Quincy Jones Wiki: Record Producer, Net Worth, 'The Secret Garden' & Facts To Know

You can’t withstand Quincy Jones. He is a funny old man who doesn’t have to be on stand-up stage to make you break with laughter. Jones got guts too, and with all the experience he has gathered from the entertainment industry, he is never afraid of speaking about anything and can roast anyone stating that he is only speaking the truth. What even makes him record producer untouchable is his always dines and rides with prominent people and the wealthiest in America. Jones spent most his life with Michael Jackson and with that alone, he had a lot of advantage of meeting the greatest people in the world. Quincy Jones is not only a record producer but everything else. By everything else I mean he is a Jack of all trades in the entertainment industry. Jones is an actor, composer, arranger, musician, film producer, television producer, magazine founder, film producer, entertainment company executive, humanitarian and many more. The 85-year-old Quincy Jones was born on the South Side of Chicago. His mother, Sarah Frances passed in 1999 while his father, Quincy Jones Sr. made his final bow in 1971. Jones Sr. was born in Kentucky and was a semi-pro baseball player and a carpenter. Jones’s grandma from his father’s side was an ex-slave in Louisville and she was married to a Welsh gentleman. Jones’s family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration from the South. His mom worked as a bank officer and a manager at an apartment complex. The record producer had a brother known as Lloyd Jones who was an engineer and worked at the Seattle television station, KOMO-TV before he passed on in 1998. Jones’s mother always sung religious songs and she introduced music to Quincy Jones. Another person who made Jones love music was his neighbor, Lucy Jackson. She would play stride piano and Jones would listen through the walls. One day he heard her and went to her piano and she couldn’t get him off her piano. When Quincy Jones and his brother Lloyd were young, their mother, Frances suffered from a schizophrenic breakdown and was put in a mental institution. Jones Sr. divorced her and married Elvera Jones who had three kids of her own, Theresa, Katherine, and Waymond their first born who was Quincy’s friend. After the couple moved to the Northwest, they had three kids together namely Jeanette, Margie, and Richard who became a judge in Seattle. Quincy Jones and his family moved to Washington in 1943 after the war and settled in Seattle where he joined Garfield High School. He developed his skills as an arranger and a trumpeter while in high school and he shared a class with notable people like Charles Taylor and Evelyn Bundy.

Quincy Jones believes that if he wouldn’t have got much experience playing for a band if he was in a bigger city than he was in. Otherwise, he would have faced a lot of competition. After he turned 14, the record producer introduced himself to Ray Charles, who was just 16 back then. Charles inspired Jones because he overcame glaucomatic blindness to his build his music career. In 1951, Jones was lucky enough to secure a scholarship to Seattle University but was there for only one semester and transferred to Berklee College of Music located in Boston after getting yet another scholarship. While studying at Berklee, he would perform at Izzy Ort’s bar and Grille alongside Bunny Campbell and Preston Sandiford who were his influences. Jones dropped out of college after he got an offer to tour as a trumpeter with Lionel Hampton. While on the road, he flaunted his gift of arranging songs and after the tour was over, he relocated to New York City where he became a freelance arranger and worked for various stars. He has built a net worth doing what he loves and worked on albums and songs like “The Secret Garden”, “Soul Bossa Nostra”, “Ai No Corrida”, “The Dude”, “Back on the Block”, “Big Band Bossa Nova”, and “Body Heat.”

Quincy Jones talked about the good, bad and ugly in an interview with Vulture. He touched on a variety of topics including his experiences with the legendary king of pop, Michael Jackson and who killed John F. Kennedy. The record producer also talked about his mistakes, specifically his 2010 record, “Soul Bossa Nostra” which he featured several artists. He said that he didn’t want to do it, but rappers wanted to record something as a tribute to him where they were supposed to versions of songs he had done in his career. Jones mentioned T-Pain who recorded “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) with the singer, Robin Thicke, where he told them that they had to make the music better than the originals, but they didn’t do as he had ordered them to. T-Pain heard all that and he took to Twitter to respond to the remarks made by “The Secret Garden”, “Soul Bossa Nostra”, “Ai No Corrida”, “The Dude”, “Back on the Block”, “Big Band Bossa Nova”, and “Body Heat” maker. He said that he told Jones face that he didn’t want to remake of his past records because he was afraid of messing up and he didn’t think he could do it like MJ and even though they still put him in the booth, he came out and heard the song, but it didn’t sound right to him. He told him that he wasn’t comfortable doing the song but he didn’t care and so Jones shouldn’t blame him. Pain ended his rant against the record producer saying that Jones was just pissed off at the entire world but maintained that he had respect for Quincy Jones. There is more that Quincy Jones said in that interview that is a bit hilarious.

“The Secret Garden”, “Soul Bossa Nostra”, “Ai No Corrida”, “The Dude”, “Back on the Block”, “Big Band Bossa Nova”, and “Body Heat” maker is considered one of the wisest men in music and one of the most exciting stars in the world today. Jones Vulture interview is already considered the biggest interview in 2018, yet we are in the first quarter of the year. Below are some of the answers Jones gave.

This was the real killer of the whole interview. Quincy said that Marlon Brando a.k.a. “The Godfather” was not only bi-sexual but also slept with popular lack male stars such as Marvin Gaye, comedian Richard Pryor and James Baldwin. In fact, Pryor’s widow, Jennifer confirmed. Jones said that Brando was the most charming “mother*****” he ever met and he would “f***” anything including a mailbox, Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye and James Baldwin. When the interviewer asked Jones how he knew he told him that Brando was an open book. Brando was open that he was bi-sexual and he passed on in 2004.

Quincy Jones was the closest non-relative to Michael Jackson. Jones said that MJ couldn’t keep his hands off other artist’s songs. One instance was MJ taking Donna Summer’s “State of Independence” and making “Billie Jean” out of it as Quincy Jones watched. He also said that MJ was greedy and even refused a songwriter his 1o percent for a song they had agreed on. That’s not the only thing Jones said about the late king of pop. He mentioned a time when he asked MJ why he did plastic surgery and Mike told him he had a disease, but Jones knew he was lying. His father even told him he was ugly.

Quincy Jones, just like the majority of celebrities, roasted Trump after he got a chance in the interview. The only nice thing he said was “megalomaniac” before he dropped a bombshell. Quincy Jones stated that he dated Ivanka Trump who is Trump’s favorite daughter, 12 years ago. Tommy Hilfiger was working with his daughter Kidada told him that Ivanka wanted to have dinner with him and he accepted. The record producer told his interviewer that Ivanka was fine and had the most beautiful legs he ever saw in his whole life, but there was something amiss in her, she had the wrong father. Quincy Jones has got no chills.

At 85, Quincy Jones lived through what was perhaps the worst times in the world. He saw the rise of and fall of Hitler and lived in the ‘60s, but Quincy Jones believes now to be the worst moment the United States has ever been through. The worst time the country has ever been through is what every American and the whole world is seeing right now. He mentioned that people are trying to fix it and there is feminism where women are saying they won’t take it anymore and racism which people are still fighting. Jones thinks it is God pushing the bad in people’s faces to make them fight back.

Talking about Taylor Swift, Jones made it clear about his feelings about rock and roll, describing it as a white version of R&B. He then went ahead to acknowledge that The Beatles are believed to be the greatest rock band of all time, he had no love for them. The record producer stated that they were a ‘no playing’ act and the worst musicians ever to have lived in this world. Well, every artist has those who love his music and those who don’t, so it’s just fine if he never liked their music.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Quincy Jones has a net worth of a whopping $400 million. With all that net worth, he is among the top ten wealthiest celebrities in the US. He has made his net worth from projects like “The Secret Garden”, “Soul Bossa Nostra”, “Ai No Corrida”, “The Dude”, “Back on the Block”, “Big Band Bossa Nova”, and “Body Heat.”

A story is told about Quincy Jones attending his memorial service in 1974. Everyone thought he would die from aneurysms and in the last days, his family and friends organized a memorial service and he talked to his neurologist to allow him to attend. He did attend the service, but he survived and buried his family members instead, starting with his father in the 80s. He has a very interesting life, and you can’t help loving him.