Quincy Jones, US music legend who reshaped pop music, dies at 91
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.
Jones’ publicist confirmed the producer’s death. No details on the cause were disclosed.
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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.
In 1971, Jones became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards television broadcast. Later this month, Hollywood’s film academy will celebrate his career with an honorary Oscar to be presented at its annual Governors Awards.
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 musicproducer
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.”
