Quincy Jones

Known to everyone simply as "Q", Quincy Jones has had a huge influence on the course of modern music through his production, arrangement and composition work with a whole range of artists covering jazz, pop, soul and hip hop. He started out as a jazz trumpeter, forming his first group as a teenager with Ray Charles, but left to go on the road with the legendary Lionel Hampton. This led to arranging work for many seminal jazz figures, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Tommy Dorsey, Cannonball Adderley and Gene Krupa. Jones then went on the road as musical arranger with Dizzy Gillespie's band and in the early 1960s formed his own big band and worked on his first soundtrack for the movie The Pawnbroker in 1965; he subsequently wrote the music for classic films like The Color Purple, E.T and Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. Jones went on to arrange music for more legends like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Dinah Washington and achieved success in his own right with his 1962 track Soul Bossa Nova, later chosen as the theme for soccer's 1988 World Cup. In 1985 he was the prime figure in the collaborative charity hit We Are The World and also played a key role in the success of Michael Jackson, originally working with him on the movie The Wiz and producing his best-selling albums, including the biggest-selling album of all time, Thriller. Jones is also well known as a political activist, campaigning for black rights and supporting many charities.