Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American music conductor, record producer, musical arranger, film composer and trumpeter. During five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones has earned a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is best known as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold 104 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”. He is well known for his 1962 song "Soul Bossa Nova", which originated on the Big Band Bossa Nova album. "Soul Bossa Nova" was a theme for the 1998 World Cup, the Canadian game show Definition, and the Mike Myers movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and was sampled by Canadian rap group Dream Warriors in their "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style".

In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African-Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Original Song" category. That same year, he became the first African-American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for "Best Original Score" for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971 Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. Jones was also the first (and so far, the only) African-American to be nominated as a producer in the category of Best Picture (in 1986, for The Color Purple). He was also the first African-American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African-American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award.

Jones was born into an African-American family in Chicago. He is the oldest son of Sarah Frances (née Wells), an apartment complex manager and bank executive who suffered from schizophrenia, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter. Jones discovered music in grade school at Raymond Elementary School on Chicago's South Side and took up the trumpet. When he was 10, his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, near Seattle; there, he attended Garfield High School. He then attended Somerset Academy.