Quincy Jones, Legendary Music Producer, Dies at 91

Quincy Jones, the musical big whose six-decade, barrier-breaking profession encompassed many artistic personas—musician, songwriter, producer, conductor, arranger, artist, document label proprietor and government, TV/movie producer, journal writer and humanitarian—has died. He was 91.

In line with Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, the 28-time Grammy Award winner (out of a document 80 nominations) and Rock & Roll Corridor of Famer died on Sunday night time (Nov. 3) at his residence within the Bel Air part of Los Angeles, surrounded by his household.

“Tonight, with full however damaged hearts, we should share the information of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the household mentioned in an announcement. “And though that is an unimaginable loss for our household, we have a good time the nice life that he lived and know there’ll by no means be one other like him.”

“He’s really certainly one of a sort and we are going to miss him dearly; we take consolation and immense delight in realizing that the love and pleasure, that had been the essence of his being, was shared with the world by means of all that he created. By means of his music and his boundless love, Quincy Jones’ coronary heart will beat for eternity.”

Among the many survivors are his seven kids, together with actress Rashida Jones.

“Quincy Jones is the last word music renaissance man,” fellow music legend Clive Davis informed Billboard in 2013. “Quincy is ever younger, ever very important, with an creativeness as massive as the most important coronary heart on this planet.”

In a monumental profession spanning greater than 60 years, Jones collaborated with a number of musical luminaries starting from mentors Depend Basie and Clark Terry to Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson. Amongst a cross-section of his storied accomplishments: Jones produced Jackson’s best-selling albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Dangerous; obtained the rights to the novel The Coloration Purple and forged a younger Oprah Winfrey in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 Oscar-nominated movie adaptation; and helmed the historic recording classes for the 1985 all-star charity single and Billboard Scorching 100 No. 1 “We Are the World.” Taking the A&R helm at Mercury Data in 1961, Jones turned the primary African-American to function a VP at a significant label. That affiliation resulted in his producing a number of hits for Lesley Gore, starting together with her 1963 pop debut “It’s My Social gathering.”

Jones broke the colour barrier once more as the primary black composer to obtain title recognition for his movie work. The primary theatrical characteristic that Jones scored was Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker in 1964. With the assist of Lumet and different business allies like Henry Mancini and Sidney Poitier, Jones composed the music for 2 landmark movies launched in 1967: finest image Oscar winner Within the Warmth of the Evening and In Chilly Blood, primarily based on the Truman Capote bestseller.

Segueing into tv, Jones wrote the memorable theme songs for such sequence as The Invoice Cosby Present, Ironside and Sanford and Son. He additionally government produced The Contemporary Prince of Bel-Air, starring rapper and fledgling actor Will Smith, and Within the Home, starring LL Cool J.

“Stop” was a international phrase to Jones, who survived two mind aneurysms in 1974. After the primary, he wrote in his 2008 e-book, The Full Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions: Pictures, Letters, Reminiscences & Extra from Q’s Private Assortment, “It didn’t seem like I’d make it, so my mates deliberate a memorial service. … They’d the live performance anyway.” Together with his neurologist at his facet, he attended the service on the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles as Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan and Sidney Poitier paid tribute to his nice expertise and legacy.

Wanting again on his profession on the event of his 80^th birthday, Jones informed Billboard, “I really feel lucky to have been born at a time the place I used to be in a position to work with each one who formed the historical past of American tradition. It’s God’s plan, and also you simply should open your coronary heart and embrace each a part of it.”

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933, to oldsters Quincy Delight Jones Sr. and Sarah Frances Jones, and was raised along with his solely full-blood brother, Lloyd. His mom labored in a financial institution earlier than being admitted to a psychological establishment for schizophrenia when Quincy was only a teenager; his father was a carpenter who performed semi-pro baseball.

Quincy Sr. divorced Sarah shortly after she was institutionalized and remarried a lady named Elvera, who had three kids. They then had three extra of their very own, for an eight-sibling household.

“We had been within the coronary heart of the biggest black ghetto in Chicago throughout the Melancholy,” Jones recalled in an interview for the Academy of Achievement, “and each block was the spawning floor for each gangster, black and white, in America too. So we had been round all of that.”

In 1943, his father uprooted the household to transfer to Bremerton, Wash., after which to Seattle, the place Quincy Jr. attended Garfield Excessive Faculty and ignited his ardour for music by finding out composition and studying to play the trumpet. When simply a teen, Jones met a 16-year-old Ray Charles—a gathering captured within the 2004 Jamie Foxx–starring biopic Ray—who turned an enormous inspiration, trainer and buddy. They might later work collectively on quite a few musical tasks.

Whereas attending Seattle College, Jones performed within the school band and continued to check music, however accomplished only one semester earlier than transferring to Boston’s Berklee Faculty of Music on a scholarship. He in the end left Berklee to tour with Lionel Hampton as a trumpeter, earlier than establishing himself as an arranger for among the period’s main abilities, together with Charles, Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa.

As a solo artist, Jones signed with ABC Paramount Data in 1956 and moved to Paris a yr later, when he turned the musical director for Mercury Data’ French distributor Barclay Data. Along with finding out composition with Nadia Boulanger, he toured all through Europe working as musical director for composer Harold Arlen’s Free and Straightforward touring present. He additionally shaped a band known as The Jones Boys that was comprised of jazz artists from that present. They received nice opinions, however cash was scarce.

“We had the very best jazz band on the planet, and but we had been actually ravenous,” he informed Musician journal. “That’s once I found that there was music and there was the music enterprise. If I had been to outlive, I must study the distinction between the 2.”

Jones started working with Frank Sinatra in 1958 after they collaborated on a profit present for which Jones did the preparations. Sinatra—who nicknamed Jones “Q”—later employed him to rearrange his 1964 album It May as Nicely Be Swing with the Depend Basie Orchestra. His first Grammy win was in 1964 for finest association on the Depend Basie Orchestra’s “I Can’t Cease Loving You.” Jones subsequent labored on the 1966 stay set Sinatra on the Sands, which contained his well-known association of “Fly Me to the Moon” (the primary recording performed by astronaut Buzz Aldrin when he landed on the moon in 1969). Sinatra and Jones additionally labored collectively on numerous TV exhibits and different recordings, leading to subsequent arranging gigs for different artists like Billy Eckstine and Peggy Lee.

“There was no grey to the person. It was both black or white,” Jones mentioned of Sinatra in 2001’s Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. “If he liked you, there was nothing on this planet he wouldn’t do for you. If he didn’t such as you, disgrace in your ass. I do know he liked me too. In all of the years working collectively, we by no means as soon as had a contract—only a handshake.”

Irving Inexperienced, president and founding father of Mercury Data, helped Jones safe a music director place on the label, and by 1964, he’d superior to VP, changing into the primary African-American to realize that put up at a significant label. Throughout his Mercury tenure, Jones moonlighted as a movie composer, scoring the critically acclaimed Pawnbroker for Lumet, which led to his leaving Mercury and relocating to Los Angeles to pursue extra movie work.

In 1965, he composed the rating for Sydney Pollack’s first movie, The Slender Thread, starring Poitier. Jones went on to attain greater than 35 films, together with Stroll, Don’t Run (1966), Carl Reiner’s Enter Laughing (1967), Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), The Italian Job (1969), Cactus Flower (1969), They Name Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Getaway (1972).

In 1968, Jones turned the primary African-American to obtain two Oscar nominations in the identical yr. He and songwriting accomplice Bob Russell (they had been the primary African-People to be nominated for finest authentic tune) had been honored for “The Eyes of Love” from the Robert Wagner romantic drama Banning, and his authentic rating for In Chilly Blood was nominated as effectively. Jones’ complete of six Academy Award nominations embrace finest image, authentic rating and authentic tune for 1985’s The Coloration Purple, which acquired 11 Academy Award nods general.

In 1971 Jones turned the primary African-American to be named musical director and conductor for the Oscars; he later served as government producer for the Academy Awards in 1996. His acceptance of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995 marked one other first for an African-American. With seven Oscar nods, he tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton because the African-American with probably the most nominations.

Alongside the way in which, Jones’ spate of solo albums additionally introduced the multi-faceted expertise crucial and well-liked acclaim, starting with 1969’s Strolling in House and together with Gula Matari, Smackwater Jack, You’ve Obtained It Dangerous Woman, Physique Warmth, Mellow Insanity, I Heard That!, Sounds … And Stuff Like That!, The Dude and Again on the Block. As a songwriter, his huge catalog has been sampled by such artists because the late Tupac Shakur and Kanye West. Certainly one of Jones’ most-licensed tracks is 1962’s “Soul Bossa Nova.” The full of life observe was used for the 1998 World Cup in France, Woody Allen’s Take the Cash and Run (1969), the Austin Powers films and on tv’s Glee.

In 1975, Jones based Qwest Productions, for which he organized and produced albums by Sinatra and different main pop stars. He produced the soundtrack for The Wiz (1978), starring Jackson and Diana Ross. Quickly thereafter, he and the long run King of Pop recorded a sequence of game-changing albums that features the top-selling Thriller.

“I feel it’s protected to say that what we—Michael Jackson, me, Rod Temperton, Bruce Swedien, Jerry Hey, Greg Phillinganes and my total studio A-Workforce—did with Off the Wall, Thriller and Dangerous won’t ever be matched,” Jones informed Billboard in 2013. “It was the right convergence of expertise, expertise and timing, with sufficient house for God to stroll by means of the room.”

Establishing Qwest Data in 1980 as a three way partnership with Warner Music Group, Jones oversaw an eclectic group of artist, together with Sinatra, British post-punk band New Order, Pleasure Division, James Ingram, Tevin Campbell, Andraé Crouch, Patti Austin, Siedah Garrett, Gregory Jefferson and Justin Warfield.

Past leisure, social activism performed an essential position all through Jones’ life. He supported Martin Luther King Jr. within the Nineteen Sixties, labored with Jesse Jackson’s P.U.S.H. motion, and teamed with Bono on a variety of humanitarian tasks. He based a company known as The Quincy Jones Pay attention Up Basis, devoted to constructing houses in Africa and empowering youth by way of instructional packages in music and tradition.

Turning his consideration to famine aid in 1985, Jones gathered collectively a various lineup of music superstars inside A&M Studios in L.A., main the recording session for “We Are the World”—famously directing the assembled artists to “examine your ego on the door.” The Grammy Award-winning USA for Africa profit single raised greater than $63 million for Ethiopian famine aid.

In 1990, he shaped Quincy Jones Leisure in a co-venture with Time Warner. QJE produced the NBC sitcom Contemporary Prince of Bel-Air, which put rapper Smith on the map as an actor, in addition to UPN’s Within the Home and Fox’s Mad TV, amongst others. In 1993, he co-founded QDE, Quincy Jones/David Salzman Leisure. Along with producing movies, TV exhibits and academic leisure, QDE revealed two magazines, VIBE and Spin.

Past his 27 Grammy Awards, Jones’ quite a few accolades embrace the Grammy Dwelling Legend and Trustees awards and France’s highest honor: Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur. Inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2013, Jones had most just lately produced the 2014 documentary Carry on Keepin’ On, about jazz trumpeter Clark Terry and his mentorship of blind piano prodigy Justin Kauflin.

In his later years, Jones continued to remain busy discovering and nurturing next-generation artists together with Kauflin, Nikki Yanofsky, Emily Bear and Alfredo Rodriguez. He carried out within the World Peace Live performance in Hiroshima, Japan in 2013, launched such ventures as Dubai Music Week by means of his World Gumbo group of worldwide artists, created the musical app Playground Classes and partnered on branded merchandise from headphones (Harman) to watches (Audemars-Piguet). In 2013, he filed a $10 million lawsuit in opposition to MJJ Productions, managed by the Michael Jackson Property, and Sony Leisure, alleging that he was shorted royalties from posthumous releases. The presiding choose dominated in February 2016 that the case would proceed to trial on June 15.

Within the last chapter of his impactful profession, Jones introduced in 2023 a significant restructuring of Quincy Jones Productions, in the end closing its artist administration division. The choice marked a shift towards prioritizing artistic endeavors in music, movie, and know-how. Whereas stepping away from artist administration, Jones remained dedicated to mentoring younger expertise, celebrating the successes of Grammy winners like Jacob Collier and Jon Batiste, and expressing gratitude for the contributions of outgoing division president Adam Fell. Even with these modifications, Jones continued to assist the following era of artists till his passing.

Quincy Jones Productions had been centered on a dynamic slate of tasks throughout numerous media. Amongst them had been movie, tv, and stage ventures, together with a musical adaptation of The Coloration Purple and a Broadway present on the historical past of Black music. Jones additionally held influential partnerships, resembling his Q-Line audio merchandise with Harman Worldwide and Qwest TV, a streaming platform centered on jazz.

Final yr, Jones additionally celebrated his ninetieth birthday with a star-studded two-night tribute on the Hollywood Bow,). The celebration, led by his goddaughter Patti Austin and that includes performances from Stevie Marvel and rising jazz star Samara Pleasure, captured Jones’ six-decade profession and legacy as an artist, producer, arranger, and conductor. From soulful renditions of Jones’ classics to tributes from his longtime collaborators, the occasion underscored the profound influence he had on generations of musicians.

Performers, backed by core members of Jones’ home band and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, introduced Jones’ iconic work to life, together with collaborations with Michael Jackson, highlighted by renditions of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “P.Y.T.,” and “Man within the Mirror.” With powerhouse performances like Jennifer Hudson’s tackle “You Don’t Personal Me,” Jones’ contributions as a trailblazer in breaking racial obstacles within the business had been additionally honored.

The night closed with Marvel main the ensemble in “Pleased Birthday,” a becoming tribute to a person whose work introduced individuals collectively.

Jones was married to high-school sweetheart Jeri Caldwell from 1957-66, to actress Ulla Andersson from 1967-74 and to actress Peggy Lipton of TV’s The Mod Squad (Rashida’s mother) from 1974-90. He’s survived by seven kids, together with one baby apiece with dancer Carol Reynolds and actress Nastassja Kinski.

Extra reporting by Gail Mitchell.