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Music Was The One Thing I Could Control. It Was The One World That Offered Me Freedom. When I Played Music, My Nightmares Ended. My Family Problems Disappeared. I Didnt Have To Search For Answers. The Answers Lay No Further Than The Bell Of My Trumpet And My Scrawled, Pencilled Scores. Music Made Me Full, Strong, Popular, Self-reliant And Cool.

-Quincy Jones

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Music Was The One

Quincy Jones

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Music Was The One Thing I Could Control. It Was The One World That Offered Me Freedom. When I Played Music, My Nightmares Ended. My Family Problems Disappeared. I Didnt Have To Search For Answers. The Answers Lay No Further Than The Bell Of My Trumpet And My Scrawled, Pencilled Scores. Music Made Me Full, Strong, Popular, Self-reliant And Cool.

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My Daddy Was A Carpenter That Worked With The Jones Boys, Who Are The Most Notorious In America. The Black Gangsters, You Know, They Were No Joke. And He Was Their Master Carpenter. He Used To Build Their Homes, And All I Saw When I Was 11 Years Old Were Dead Bodies And Tommy Guns And Stogies, And Backrooms, You Know, Drexel Wine And Liquor, With The Big Piles Of Money Underneath.

To Me It's No Accident That All The Symphony Orchestras Around The World Tune Up To The Note A. And A Is 440 Cycles, Except In Germany Where It's 444. But The Universe Is 450 Cycles. So What I'm Trying To Say Is, I Think It's God's Voice, Melody Especially. Counterpoint, Retrograde Inversion, Harmony... That's The Science And The Craft.

It's Very Freaky In Chicago.there's Something In The Water There, I Don't Know What It Is. But The Actual Word Chicago Means, In The Indian Language, Garlic. It Was Just Garlic And Mosquitoes There. And That Is The Roughest City On The Planet, And I Been To Every Place In The World.

Eight Kids And A Stepmother, And I Just Wanted To Be Out Of There And So When I Got A Scholarship From Boston To The Schillinger House, Which Is Now The Berklee School Of Music, I Couldn't Wait To Get Out Of There.

Young People Should Travel, And They Don’t. You Can’t Know If You Don’t Go.

My Dream Is To Put Together A Performance Of The Evolution Of Black Music With Cirque Du Soleil . I Would Also Like To Do Street Opera And Children's Books. But Even As I Work Toward These Things, I Want To Simplify My Life.

A Song Should Have All The Color And Beauty Of Every Rose.

I Was Raised In Chicago And I Guess That Was One Of The Special Breeding Grounds For Gangsters Of All Colors. That Was The Detroit Of The Gangster World. The Car Industry Was Thugs.

Benny [carter] Opened The Eyes Of A Lot Of Producers And Studios, So That They Could Understand That You Could Go To Blacks For Other Things Outside Of Blues And Barbecue. He's A Total Musician. He Was The Pioneer, He Was The Foundation. He Made It Possible For That Doubt To Be Taken Away.

I Went With Lionel Hampton For Three Years. Out Of That Came A Trip To Europe.

I Don't Deserve A Songwriters Hall Of Fame Award. But Fifteen Years Ago, I Had A Brain Operation And I Didn't Deserve That, Either. So I'll Keep It.

I've Met Every Freak In The Business.

The Only Music I Don't Like Is Bad Music.

I've Always Thought That A Big Laugh Is A Really Loud Noise From The Soul Saying, "ain't That The Truth."

It Has Been Proven Time And Time Again In Countless Studies That Students Who Actively Participate In Arts Education Are Twice As Likely To Read For Pleasure, Have Strengthened Problem-solving And Critical Thinking Skills, Are Four Times More Likely To Be Recognized For Academic Achievement, Four Times More Likely To Participate In A Math And Science Fair.

China's Got A Billion People And A Hit Record Over There Is A Million Records. You Know That Ain't Right.

Greatness Occurs When Your Children Love You, When Your Critics Respect You And When You Have Peace Of Mind.

I Never Felt Like I Had A Mother.

You Can Study Orchestration, You Can Study Harmony And Theory And Everything Else, But Melodies Come Straight From God.

I Used To Practice Piano For Hours, And Now, With A Synthesizer, You Can Input The Music And The Machine Perfects The Song. That's Why We Have So Many People In The Music Business Who Should Be Plumbers. They Don't Really Understand Music Because They Haven't Been Trained.

We Stole A Box Of Honey Jars One Time And Went Out In The Woods And Took Care Of The Whole Box. I Don't Think I Touched Honey Again For 20 Years. I Never Wanted To See Honey Again.

The Climate In The '50s And '60s For Black Performers Or Black People In The Entertainment Business Was Atrocious. It Was Atrocious.

Editing While You're Writing Is Like Strangling The Baby In The Crib.

You Cannot Get An A If You're Afraid Of Getting An F.

What Happens When You Get A Big Break And You Haven't Prepared Yourself? That Becomes The Biggest Mistake You've Ever Made. I See It Happen All The Time.

Biggest Mistake

Jazz Has The Power To Make Men Forget Their Differences And Come Together... Jazz Is The Personification Of Transforming Overwhelmingly Negative Circumstances Into Freedom, Friendship, Hope, And Dignity.

Empty The Cup Every Time And It Comes Back At Twice As Full. I Developed That Attitude When I Was Very, Very Young, When I Decided I Didn't Want To Be A Gangster Anymore. Whether It's Just Shining Shoes, I Said Okay, I'm Going To Do This Better Than Anybody Else Did It In My Life.

You Want Your Parents To Say, "hey, I'm Proud Of You." When You Don't Hear That, You Learn To Compensate. You Say, "hell, I Don't Need Their Approval. If I Get My Music Right, I'll Have Everyone Else's Approval." I Didn't Understand It Then, But I Now Know That's What Happened To Me.

I'd Been In Love Before - I Was Always In Love.

I'm Never In My Life Going To Do A Record That's A Tribute To Myself. I Don't Need It.

Music Was The One Thing I Could Control. It Was The One World That Offered Me Freedom. When I Played Music, My Nightmares Ended. My Family Problems Disappeared. I Didnt Have To Search For Answers. The Answers Lay No Further Than The Bell Of My Trumpet And My Scrawled, Pencilled Scores. Music Made Me Full, Strong, Popular, Self-reliant And Cool.

I Started Imagining This Whole Different World. It Was A Society Of Musicians, A Family I Hoped I Could Belong To One Day.

I Don't Remember Feeling Love.

I Got To Trumpet, Finally. That's Why I Love To Write For Brass, And [count] Basie And [frank] Sinatra And All That Stuff, 'cause That's Just Like Part Of My Dna.

We Got Into All The Trouble You Could Ever Imagine. We Figured That If The Jones Boys And All The Gangsters Ran Chicago, We Had Our Own Territory Now. All The Stores, All The Crime, We Were In Charge Of Everything, My Stepbrother And My Brother.

Music In Movies Is All About Dissonance And Consonance, Tension And Release.

A Bad Song, The Three Best Singers In The World Cannot Save It, And That's The Bottom Line.

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If Architecture Is Frozen Music Then Music Must Be Liquid Architecture.

It Was Messed Up, Because In 1947 My Family Moved To Seattle And I Had To Get Up At 5:00 O'clock In The Morning To Catch The Ferry Back To Bremerton Every Morning Because I Was Boys Club President.

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My Earliest Memories Are Being Pinned To A Fence With A Switchblade.

I Go To The Favelas In Brazil. It's The Same In The South Side Of Chicago. It's The Same, Or Just More Violent. We're Trying To Get Them To Stop Selling Dope. You See Kids With Ak-47s, And Nine-year-olds With Nine Millimeters. You Know, They Don't Play. They Make Us Look Like Nuns.

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Prince.. A True Artist In Every Sense Of The World.gone Way Too Soon.

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Security Systems

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Some Summers My Father Would Take Us Down To Visit Our Grandmother In Louisville, Who Was An Ex-slave, Susan Jones, And She Had A Shotgun Shack They Call It, And No Electricity, A Well In The Back, A Coal Stove, Kerosene Lamps.

I Improvised My Life Along The Way - I Just Moved Step-by-step. And I Knew That If I Got Better, Something Would Happen.

Playing The Game, And Unfortunately, Playing The Gangster Game Is Very Profitable.

Did You Know You Would Become As Successful As You Have? Hell, No. But You Know What? You Were Prepared, Baby.

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Not One Ounce Of My Self Worth Depends On Your Acceptance Of Me.

Billy Strayhorn Wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy To Me Is The Boss Of The Arrangers.

I Guess Hip-hop Has Been Closer To The Pulse Of The Streets Than Any Music We've Had In A Long Time. It's Sociology As Well As Music, Which Is In Keeping With The Tradition Of Black Music In America.

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It's Easy To Get Next To Music Theory, Especially Between Your Peers And Music Classes And So Forth. You Just Pay Attention. I Had A Good Ear, So I Realized That Printed Music Was Just About Reminding You What To Play.

It's Amazing How Much Trouble You Can Get In When You Don't Have Anything Else To Do.

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My Son Is A Hip-hop Producer.

I Got In The School Band And The School Choir. It All Hit Me Like A Ton Of Bricks, Everything Just Came Out. I Played Percussion For A While, And Stayed After School Forever Just Tinkering Around With Different Things, The Clarinets And The Violins.

I Was Married For 36 Years But Now I'm Free.

Count Basie Practically Adopted Me At 13. We Became Closer And Closer And I Ended Up Conducting For Him And Sinatra.

I Got A Scholarship To Seattle University And I Was Writing Arrangements For Singers And Everybody. But The Music Course Was Too Dry And I Really Wanted To Get Away From Home.

You Have To Know That Your Real Home Is Within.

I Was The Most Subtle Person In The World.

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Let's Not Get Too Full Of Ourselves. Let's Leave Space For God To Come Into The Room.

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The Act Of Multitrack Recording Is The Act Of Arranging.

All Guys Get Into Music Because They Love Music And They Also Want To Get The Girls.

Michael (jackson) Was So Shy, He'd Sit Down And Sing Behind The Couch With His Back To Me While I Sat With My Hands Over My Eyes-and The Lights Off.

Making A Record Is Like Painting A School Bus With A Toothbrush

Communications Are Making This One World. Back In The Day, 400-500 Years Ago, Nobody Knew What Anyone Else Was Doing. It's On The 6 O'clock News Now. Now We Can Say, Oh, That's The Way They Live. Oh, They Do That!! Opportunities, The Chance To Bring About Change, It's All Based On Communication. Communication And Jet Planes.

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