Quincy Jones, the musical titan who collaborated with everyone from Michael Jackson to Ray Charles, dies at 91 – Andscape

Quincy Jones, multi-talented musical titan which is big heritage he produced Michael Jackson’s historic album, wrote award-winning soundtracks for movies and tv shows, and collaborated with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and tons of of other recording artists, died at the age of 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of the death of our father and brother Quincy Jones,” the family said in an announcement. “And while this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the wonderful life he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones rose from working with gangs on Chicago’s South Side to the heights of show business, becoming considered one of the first black executives to prosper in Hollywood and amass extraordinary music catalogue which incorporates a few of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was difficult to discover a music lover who didn’t have at least one album with his name on it, or a pacesetter in the entertainment industry and beyond with whom he didn’t have any bond.

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 recordings for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed soundtracks for and , organized President Bill Clinton’s first inaugural ceremony, and oversaw the all-star recording of “We Are the World,” a 1985 charity album. for famine in Africa.

Lionel Richie, who co-wrote “We Are the World” and was considered one of the lead vocalists, called Jones the “principal orchestrator.”

In a profession that began when vinyl records were still played at 78 rpm, top honors probably went to his productions with Jackson: , and the albums were almost universal in style and appeal. Jones’ versatility and imagination helped unleash Jackson’s explosive talent, which transformed him from child star to “King of Pop.” On such classic songs as “Billie Jean” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson created a world soundscape of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&B, jazz and African songs. For , a few of the most memorable touches got here from Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for the guitar solo on the genre-mixing “Beat It” and enlisted Vincent Price to provide a spooky voice on the title track.

In 1983 alone, it sold over 20 million copies and equals, amongst others, The Eagles as the best-selling album of all time.

“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says, ‘it’s the producers’ fault’; so if everything goes well, it should be your ‘fault’ as well,” Jones said in a 2016 interview with the Library of Congress. “Paths don’t suddenly appear. The producer must have the skills, experience and ability to see the vision through to completion.”

The list of his accolades and awards spans 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography, including 27 Grammy Awards (now 28), an honorary Academy Award (now two) and an Emmy for “Roots.” He also received the French Legion of Honor, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy, and the Kennedy Center Tribute for his contributions to American culture. He was the subject of the 1990 documentary “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” and the 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoirs made him a best-selling writer.

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones cited the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he remembered. But he recalled his childhood with sadness, once telling Oprah Winfrey: “There are two kinds of individuals: those who have caring parents or guardians and people who don’t. Nothing in between. Jones’ mother suffered from emotional problems and eventually entered care, which made the world seem “meaningless” to Quincy. He spent most of his time in Chicago on the streets, amongst gangs, stealing and fighting.

“Man, they nailed my hand to the fence,” he told the AP in 2018, showing off his childhood scar.

Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a neighbor in Chicago had a piano, and shortly he was playing all of it the time. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10, and his world modified at a close-by recreation center. Jones and a few friends broke into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room with a stage nearby. There was a piano on the stage.

“I went there, stopped, looked, and then jingled for a while,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I began to find peace. I used to be 11 years old. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”

Within a couple of years, he began playing the trumpet and befriended the young blind musician Ray Charles, with whom he became lifelong friends. He was talented enough to win a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones continued to work as a contract composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a young person, he supported Billie Holiday. At the age of twenty he was touring with his own band.

“We had the best jazz band in the world, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s after I discovered that there was music and there was a music business. If I were to survive, I’d have to learn the difference between them.”

As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers to turn into vice chairman of Mercury Records in the early Sixties. In 1971, he became the first black musical director of the Academy Awards. The first film he produced received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986 (much to his disappointment, it didn’t win any). In cooperation with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which owned the popular culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. In 1999, the company was sold for $270 million.

“My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: accept talented people on your 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 comfortable with virtually every kind of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” with its strong, rolling rhythm and wistful flute, or opening his production of Charles’ soulful “In the Heat of the Night” with a rousing tenor saxophone solo. He has collaborated with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), singers (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, rapper and singer Queen Latifah).

Only in “We are the World” the performers were Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. He co-wrote hits for Jackson – “PYT (Pretty Young Thing” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) – and sampled songs by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the series “Sanford and Son.”

Jones was a moderator and star maker. He gave Will Smith a key role on the hit television show produced by Jones, and in the process introduced viewers to Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. Starting in the Sixties, he composed over 35 soundtracks for movies, including:

He called scoring “a multifaceted process, an abstract combination of science and soul.”

Jones’ work on the film’s soundtrack led to his collaboration with Jackson, who starred in the 1978 film. In an essay published in Time magazine after Jackson’s death in 2009, Jones recalled that the singer kept sheets of paper with him containing the thoughts of famous thinkers. When Jones asked about the origin of 1 passage, Jackson replied “Socrates” but pronounced it “SO-crayts.” Jones corrected him: “Michael, they’re SOCK-ra-tees.”

“And the look he gave me then made me say, because I was so impressed with everything I saw in him during rehearsals, ‘I’d like to try producing your album.'” Jones recalled. “Then he came back and told the people at Epic Records and they said, ‘No way. Quincy is too jazzy». Michael was stubborn, so he and his managers came back and said, “Quincy is producing the album.” And we started doing it. Ironically, it was one of the best-selling Black albums at the time and the album saved the jobs of people saying I was the wrong guy. That’s how it works.”

Tensions emerged after Jackson’s death. In 2013 Jones sued Jackson’s estateclaiming he’s owed multimillion-dollar royalties and charges for producing a few of the superstar’s biggest hits. In a 2018 interview with New York magazine, he called Jackson “as Machiavellian as possible” and alleged that he drew material from others.

Jones was addicted to work and play and sometimes suffered due to it. He nearly died of a brain aneurysm in 1974 and fell right into a deep depression in the Eighties when Oscar voters rejected “The Color Purple”; it never received a competitive Oscar. Jones, a father of seven children and five moms, described himself as a “dog” who had countless lovers around the world. He was married 3 times, his wives included actress Peggy Lipton.

“For me, loving a woman is one of the most natural, blissful, life-enhancing – and dare I say, religious – acts in the world,” he wrote.

He was not an activist in his youth, but he modified after attending the funeral of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and later becoming friends with the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jones dedicated himself to philanthropy, saying that “the best and only useful aspect of fame and celebrity is having a platform from which to help others.”

His goals included fighting HIV and AIDS, educating children, and caring for the world’s poor. He founded Quincy Jones Listen Up! foundation designed to connect young people with music, culture and technology, and said that throughout his life he had been guided by “a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism.”

“Life is like a dream, said the Spanish poet and philosopher Federico Garcia Lorca,” Jones wrote in his memoirs. “Mine was in Technicolor, with full Dolby sound thanks to THX amplification, before they knew what these systems were.”

In addition to Rashida, Jones is survived by daughters Jolie Jones Levine, Rachel Jones, Martina Jones, Kidada Jones and Kenya Kinski-Jones; son Quincy Jones III; brother Richard Jones and sisters Theresa Frank and Margie Jay.