Quincy Jones, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic Thriller album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.
Jones’s publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.
“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”
Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalogue that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.
Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for Roots and In the Heat of the Night, organized president Bill Clinton’s first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of We Are the World, the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.
Lionel Richie, who co-wrote We Are the World and was among the featured singers, would call Jones “the master orchestrator.”
In a career which began when records were still played on vinyl at 78 rpm, top honours likely go to his productions with Jackson: Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad were albums near-universal in their style and appeal. Jones’s versatility and imagination helped set off the explosive talents of Jackson as he transformed from child star to the “King of Pop.”
On such classic tracks as Billie Jean and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Jones and Jackson fashioned a global soundscape out of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&B and jazz and African chants. For Thriller, some of the most memorable touches originated with Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-fusing Beat It and brought in Vincent Price for a ghoulish voiceover on the title track.
Thriller sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and has contended with the Eagles’ Greatest Hits 1971-1975 among others as the best-selling album of all time.
“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says ‘it was the producers fault’; so if it does well, it should be your ‘fault,’ too,” Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016. “The tracks don’t just all of a sudden appear. The producer has to have the skill, experience and ability to guide the vision to completion.”
Won 28 Grammys and Emmy for Roots
The list of his honours and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography Q, including 27 Grammys at the time (now 28), an honorary Academy Award (now two) and an Emmy for Roots. He also received France’s Legion d’Honneur, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center tribute for his contributions to American culture.
He was the subject of a 1990 documentary, Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoir made him a best-selling author.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones would cite the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he could remember. But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey that: “There are two kinds of people: those who have nurturing parents or caretakers, and those who don’t. Nothing’s in between.”
Jones’s mother suffered from emotional problems and was eventually institutionalized, a loss that made the world seem “senseless” for Quincy. He spent much of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.
“They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man,” he told the AP in 2018, showing a scar from his childhood.
Found ‘peace’ at the piano
Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a Chicago neighbour owned a piano and he soon played it constantly himself. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10 and his world changed at a neighbourhood recreation centre. Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage was a piano.
“I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”
Quincy Jones talks about how, during a break-in when he was 11, fate exposed him to music and changed the path of his life.
Within a few years he was playing trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. He was gifted enough to win a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band.
“We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two.”
As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice-president at Mercury Records in the early ’60s. In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony. The first movie he produced, The Color Purple, received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986. (But, to his great disappointment, no wins). In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million US in 1999.
“My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from,” Jones wrote in his autobiography.
He was at ease with virtually every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon to a punchy, swinging rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Charles’s soulful In the Heat of the Night” with a lusty tenor sax solo. He worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, rapper and singer Queen Latifah).
On We are the World alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. He co-wrote hits for Jackson — P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing — and Donna Summer — Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) — and had songs sampled by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the sitcom Sanford and Son.
