Quincy Jones Scores A Celebrity Encounter

Quincy Jones started his professional career in 1951 as a trumpet player in Lionel Hampton’s band. Since then he’s had an illustrious career as a performer, composer, producer and arranger. Since we recently had a string of theme songs and film scores, I thought I’d post one of Quincy’s themes. Here’s the theme to “Sanford And Son.”

Redd Fox is the subject of my second and least interesting “celebrities in airports” stories. There are three stories all together. Redd was actually born John Elroy Sanford but he got the name Redd because of the color of his hair and his reddish complexion. I have mentioned before that I was also a red headed child. Back in the 70s, when my mom, grandmother and I ran into Redd Foxx while walking through the airport I really hoped he’d comment on our follicular fidelity (even though his hair was salt and pepper by that time). He didn’t. To be fair though I was standing some distance away with my grandmother while my mom talked to him. When Mom pointed me out though, he did wave and say “Hello darlin'” in his cool gravely voice. Then we said goodbye and caught our plane. That’s the whole duller-than-advertised story. I thought about punching it up with a “Die Hard” action sequence but I decided that Quincy Jones’ theme music is better than an exploding Bruce Willis any day!