Qwest Records
American record label
Qwest Records was an American record label run by Quincy Jones.
History
Qwest Records was established by Quincy Jones in 1980 as a joint venture with Warner Bros. Records, although Jones remained under contract with A&M Records until 1981. The first release on Qwest was George Benson's 1980 album, Give Me the Night, shared with Warner Bros. Records, as Benson was under contract with it. Patti Austin, Jones's goddaughter, was one of the first artists to sign with Qwest, and the label released her album Every Home Should Have One in 1981.
While Qwest Records primarily catered to the R&B market, it also welcomed a diverse range of artists. This included Frank Sinatra (whom Jones produced in the 1960s), Tevin Campbell, Radiance, and the British alternative dance group New Order (formerly known as Joy Division, its earlier post-punk incarnation). Jones told NME in a May 1990 interview:
I'm so honored that New Order picked my label to go on in the US—it really flattered me. They're beautiful people.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Qwest Records” is american record label. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Qwest, Records and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3414893. VIAF identifies the subject as 149037419. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1981 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Qwest Records” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.