Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the who, over the course of a career spanning some 75 years, has worked as a musician, arranger,

orchestrator, conductor, record producer, film composer, record label executive, film producer,

and humanitarian, closely collaborating with an incredible array of the most important

artist of his time, including Ray Charles, Clark Terry, Lionel Hampton, Desi Gillespie, Count

Basie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn,

Frank Sinatra, Leslie Gore, Sidney Lamette, Michael Jackson, Stephen Spielberg,

Oprah Winfrey, and Will Smith.

Along the way, he also became one of only 21 egots, meaning a winner of at least one

Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. If you count not only competitive awards like his Emmy, Tony,

and 27 Grammys which are tied with Allison Kraus for the most among people still living and second most overall, and non-competitive awards, like the special Oscar, the Gene Herschel Humanitarian Award, that the

Film Academy presented him in 1995 to go along with two special Grammys, 1989's Trustees

Award and 1992's Legend Award.

He's also a 2013 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

and a recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award.

His friends call him Q, but the world knows him as the incomparable Quincy Jones.

Over the course of our conversation at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, the 85-year-old and I discussed a wide range of topics, including how he was shaped by his

dark childhood, how he first began playing music professionally while he was still in his

teens, what it was like being black in Hollywood and abroad as he was building his career?

How he reinvented himself in so many different areas of the entertainment industry over the years

and what motivated him later in his career to champion up-and-coming talent like Jackson, Winfrey, and Smith,

what he thinks of the state of music and America today,

and what he makes of Quincy, the acclaimed new documentary feature, about his life and career.

...