my next guest uh ladies and gentlemen is a fine musician he's also a terrific composer
poser and an arranger and the most successful uh this is unbelievable the most successful record
producer of all time he's also the producer of a brand new motion picture opening december
eighth uh 18th rather called color purple the color purple and on top of all of that this man
is the only guest we've ever had on the show named quincy please say hello to quincy jones
how you doing okay you uh you're doing it all you do everything
no i think this is this after this two-year spent uh i'm going to rest for about two years
it took you two years to to to do the movie and then other things as well right is that what
you're talking about right yeah the movie was almost every day for two years now how do you
go from being a uh an arranger a composer and a record producer to producing your own motion
picture you're not in it but i mean you're producing the picture well it uh it just it's
something i'd always wanted to do inside david and uh about two years ago i guess october 83 peter
guber was a producer out in california came to me to talk about an olympic theme for gymnastics
and we said okay but then i really got interested when he said i'd also like you to get involved in
in a a book called the color purple which i had taken to on vacation with me and uh
i couldn't believe it because i fell in love with the book it was small and i took it with
me already yeah and uh it touched me more than anything i've ever read in my life uh
and it also helped me to understand from a woman writer's standpoint what that was all about i mean
alice is a very truthful writer walker yes she's the one who wrote color purple now how do you let
me uh uh short circuit here but how do you go from that step to to hiring steven spielberg to direct
the film and getting the cast and all of that sort of thing well you have to let everybody call you
crazy at first because i said peter can you let me just take this and see what i can do with it
he said fine if i get in trouble you pull me back and uh he said who are you you're thinking about
directing us at steven spielberg he said yeah yeah and everybody else did and uh at the same time
stephen had been thinking about the movie and we found we were friends before but uh he knew about
the film uh you know he knew about the the book yeah and was before you talked about circling
circling the field about the same time and then uh i just stayed with it and for 11 months later uh
uh i found myself with stephen and kathy kennedy and frank marshall all pros in on a rocket and
every stage of the film it turned out very nicely i saw it the other day it was it turned out really
nice you must be very proud of it but when you're working with spielberg now this is a
story of a family and a group of people working in the early 1900s in georgia right did you have
trouble with spielberg wanting to put like you know uh martians in it and stuff no some little
guy coming down from jupiter no way no way this in the beginning we talked about this and i said
stephen this is all no flying you knew just some black people walking around on the ground
uh he's he's uh he's uh he's an incredible one the most incredible director yeah like i said it was
a very impressive piece of work now uh what by the way i mentioned your name is quincy what's
your middle name no really do you have a middle name delight quincy delight right but it was
my father's name too so it's not a stage name or anything i wouldn't do that yeah yeah uh so would
uh what was your father's first wednesday delight jones oh you got the whole name right and my son
got the whole thing too he passed on the delight so yes he got it all yeah uh we're gonna what are
we gonna do we're gonna we have some footage here you wanna do this you wanna take a look at some
of this you wanna talk about records for a while okay we're gonna see a minute or two from uh uh
the color purple uh which opens december 18th all over the united states huh yes it's gonna
be a big movie you can feel it yeah all right let's take a look at it here and see what we got
who are the people in there that's danny glover as the father and uh the his son is willard pugh
and he's auditioning his new fiance for right father that's a bride to be and that's uh oprah
winfrey from chicago she was a talk show hostess out there yeah now that's an interesting story the
other lady that we saw in there is of course celie that's whoopi goldberg right right now now explain
the uh explain the the woman from chicago and how she got into the film well it was in chicago out
to detestified michael jackson's lawsuit for plagiarism trials supposedly uh uh and i was
in i stayed up all night so i was walking around facing the floor turned on the tv set at 9 15 in
the morning and i saw this lady and said i felt to myself there's sophia and didn't even know whether
she could act or not and so we asked to get a videotape and send it to stephen and uh there
she is that this is the luckiest woman on the face of the earth and talented too she does a very nice
job in there now now how many uh record albums does this thing end up selling was it uh how many
it's it's not tied with one other i think which one uh thriller oh oh 38. 38 million 38 million
good lord now do you still do that for people if i came to you and wanted to make a record album
would you produce one for me can you say it no i can't sing at all but now now uh you and michael
jackson worked on it together yes you wrote songs together yes ma'am wrote one song michael wrote
four uh-huh and we had various songs in the album now when you're putting together an album like
that do you do you are you ever surprised that a song that goes on the album becomes a hit or
are you ever surprised that it doesn't become a hit i'm surprised i mean this sincerely everybody
goes into the studio to make the biggest record in the world sure and everybody's always surprised
when it isn't the biggest record in the world i'm surprised when it's not 200 that haven't
done that you know so uh your surprisement is one that you really have a lot of hopes for
and nothing happens to it that really shakes your antennae now uh when you get down to the final cut
do you ever take a song off and replace it with another one and then save that song and then later
give it to somebody else and it does well that's happened on thriller we had four songs on there
and had all the songs finished took four off and replaced it with pyt and beat it and uh
uh human nature what became of the the four you took off some other people recorded it yeah and
what happened it wasn't it was it was okay you know but it wasn't enough so you you knew what
you were doing in there we just got lucky no no no no no no no no uh and then tell me about
the first band you worked with when you were starting out well i was uh 14 years old and i
16 year old was ray charles in seattle and uh ray was 16 you were 14 16 and i was 14.
and it was bumps blackwell's band and uh we used to play for scottish's and everything
else and we'd get together at three o'clock in the morning to play what we really like which is bebop
and then from then on you you stayed with it right on through right lionel hampton and
the right for campaign as a kid you worked here in new york oh yes we did the first tv shows here
with morrie amsterdam and uh and uh uh milton barrel yeah 52. yeah you don't even remember
all that dude no of course i do what do you think i am of course no i'm like i'm four or something
no i remember that stuff uh gee well i couldn't be happier for you that's a great suit by the way um
the the movie opens the 18th and i'm sure it'll be a big success for you
like you need another success uh congratulations quincy nice meeting you
we'll be back folks that's it quincy thank you very much for being here uh my thanks
to martin mull and uh barbara avent the woman who peels hard-boiled eggs tomorrow marv albert
will be here madeleine khan and tom hanks have a nice evening ladies and gentlemen