quincy jonesThe American music maestro and entertainment industry titan who influenced nearly every popular genre, produced landmark albums and was nominated for a record 80 Grammy Awards died on Sunday, his publicist said.
He is 91 years old.
Jones “passed away peacefully” Sunday night at his home in Bel Air surrounded by his family, according to Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson.
“Tonight, with full and broken hearts, we must share the news of the passing of our father and brother, Quincy Jones. Although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate his greatness Live and know that there will never be another.
In a prolific career spanning more than 70 years, Jones established himself as a behind-the-scenes force and gifted artist as an arranger, composer, songwriter and performer.
He has left an indelible mark on jazz, pop, hip-hop and dozens of film and television scores, working closely with some of the most famous names in the American songbook, from Count Basie and Dinah Washington to Frank ·Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon.
He produced Michael Jackson’s hit record “Thriller,” Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of “The Color Purple” and the NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — projects that helped cement his status as a hitmaker and media mogul.
Jones has received numerous awards and honors, including a 2001 John F. Kennedy Center Honor, the 2010 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, and a 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Teece Redding is one of the first three “Foundation Inductees” to Atlanta’s Black Music and Entertainment Walk of Fame.
“A master inventor of hybrid music, he has fused pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling fusions across virtually every medium, including records, live performances, films and television. Obama said in his speech.
Jones wins 28 Grammy Awards, Placing him second on the list of all-time winners. In 1977, he won an Emmy Award for composing the theme song for the first episode of the miniseries Roots, and in 1994 he received the Academy Award for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933, to Quincy Delight Jones, a semiprofessional baseball player and carpenter, and Sarah ·Sarah Frances is a bank clerk and apartment building manager.
Jones’ first exposure to music was when his mother sang religious songs. She later developed schizophrenia. Jones’ parents eventually divorced and his father remarried.
In the early 1940s, Jones and his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, where he studied trumpet and worked with a fledgling pianist/singer named Ray Charles, who reportedly Charles helped convince Jones to pursue his interest in musical theater.
In the 1950s, Jones studied briefly at Boston’s prestigious Schillinger School of Music (now known as the Berkeley College of Music). He then began touring with jazz great Lionel Hampton as trumpeter and arranger.
Over time, he earned a reputation as a skilled freelance arranger. He worked with Cannonball Adderley, Count Basie, Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce (later known as Basheer Qusim), Oscar Pettiford, Dinah Washington and many other jazz luminaries.
In 1956 he toured with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band through the Middle East and South America and recorded his first album as bandleader that same year.
He worked for a time at Barclays Records in Paris, then led an all-star big band in Europe in a performance of Harold Arlen’s two-act “blues opera” “Free and Easy.”
In 1961, Jones returned to the United States and became artist and repertoire director for Mercury Records. Three years later, he was promoted to vice president, becoming one of the first black Americans to hold a top executive position at a major U.S. record label.
In the 1960s, Jones arranged and produced albums while also establishing himself as a go-to composer for film scores, first for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker Score, later composed for Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night and Richard Brooks’ “In Cold Blood.”
He went on to write for the original The Italian Job (1969), the satirical comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, the Steve McQueen thriller Get Out and the Robert Redford thriller A smooth, stylish soundtrack.
Jones’ next stop was A&M Records, where he worked from 1969 to 1981, taking a brief hiatus in 1974 to recover from a brain aneurysm.
Jones’ health was believed to be so poor that his friends and family began preparing for his death. He eventually attended his own memorial service along with comedian Richard Pryor, actor Sidney Poitier and singer Marvin Gaye.
In 1975, Jones founded his own record label, Qwest Productions, which signed artists such as Patti Austin and the British band New Order. Three years later, he composed the score for Lumet’s film musical “The Wizard of Oz,” an adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” starring Jackson and Diana Ross.
Jones reached commercial peaks as the producer of three of Jackson’s records, “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” each selling tens of millions of copies and shaking up the pop culture landscape.
“Thriller” soared up the sales charts with its hit single, electronic fusion of various music genres and MTV-like aesthetic. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time, and despite Jackson’s troubling personal life, it remains a landmark.
Jones was a prolific philanthropist. He helped recruit Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and other well-known performers for the 1985 production Charity single “We Are the World” to raise funds for famine victims in Ethiopia.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Jones branched out into other media, producing Spielberg’s version of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1985), as well as the beloved television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, starring Weir. 》. He also founded the music magazine Vibe.
In his later years, Jones—then a legend in entertainment and beyond—remained productive in the arts and philanthropy.
In 2001, he published his memoir, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, and in 2018, his daughter, actress Rashida Jones, directed a Netflix documentary about him.