Back on the Block, the latest hit album from Quincy Jones, may not sell as many copies as Thriller, the all-time record-setting megahit he produced with Michael Jackson in 1982. It may not have the global impact of "We Are the World," his superstar-studded 1985 musical event, which raised $50,000,000 to fight hunger. It may not earn him another Grammy award, though he has won 20 of them since 1963. But Back on the Block is certainly the most historic achievement of Jones's extraordinary career. It's also the story of his life.

A virtuoso blending of bebop, soul, Gospel, rhythm-and-blues, Brazilian and African music, rap and fusion, it's what one critic called "a virtual crash course in black popular music of the 20th Century." In his liner notes for the album, Jones wrote that his intention was "to bridge generations and traverse musical boundaries." Actually, that's what he has been doing ever since he broke into show business at the age of 15 as a trumpet player and arranger for Lionel Hampton.In the 42 years since then, he has composed, arranged or produced hits for almost every major name in the music business, from such big-band greats as Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie to modern-day superstars such as Frank Sinatra. He is also credited with helping catalyze the phenomenon of "crossover" by bringing black music across the color line into the musical mainstream. As a vice-president of Mercury Records in the early Sixties, Jones was the first black executive at a major label, and in 1963, he began a second career in Hollywood, where he became the first black to reach the top rank of film composers, with 38 pictures to his credit.His biggest professional setback came in 1978, when he served as musical director of The Wiz, a multimillion-dollar flop--but the project solidified a friendship with 20-year-old Michael Jackson (who starred as the Scarecrow) and launched a series of creative collaborations that culminated in Thriller and "We Are the World." His first excursion as a movie producer, in 1985, elevated him into the big leagues almost overnight. He persuaded Steven Spielberg to coproduce and direct "The Color Purple," cast Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg in the roles that won them Oscar nominations, then supervised the entire production--and, for good measure, wrote the score.But the strain of living in all those fast lanes, along with the disintegration of his third marriage, to actress Peggy Lipton, drove Jones into a nervous collapse that stirred memories of the near-fatal aneurysm--a hemorrhaging artery in the brain--that had stricken him in 1974 after a similar bout of overwork. This time, he took a monthlong "spiritual leave of absence" in Tahiti and returned "in control of my life for the first time."

His eclectic album Back on the Block is the harvest of that sabbatical. So is his new company, an entertainment conglomerate partnering Jones and his chief executive, Kevin Wendle, in a co-venture with Time Warner's Bob Pittman, a former MTV executive. And so is the list of honors that have come his way since then--among them this year's Soul Train Heritage Award, which turned into a star-studded 57th-birthday tribute to "Q," as he's known to his hundreds of friends and admirers in the business; a Man of the Year citation at the annual conference of the international music-business association MIDEM; and, most recently, a prestigious Legion of Honor award from the government of France, where he is considered an American national treasure.Paris was one of the settings for this conversation with Alex Haley, whom he met in 1975 while the author was writing Roots. Jones was enthralled by the stories Haley told him about his ancestors, and when David Wolper asked Jones to score the first 12 hours of the television miniseries, he and Haley became collaborators as well as friends. When we called Haley with this assignment, he was in the final stages of completing his long-awaited book Henning, but it's a measure of their friendship that he agreed to take time out for this very special Playboy Interview.

He reports: "On a desk in Quincy Jones's business office in Los Angeles sits the biggest Rolodex I've ever seen. It contains, I'm told, the names of more than 5000 friends and associates in the entertainment industry. I believe it. There probably isn't a heavier hitter in the business, or one more universally admired."Whatever Quincy's doing, whether it's work or play, he does it with his whole being. And he seems to keep busy pursuing one or the other, in grand style, just about 24 hours a day. My interview with him, appropriately, began on a private jet en route to Manzanillo, Mexico, and continued beside his pool at the spectacular Las Hadas resort hotel, between takes for a feature-length documentary of his life, Back on the Block with Quincy Jones, scheduled for theatrical release in September. Our next session followed a memorable dinner prepared by Quincy's French-Brazilian chef at his showplace Bel Air home, a stone's throw from the Reagans."A third session took place last summer in Paris during the bicentennial Bastille Day extravaganza, the orchestral highlight of which Quincy had been imported to conduct. The mayor of Paris headed a parade of Quincy's old friends, who visited him in his flower-banked suite at the Ritz. And after festivities, before returning home, he and his traveling companions--Time Warner co-C.E.O. Steve Ross and his wife, Courtney, who was producer of the documentary--decided to stop off in London for dinner with Quincy's pal Dustin Hoffman. As we say in Tennessee, that's tall cotton. But somehow, through it all, success hasn't spoiled Quincy Jones. I wanted to know why. So that's where we began."

Playboy: "Lifestyle of the rich and famous" is a phrase that could have been coined to describe the way you live, Quincy--but you don't seem to have lost your humility. Why not?

Quincy Jones: I never forget where I came from, man. When I was seven, I remember my brother Lloyd and I went to spend the summer with my grandmother in Louisville, Kentucky. She was an ex-slave, but she'd moved up in the world since then. The lock on the back door of her little house was a bent nail, and she had a coal stove and kerosene lamps for light, and she used to tell us to go down to the river in the evening and catch us a rat, and we'd take that sucker home in a bag and she'd cook it up for supper. She fried it with onions, and it tasted good, man. When you're seven years old and you don't know any better, everything tastes good to you. That kind of memory makes you appreciate everything that much more, because from then on, no matter how good it gets, you never take anything for granted. I've had the whole range of experiences, from rats to pâté, and I feel lucky just to be alive.