2008 NEA Jazz Master

		Quincy Jones Bandleader
photo by Greg Gorman

"I want to thank the National Endowment for the Arts for recognizing the great jazz artists of our time, and I graciously accept this award on behalf of my fellow jazz musicians, past, present, and future."

Quincy Jones is a music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer, and trumpeter.

Born in Chicago in 1933, he began his performing career by playing small gigs and weddings. Later, he toured with Lionel Hampton as well as Dizzy Gillespie, and with Harold Arlen's jazz musical Free and Easy.

He became music director for Mercury Records in 1960, rising to vice president four years later. Also in 1964, he composed his first film score with Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker. After the success of that film, he left Mercury Records for Los Angeles to pursue what became a highly successful career as film score composer. To date he has written scores for more than 35 films including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and Cactus Flower.

A social activist during the 1960s and ‘70s, he also helped form the Institute for Black American Music. Returning to the studio, he recorded a series of Grammy-winning albums between 1969 and 1981 including Walking in Space, Gula Materi, Smackwater Jack, Ndeda, and You've Got It Bad, Girl. Following recovery from a near-fatal cerebral aneurysm, he turned to producing albums most successfully with Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller.

Jones made his debut as a filmmaker in 1985 when he co-produced with Steven Spielberg The Color Purple featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. In 1993, Jones joined with David Salzman to form QDE, a co-venture with Time Warner. The company encompasses multimedia programming, motion pictures, television, and Vibe magazine. At the same time, he manages his own record label Qwest Records and is the chairman and CEO of Qwest Broadcasting.

He holds the record for the most Grammy nominations at 79, 27 of which also garnered him Grammy awards.

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