"I was 14 and he was 16," Jones recalls in an interview with Variety magazine. "We played R & B every night--we played at the Seattle country club at 7 o'clock, doing 'Room Full of Roses'...then we'd go to black clubs and play R & B from 10 'til 1 a.m. and then go over to the Elks Lodge and play bebop.... We played for comedy acts, we played for strippers."

At the age of 18, Jones moved from one coast to another, when he won a scholarship to Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music.

In addition to regular lessons, Jones and his friends often disappeared to other parts of the school to develop their talents.

"We didn't do many gigs, but we used to love to jam in the bottom of the schoolhouse," says Ray Santizi, a friend of Jones at Berklee.

Santizi also says that Jones ability to travel in a variety of circles was apparent even then.

"He was a very personable guy," Santizi says. "He had a good built-in sense of public relations."

At the age of 19, Jones left the halls of academia to travel with the Lionel Hampton band as a trumpeter, arranger and backup pianist.

By the mid '50s, Jones had hit the big time, as he was arranging and recording for diverse artists such as Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

During this period Jones developed a business sense to match his musical one. By 1953, Jones had bought and published the rights to his own work.

"He was always acutely aware of his own worth," says Gates, who is the chair of Harvard's Department of Afro-American Studies. "He is the only person of this generation, no, he is the only person period, who has been able to be a great musician and a great businessman."

Still, in the late '50s, Jones experienced the difficulties of poverty. A group of 30 musicians whom he had taken on tour was stranded without money in Europe, leaving the musician who had such a promising youth contemplating suicide.

Hitting the Big Time

Jones was rescued from his plight by friend and Mercury Records producer Irvin Green, who hired him as Director of Artists and Repertoire in 1961. Three years later, Jones became a vice president, becoming the first black to assume an executive position on a major record label.

In 1963, Quincy won a Grammy for his work as an arranger on Count Basie's "I Can't Stop Loving You," the first of his 26 Grammys.

"I think his sense of arrangement, his work with Count Basie and Duke Ellington...were very thick productions with lots of orchestration," says Lee Mergner, associate publisher of Jazz Times. "But later he was able to bring big band into the pop framework. He is truly one of those musicians who can adjust to the times."