, and so forth. It just opened up the door. And I got it.

Tavis: We didn't, but thanks for explaining it. (Laugh)

Jones: (Laugh) I'm sorry.

Tavis: It sounded good the way you explained it, though.

Jones: I'm sorry, man.

Tavis: I could tell you knew what you were talking about.

Jones: No, but it just gets...

Tavis: This mentoring award is huge. They should have given this to you a long time ago, mentor of the year. I think of all the people, and I consider myself at the bottom of that list.

Jones: Oh, please.

Tavis: But I think of all the people that you have...

Jones: Don't even try it, Tavis.

Tavis: No, I'm serious, I think of all the people...

Jones: Don't even try it.

Tavis: ...you have mentored, the list is so long. Oprah at the top, and so many other people on that list of mentoring. What is it for you that makes it such a joy to help other people get these careers off the ground...Oprah and Will and so many other people?

Jones: Because they give it to me. They did it to me. Count Basie, Ray Charles, Clark Terry. They did it. Billy Taylor did it for me. Benny Carter, man, puts you on his shoulder and walks you into the lot at the television department in Universal to Stanley Wilson. They did, man. These guys gave. They were just incredible. And it becomes a habit, because if you receive, you give.

It just seems very natural to me to see a little kid, whether it's in Soweto or Philadelphia. And you identify with it. Number one, I can never forget where I came from. (Laugh) And you always identify with it, be it Cambodia or Africa, wherever. You identify with it.

Tavis: Speaking of Cambodia, Africa, I've been blessed to travel a couple of places around the world with you, and you never seem to stop traveling. I get the sense that you don't do it just 'cause you ain't got nothing better to do. Traveling must do something for you, 'cause every time I call you trying to find you, you're in some part of the world.

Jones: Absolutely. There's no question about it. And every time - I was, again, Ben Webster, who's a great jazz legend, saxophonist, told me, again, young blood, I was getting ready to go overseas with Lionel Hampton at 19. He says, 'Wherever you go in the world, remember to eat the food the people eat, listen to the music they listen to, absorb it, eat it.' (Laugh) That, too. 'And learn 30 or 40 words in every language.'

And I took that very literal. I learned (unintelligible), Turkish, Greek, French, Swedish. Just get to the words. Italian, Japanese, whatever. I'm studying Mandarin now, and Arabic. (Laugh) Please, man, you better study some Mandarin now. (Laugh) China's getting ready to eat your lunch, man.

You better believe it. I've been there three times this year, in Beijing. Spielberg...

Tavis: Three times...

Jones: I just got appointed to, with Spielberg and Ang Lee, to be the advisors, the creative consultants for the Olympic Beijing, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Tavis: So you're still going, man.

Jones: Absolutely.

Tavis: Still going strong.

Jones: Absolutely, man.

Tavis: Quincy Jones ain't going nowhere no time soon.

Jones: No way.

Tavis: And we are all the better for it. I didn't need Harvard to tell me that he is a great mentor, but I'm so glad that Harvard figured that out and has named Quincy Jones the mentor of the year. Q, I love you, and it's always a pleasure to have you here.

Jones: Love you too, man.

Tavis: Stay strong, man.

Jones: You, too.

Tavis: That's our show tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Our radio podcast available now at TavisTalks.com. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.