Quincy Jones doesn't mean to name-drop. But after fifty years in the music biz, he's worked with just about everyone who's anyone. In conversation, he can't help but refer to good old buddies like Frank Sinatra, Oprah Winfrey, Paul Allen, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, Steve Wozniak, Sammy Davis Jr., Alex Haley, and best-selling author James McBride, who's helping Jones write his new autobiography.

Jones' life reads like a Pop Music 101 course. It started with a stint in Lionel Hampton's band, followed by stints with Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra. Fast forward to several highs in the Eighties with best-selling singles and albums (USA for Africa's "We Are the World," Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller). In all, he's amassed more Grammy nominations than anyone else (seventy-seven) and won twenty-six of them. Name another field, and he's probably conquered that too. He's produced TV shows (Fresh Prince of Bel Air and MadTV), he co-produced The Color Purple, he publishes Spin and Vibe magazines, and was instrumental in developing the new Microsoft Encarta Africana CD-ROM. Jones spoke to Rollingstone.com about his new double-CD of love songs, From Q with Love, his Web sites, the MP3 phenomenon, his proudest achievements and his only regret.

Why compile love songs for your latest album?

It's like the footprints of your life, almost. It was a personal record for me for a while; I carried it around for five years [on a couple of cassettes] and just added things to it because I didn't want any uptempo songs in there. Then I gave Oprah a fortieth birthday party a couple of years ago, and she had about forty guests over to the house and I had printed up [some copies of this compilation] really nicely in a case with all the names on it, and the people all came up and said "I have a sixteen-year-old I'd really like to give that to and an aunt..." and the range shocked me. I ended up with thirty-four songs. You've got Luther Vandross in there recorded in 1977, when nobody knew who he was. Then you've got Tevin Campbell who started with me when he was twelve. And he's twenty-one now. Patti Austin, who I've known since she was four, with Dinah Washington. It took thirty-three years to do. And I could never find that many good songs that quickly.

Are there any artists you haven't worked with that you'd like to work with?

There's two. One I deeply regretted because we were convinced and planning to do it for seventeen years and that was Marvin Gaye. We traveled, we did personal appearances together with my band, and talked to each other all the time, always together, and I never in a million years thought he'd leave before me. Also Whitney Houston. We've talked about it for about ten years.

Is there anything you haven't done?

I'm doing something right now that makes me feel like I'm fifteen years old. Andthat's writing a Broadway show on Sammy Davis Jr.'s life. It's the most challenging thing I've gotten involved with in my life. And I love that. I've known Sammy since I was eleven years old.

I read some comments you made recently about MP3s.

It's two years overdue. We were talking to telephone companies about this two or three years ago -- myself, my companies and the Baby Bells. They were ready to rock. They had built some $300 million facilities down in Reston, Va., with Oracle file servers. They were ready to hit Normandy, man. MP3 to me is an embryonic catalyst that will jump-start this thing. But if they don't find a way to compensate songwriters or artists, then, no I'm not for it, and I never will be.

Can the internet help sell more records than the current system does?

Absolutely. Going to the record store is what we did forty years ago. Exactly the same way. I cannot understand people getting excited about a platinum record in a country with, say, 300 million people. It's kind of a joke to get excited about a platinum record if a record is genuinely popular. I've had the experience in my lifetime to sell with Michael Jackson, and we sold four million albums in just London -- let alone a whole country.

When was your first online experience?

It must have been 1992. We've been dealing with computers, though, since the Seventies. Herbie Hancock was into them, the Fairchilds were into them. It was part of our equipment. It's a part of our craft. We were literally mixing in '74. That's an amazing story. I remember one time we were mixing the Brothers Johnson and we had a second engineer, and he said he was going to start a computer company. And he was talking about the name, and three years later he made $400 million dollars. His name was Steve Wozniak. He wasstarting Apple then, and nobody had any idea what that meant. They still don't.

What is the purpose of your Qradio site [www.qradio.net]?

It's taking the African Diaspora to the Internet. We want its basis to be the foundation of African music. It's the same as the way we build our foundation on Basie and Duke and people like that. They invented the music, they didn't have anyone to copy it from. Louis Armstrong didn't have anyone but King Oliver to listen to. You talk about the pioneers, the foundation of it, and build it up and see what the tributaries are about. Like Miles or Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie or Roy Elridge. Black music is almostlike a collective really.

Looking at your life in retrospect, is there anything you would have donedifferently?

I always thought that if my child had nice clothes to wear to school and had a roof over his head and could eat and live comfortably, then I had done my job. I didn't understand what nurturing was about. Because a lot of my success was at the cost of my kids not getting all the daddy time they needed. That I regret. And I can't go back, but I can certainly do it now. And I have a six-year-old who I adore and six daughters from six to forty-five, and a son who's thirty years old who's in the business, a rap producer. Very good musician. Great kids.

Do you have a career high point?

It's hard to say. From what the Duke was about, to Sinatra at the Sands, to "We Are the World" to Thriller to Off the Wall to Back on the Block, where we had Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and Dizzy and Miles with rappers introducing them -- I just love all those journeys. They're all different children. I remember Sinatra in '66, and working with Sinatra is probably as good as it gets. People don't realize that you can't make that call and say: "Hi, this is Quincy Jones and, Mr. Sinatra, I'd love to work with you." You just have to sit and wait and do your work and do the best you can until those calls come through. I've been lucky that most of thepeople have called.

JAMES OLIVER CURY
(April 2, 1999)