Titan of American music dies at age 91
5/11/2024 6:15
Quincy Jones, the man known simply as
"Q" who worked with musicians ranging from Count Basie to Frank
Sinatra and reshaped pop music with his collaborations with
Michael Jackson, died on Sunday at age 91, his publicist said.
There was little Jones did not do in a music career of more
than 65 years. He was a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger,
composer, producer and winner of 28 Grammy Awards.
A studio workaholic and a virtuoso at handling delicate
egos, he shaped recordings by jazz greats such as Miles Davis,
produced Sinatra, and put together the superstar ensemble that
recorded the 1985 fundraiser "We Are the World," the biggest hit
song of its time.
Jones also was a prolific writer of movie scores and
co-produced the film "The Color Purple," as well as the 1990s
television show "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air," which launched
the career of Will Smith. He had been scheduled to receive an
honorary Oscar from Hollywood's film academy this month.
Jones' circle of friends included some of the best-known
figures of the 20th century. He dined with Pablo Picasso, met
Pope John Paul II, helped Nelson Mandela celebrate his 90th
birthday and once retreated to Marlon Brando's South Pacific
island to recover from a breakdown.
Everything he did was stamped with his universal and
undeniable hipness. U2 frontman Bono called Jones "the coolest
person I've ever met".
Jones' most lasting achievements were in collaboration with
Jackson. They made three landmark albums - "Off the Wall" in
1979, "Thriller" in 1982, and "Bad" in 1987 - that changed the
landscape of American popular music. "Thriller" sold as many as
70 million copies, with six of the nine songs on the album
becoming top 10 singles.
* Quincy Jones: Nine facts about the American music
producer
MUSICAL BREAK-IN
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born March 14, 1933, in
Chicago. As a boy, he aspired to be a gangster like those he saw
in his rough neighborhood. He was 7 when his mother was taken to
a mental institution. His father, a carpenter, remarried and
moved the family to Bremerton in Washington state, where young
Quincy pursued a life of petty crime.
Jones said his interest in music bloomed in Bremerton, when
he and some friends found a piano after sneaking into the
community center in the segregated wartime housing project where
they lived.
He experimented with different instruments in the school
band before settling on the trumpet and by 13 was playing jazz,
popular music and rhythm-and-blues in nightclubs. In Seattle at
age 14, Jones met 16-year-old Ray Charles, not yet famous, who
taught him to arrange and compose music.
Basie and trumpeter Clark Terry also would be mentors to the
young Jones and he won a scholarship to what would become the
Berklee College of Music in Boston. He gave it up, however, to
go on the road with Lionel Hampton's band as a teenage trumpet
player in the early 1950s.
"Music was the one thing I could control," Jones wrote in
his autobiography. "It was the one world that offered me freedom
... I didn't have to search for answers. The answers lay no
further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, penciled
scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and
cool."
In the late 1950s he went on U.S. government-sponsored tours
around the world with a band organized by bebop jazz pioneer
Dizzy Gillespie. Jones then led his own band through Europe. He
was deeply in debt in the early 1960s when he took a job at
Mercury Records in New York, becoming one of the first Black
executives at a white-owned record company.
There, Jones ventured out of the jazz genre and produced his
first hit single, "It's My Party," a Lesley Gore song that
topped the U.S. pop chart in 1964.
Jazz purists called him a sell-out for making pop music but
Jones later told Rolling Stone: "The underlying motivation for
any artist, be it Stravinsky or Miles Davis, is to make the kind
of music they want and still have everyone buy it."
At Mercury, Jones got his first movie-scoring job, Sidney
Lumet's "The Pawnbroker." He went on to score nearly 40 films,
including "In the Heat of the Night," "In Cold Blood,"
"Mackenna's Gold," "The Wiz" and part of the television
mini-series "Roots".
The people Jones worked with would populate a jazz or R&B
hall of fame - Basie, Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Dinah Washington,
Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin. But he also
produced in other genres with, among others, Paul Simon, Amy
Winehouse, Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer.
He arranged Sinatra's hit "Fly Me to the Moon" that
astronaut Buzz Aldrin played a cassette recording of during the
first moon landing in 1969. Years later, Jones told GQ magazine
that Sinatra "called me up, and he was like a little kid: 'We
got the first music on the moon, man!'"
His own recordings were just as eclectic, veering from jazz
to soul, African to Brazilian. In 1991 his "Back on the Block"
record won the Grammy for album of the year and also Grammys in
the rap, rhythm and blues, jazz fusion and instrumental
categories.
Jones' work with Jackson was historic, although Jackson's
record company initially thought Jones was too jazzy to be his
producer. They started in 1979 with "Off the Wall," after the
singer had split from his brothers in the Jackson 5 and put
together a mix of dance tracks and ballads. The album featured
four songs that became top 10 hits.
Their 1982 collaboration, "Thriller," became a cultural
touchstone of the 1980s. Jones and Jackson wanted to broaden
Jackson's fan base so they added rock elements, getting
guitarist Eddie Van Halen to play a blistering solo on "Beat
It," which became one of Jackson's biggest hits ever.
Complemented by dazzling videos featuring Jackson's mesmerizing
dancing just as MTV was coming of age, "Thriller" made the
entertainer one of the biggest stars in the world.
DIVINE COLLABORATION
Hits like "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and the title song made
"Thriller" the biggest selling album of all time. It won three
Grammys for Jones and seven for Jackson.
They followed that in 1987 with "Bad," which had five No. 1
hits, including "Smooth Criminal" and "Man in the Mirror."
In 1985, Jones, Jackson and singer Lionel Richie organized
"We Are the World," a record to raise money for fighting famine
in Ethiopia. The huge all-star chorus featured Ray Charles, Bob
Dylan, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen and Smokey Robinson. Jones
set the tone for the recording session with a sign that said:
"Leave your ego at the door."
Jackson died in 2009, and Jones later sued the estate,
testifying that he was "cheated out of a lot of money" in
royalties. In July 2017, a Los Angeles jury awarded Jones $9.4
million.
Jones started his own record label, Qwest, as well as Vibe,
a magazine that covered the hip-hop world, and had various
foundations and humanitarian projects.
He kept launching new projects well past the traditional
retirement age. In 2018, Jones, then 84, told GQ magazine: "I
never been this busy in my life."
Jones was married three times. His first wife was his high
school sweetheart Jeri Caldwell with whom he had one daughter;
his second wife was Swedish model Ulla Andersson with whom he
had two children, including Quincy III, who became a hip-hop
producer.
His third wife was "Mod Squad" actress Peggy Lipton, with
whom he had two daughters, including actress Rashida Jones. He
had two other children outside his marriages, including one with
actor Nastassja Kinski.
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