Quincy Jones has built a career by melding the music of four decades.

"We were walking through the Square," says Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr., of friend and Class Day speaker Quincy Jones. "We were walking toward the Af-Am department and right in front of CVS, he says, 'Stop. You hear that? That kid'"--a young drummer in front of the Coop--"'is really, really talented.' And Quincy went over to the kid...and asked him for his name and said he would give him a call."

Quincy Jones, who will address the graduating class today, is a renowned producer, arranger, conductor and 77-time Grammy nominee who has worked with an astounding array of stars including Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson. Yet Jones owes his success not to his work with the top figures in his field, but to his ability to spot talent in the rough.

This appreciation of musical originality stems from Jones' innate talent as a trumpeter and composer, and his musical training on the streets of Seattle and the halls of the Berklee College of Music.

Jones' comprehensive understanding of music makes him him one of the very few musicians to transcend the boundaries between genres and work with artists who span five decades and range in style from big band to pop to jazz to hip hop.

To move this talent from backwoods clubs to big name arenas requires a business sense as well as a musical one, and in this sphere Jones is equally adept.

The musical mogul has worked as a film and record producer, magazine founder and multimedia entrepreneur. He owns five separate enterprises, making him one of few blacks in the entertainment business to own what they produce.

Whether dealing with an up-and-coming rapper or a multimillion dollar corporation, Jones' personal ability to bridge the gap between black and white, old and young, has been the key to his business success.

When Harvard's graduates assemble today, the man before them will stand tall as both artist and entrepreneur, a musical man worth a listen.

From Chicago to the Continent

Jones' journey began in Chicago on March 14, 1933, in a setting plagued by poverty and urban violence.

At the age of three, Jones and his brother Lloyd saw his mother institutionalized in a state mental facility.

"I'm from the South Side of Chicago, meaning the ghetto," Jones told noted musical historian Joe Smith. "At four years old, we carried switchblades to protect ourselves."

Perhaps fortunately for the fate of the music world, when Jones was 10, his father decided to relocate the family--which then included a stepmother and six step-siblings--to Seattle.

In junior high, Jones took up what was to be one of his life-long loves, the trumpet, and sang in a gospel quartet. He made his local debut with a horn solo at a school Christmas pageant at the age of 12, his national debut as a trumpeter for Billie Holiday at 13.

In a city not known for its musical progeny, the man called 'Q' found a kindred spirit. His name was Ray Charles and he became a lifelong friend.

"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."

Jones produced hundreds of records for Mercury, but gained global acclaim for his production of "We Are the World," the best-selling single of all-time, and Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all-time.

Jackson has called Jones "the King of all music," and has said that Jones "like fine wine, mellows with age."

During the last three decades, Jones entered another world that had been closed to blacks, as he composed the film scores for 33 major motion pictures. In 1985, he co-produced Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," which won 11 Oscar nominations, introduced Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences and marked his debut as a film producer.

Q's Jook Joint

Jones' talent as a producer lies in his ability to meld different musical styles, a combination epitomized in his most recent album, Q's Jook Joint.

Each of the songs is a modern R & B remake of 22 of Jones all-time favorite big band jazz hits from 11 of his earlier LPs.

This format makes possible such combinations as modern pop vocalist Brandy and legendary performer Ray Charles (on "Stuff Like That").

"You go and lay out the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s and you'll see a song here that almost represents each period," Jones said in an interview with Billboard. "It doesn't get documented very well in the past, 'cause nobody thought it was worth very much--and it's the richest culture in the world."

Jones selection of Canadian Tamia (then unknown to American audiences) as the principal vocalist on an album heralding the talents of past greats symbolizes the producer's willingness to take risks and appreciate musical talent.

"I think because he is a consummate musician he has literally been able to hear and discover what is essential about what the next thing is," says Dwight D. Andrews, who taught Music 131: "History of Jazz." Andrews is the first to hold an associate visiting professorship sponsored by Quincy Jones.

Dealing With Fame And Fortune

Jones' success has brought him national and international acclaim. In addition to receiving the most Grammy nominations in history, he has received seven Oscar nominations, an Emmy Award for his production score of Roots, and the Legion d'Honeur, France's most distinguished award.

He even appears in a comic strip, the nationally syndicated "Jump Start," which regularly features Jones as a visiting character.

But despite the producer's fame and hectic schedule, those closest to him say he is usually able to maintain remarkable equilibrium.

"We will be in a bathroom, and brothers will come up to him and say, 'Quincy, my man, I can see that you're busy, but could you just take a listen to my tape?'" Gates recounts. "But, somehow, Quincy is always polite."

His daughter Rashida Jones, who will graduate from Harvard tomorrow, says that her father was in many ways similar to a normal Dad, albeit a well-connected one.

"I did a lot of plays in high school--he refused to let me do a play without taping it and sending it to all of his friends," she says. Rashida's parents divorced when she was 10, and she says she spent about an equal amount of time with each growing up.

Rashida laughingly relates that there was no fear of her father being a stage parent, since "he is not an actor," but that she "would always approach him" when she wanted to work on piano chords.

Rashida adds that her father was relaxed and low-key compared to her high school friends' parents, many of whom were also stars.

"A typical birthday would be hanging out in the front yard, balloons and a cake, music playing, nothing more than that," Rashida says.

Running With the Youngsters

Jones' success as a producer today rests in part on his ability to keep himself mentally and physically in step with much younger musicians.

He has seven children ranging in age from 4 to 44, and two scars on his forehead are reminders of his 1974 surgery for two life-threatening brain aneurysms, which left him unable to play the trumpet.

Still, friends say that Jones' energy and enthusiasm remain overwhelming.

"He is younger than you and me combined," says Keith Clinkscales, 33, the president and CEO of Vibe, a magazine of urban music founded by Jones. "There are times when he is hanging out with me and I just have to let him go."

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Jones said that the most overrated virtue is celibacy, a rather unusual statement for a 64 year old.

"He knows how to run the night," Clinkscales says. "That comes from his old bebop back-in-the-day upbringing."

Jones is also a 20 year practitioner of hatha yoga. He lifts weights, runs on a treadmill and on some mornings does 200 pushups under the guidance of his personal trainer.

During the '60s and '70s, Jones earned legend status for his willingness to stay up four or five nights in a row with fellow producer Rod Pemberton to get albums out before deadline.

Twenty years later, Jones still possesses this energy, say those who are closest to him.

"My dad does not sleep," Rashida says. "I don't know how he does it, he is so driven."

Transcending Race

Jones now owns five separate enterprises, but has faced criticism from some in the black community for his willingness to work with mostly-white companies.

Jones and Time Warner each own a 50 percent share of Qwest Records, and he and David Salzman have equal shares of Vibe records. None of his enterprises are majority black owned.

But supporters are quick to point out that the flip side of the coin is that his product is quintessentially black, and many say his greatest success is transmitting this culture to the larger world.

"I think he has been able to last so long because he can appeal to so many kinds of people," says Valerie Gray, the entertainment editor at Black Enterprise. "He has been able to transcend ethnic groups with his music."

But Jones' magazine, Vibe, which was created in 1992, has also been criticized for being an inauthentic representation of black culture. When senior writer Kevin Powell resigned from the magazine, he cited the large number of white members on the senior editorial board as his reason.

But Clinkscales, who himself is black, defends the politics of the magazine.

"I think some people get into this very serious thing of counting the number of bodies. We have an editorial staff which is more than 50 percent black, closer to 75 percent black," Clinkscales says. "We do have some white editors, I am very proud of them."

"He is a man who is enormously proud of his ethnic heritage," Gates says. "He is not a racist; only to perform with black people as a matter of principal would be racist."

Gates says he will attend Jones' speech today, and that he is looking forward to hearing from the man "who is truly loved by everyone."

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who will also attend the speech, says that Jones is a particularly appropriate choice of speaker because he, like the College, believes that cultures must interact to reaffirm and strengthen their own identities. Epps says the College's philosophy on race closely mirrors that of Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison.

Jones has listed Ellison as one of his favorite writers, and the message that Harvard's newest graduates will hear today comes from a man who made a career of sharing the culture that created him with the world that long ignored it.

"The whole world has decided to throw away their own culture and use this as the culture that reflects them. Music by African-Americans has become their voice, their Esperanto, so to speak," Jones told Billboard. "I've traveled around this world so many times, and it still shocks me. And Americans, white and black, seem to be the last to know about it."

To hear a sampling of Quincy Jones' work, please see The Harvard Crimson web page at: http://hcs.harvard.edu/~crimson.Photo courtesy of Rashida Jones"He is the most supportive person in the world," says daughter RASHIDA JONES (right).