Quincy Jones: 'I'm too old to be full of it'

TORONTO — Quincy Jones holds out his hands.

Like Jones, an easy raconteur, they tell stories. There's a small scar from when he, as a youngster in 1930s Chicago, accidently wandered into a gang's territory. "They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man," he says. Jones points to a ring on his right pinkie left to him by Frank Sinatra, bearing the singer's family crest. It has stayed lodged on his finger for years just at it did on Sinatra's.

"The friendship was so strong. You can't describe it. We loved to party together, make music together," says Jones, smiling. "I'd tell (drummer) Sonny Payne: 'Let's get the back beat a little stronger,' because Frank was only lifting his feet about a foot," says Jones, stomping his foot to a beat. "Let's get a foot and a half."

For six decades Jones has been the footstomping back beat to a staggering breadth of American music. His hands have been over everything. From Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles to Michael Jackson, "Roots" to "In the Heat of the Night," Jones — a trumpeter, pianist, composer, arranger, producer — is the great chameleon of 20th century music. He has recorded 2,900 songs, 300 albums and 51 film and TV scores. He has been 79 times nominated for a Grammy, winning 27. And he has produced seven kids, one of whom — Rashida Jones — has chronicled him in the new documentary, "Quincy."

"When I look at it now, I'm overwhelmed," Jones said in an interview shortly before "Quincy" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. "To have your life jump back at you on the screen — wooo!"

"Quincy," which will debut on Netflix and in select theaters Friday, is an intimate portrait of a hard-to-summarize legend. He's now 85 and has been through a few health scares. But after giving up drinking two and a half years ago, he says, "I feel like I'm 19."

And he has lost little of his curiosity or verve. Jones made headlines last winter for a pair of candid interviews in which he discussed, among other things, what he considered the Beatles' weak musicianship and dating Ivanka Trump. He later apologized but didn't take back any of his tales.

"I'm too old to be full of it," Jones chuckles. And while Jones was in a more relaxed mood in Toronto, he was happy to contradict reports of the Eagles' "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" passing Jackson's "Thriller" (which Jones produced) as the all-time best-selling album. "We had 150 million, man," he says, alluding to worldwide sales. "That's bull----."