By: Jackie Jones and Kim Nelson-Ingram, BlackAmericaWeb.com It s all about preparation, says legendary musician, composer, producer, arranger and businessman Quincy Jones.
You hope for opportunities.
You know opportunity and preparation is the stuff that good luck is made out of. When opportunity knocks, you have to be ready, Jones said in a recent interview for the "Tom Joyner Morning Show."
It s experience," he said.
"Do it more and more and more so you know what you re doing.
Being prepared is a little easier, though, when you know from childhood what it is you want to do.
Jones grew up poor on the south side of Chicago, had a few brushes with the law and watched his mother descend into mental illness before the family moved to Seattle when he was 10 years old.
He took up the trumpet in grade school and found his opportunity in music. More than his muse, it was his salvation.
Music was the one thing I could control.
It was the one world that offered me freedom, Jones said in his book Q The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared.
I didn t have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than in the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, penciled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool.
The men who played it were proud, funny, worldly, and dap dressers. The New York cats and kittens who came through town were like kings and queens.
One could argue with authority that Jones himself is a king in the world of music.
He's certainly a groundbreaker:
Burton as the most Oscar-nominated blacks ever.
One day, I wrote a song, From the Four Winds, and showed it to Hampton.
So he showed it to his musical director, he invited me to join the band, and I ran straight for the bus. I didn t want to go home and ask somebody for permission, Jones said.
Hampton s wife, Gladys, had other plans, however.
She said, what s this child doing on the bus? C mon here, honey; and put Jones off the bus and told him to come back when he was old enough to travel with the band.
By 18, however, Jones was touring with the band.
Less than 20 years later, I won my first Grammy for a record I did with (Count) Basie for I Can t Stop Loving You.
Besides Basie, Jones was an arranger for Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan.
In addition to his film scores, Jones composed the theme songs for such television shows as Ironside, Sanford and Son, and The Cosby Show.
Jones was mentored by many musicians including the Hamptons, Basie and Clark Terry, as well the late publisher of Ebony Jet magazines, John H. Johnson.
Getting such talented mentors at a young age helped Jones get and stay on the right path.
They just tell me whether to go right or left or three blocks instead of two, he said.
And Jones has paid it forward.
The Quincy Jones Foundation has built more than 100 homes for Nelson Mandela s foundation in South Africa.
In the 1960s, he was one of the founders of the Institute for Black American Music, which produces events to raise money for the creation of a national library of black art and music. He also is a founder of the Black Arts Festival in Chicago. Jones Listen Up Foundation links youths with opportunities in culture, music, technology and education, including an intercultural exchange program between underprivileged youths from Los Angeles and South Africa.
Jones was named The Harvard Mentoring Project s 2007 Mentor of the Year recently for the work he had done with a youth violence prevention project with rappers Coolio and Method Man and entertainment mogul Russell Simmons called Squash It, as well for taking a group of gangbangers to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and work with Habitat for Humanity there. He's also helped to guide the careers of recording artists Tamia and Tevin Campbell, actor Will Smith -- and he's credited with launching the acting career of media mogul Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple.
To be an effective mentor or producer, Jones said, you have to really know the inside of a person you re producing, how far to push, when to back off.
They watch and see, and after they see you know what you re doing, you develop a relationship that encourages those people to do their best work.
You need trust and love on both sides or you can t have a good record, Jones said. You can be mentored by anybody if they have their act together.
Just make sure the person is going in the right direction going up," he said. "You don t need any help to do bad.
Black America needs to claim its history and reclaim its self-reliance, self-confidence and self-respect, according to panelists attending the State of the Black Union symposium.
She may no longer be delivering the news, but Carole Simpson is still doing her part to ensure that future journalists carry on the mission for which she worked so hard to be a part. ..
.
This weekend, a multi-cultural America took notice as Obama told the world that he is prepared to lead the United States into a new era with a message of hope and faith.
Recently released data suggests that perhaps the city of New York is failing to live up to an earlier promise to curb the police department’s use of race-based profiling in its work.
While race is a big X factor in Obama’s bid for the top spot, it’s hardly the only factor. The other crucial is they his views will play to voting blocs in certain ..
.
After this weekend's screening of "Tambourine Man," "Tom Joyner Morning Show" mainstay J. Anthony Brown can officially add filmmaker, director and producer to his growing list of credits.
"You know opportunity and preparation is the stuff that good luck is made out of," says one of music's most revered visionaries. "When opportunity knocks, you have to be ready."
Sharon Joseph and her aunt Gail Richards stepped out on faith four years ago to start their business and grounded the business in faith.
A year after opening Harlem Lanes, it's paid off.
"My girlfriend told me that when a person is diagnosed, he or she faces two possible deaths - social and physical," writes Mo'Nique in “Not in My Family: AIDS in the African-American Community.”
The veteran political journalist and moderator of the '04 vice presidential debate maintains that when it comes to analysis and opinion, "there is a lack of people of color on both sides of the line.
" ...
News RSS