GATES: Are our people better off today than they were in the 1960s, do you think?
JONES: The 60s? I don’t know, I think it’s probably like the Dickens cliche, the best of times and the worst of times, but I can’t really call the 60s the best of times.
GATES: You know, so often now people my age and younger say how bad segregation was. It was a terrible thing and this is better. But was the segregated black world all bad or were there good things about the neighborhood.
JONES: It was rough. It depends on who’s pouring and who’s drinking. [LAUGHTER] Back to that thing. I remember starting in the 50s, you know, it was not so cool because it was just inconvenient and painful to have to find a place to stay all over America. You know the hotel situation. Even places like Philadelphia. But the south was a nightmare to try to stay someplace just for a night and all that nonsense that was going on then, and the 60s was the turning point and so there was a lot of turmoil and that’s why I said the best and worse of conditions.
The climate in the 50s and 60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious. The music was happening and everything else but when you call it the music business they were in just in the music and not in the business at all because the stories of what used to happen with management and record companies and so forth in the 50s, I mean it’s nothing like today. People walk around, like Michael Jacksons and Princes and Babyface or whoever is happening, they are industries, I mean serious seriously big industries. I remember working with Nat Cole on a tour in 1959 and he says I’m Nat Cole, a singer and a jazz piano player but I’m also an industry and he became an industry. Michael Jordan is an industry, huge industry. Shaquille O’Neil is an industry. Oprah Winfrey is a nation. [LAUGHTER] Is a nation, it’s incredible. It’s true, though. She’s, it’s absolutely incredible. There’s nothing even close to that in the 60s. Nobody even dreamt about anything like Oprah…
JONES: Astounding.