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Quincy Jones

Musician, producer, arranger, and composer Quincy Jones released his autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones (Doubleday), and a 4-CD box set collecting his work, Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones (Rhino) in 2001. Over his fifty-year career, he worked with nearly every major figure in the music industry. As a teenager, he played backup for Billie Holiday alongside his 16-year-old friend, Ray Charles. At 18, he began playing the trumpet in Lionel Hampton's band with Clifford Brown. He went on to collaborate with Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Lesley Gore, and many others. He wrote the theme songs for Sanford & Son and Ironside and composed music for the films In Cold Blood, For the Love of Ivy, and The Pawnbroker. His biggest commercial success came from producing and arranging Michael Jackson's 1982 hit album Thriller.

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Today in Fresh Air History

The Difficulty of Conversing About Race in the United States.

Writer David Shipler. A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America (Knopf) is his newest book. It looks closely at the ever present race question in the United States through interviews of folks across the country and analysis of stereotypes he found. Shipler is the author of Russia and won a Pulitzer Prize for Arab and Jew: Wounded Sprits in a Promised Land.

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Daughter of Warhol star looks back on a bohemian childhood in the Chelsea Hotel

Alexandra Auder's mother, Viva, was one of Andy Warhol's muses. Growing up in Warhol's orbit meant Auder's childhood was an unusual one. For several years, Viva, Auder and Auder's younger half-sister, Gaby Hoffmann, lived in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. It was was famous for having been home to Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, and Bob Dylan, among others.

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This fake 'Jury Duty' really put James Marsden's improv chops on trial

In the series Jury Duty, a solar contractor named Ronald Gladden has agreed to participate in what he believes is a documentary about the experience of being a juror--but what Ronald doesn't know is that the whole thing is fake.

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