Quincy Jones dies at 91

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

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

Jones rose from running around with gangs on Chicago’s South Side to the highest levels of show business, becoming one of the first black executives to flourish in Hollywood and amassing an exceptional musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, you were unlikely to find a music lover who didn’t have at least one record to his name, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond with whom he had no connection.

Jones kept company with presidents, foreign leaders, movie stars, musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged recordings by Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for “Roots” and “In the Heat of the Night,” organized President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration and oversaw the all-star recording of “We Are the World,” 1985 Charitable Register for Famine Relief in Africa.

Lionel Richie, who co-wrote “We Are the World” and was among the featured vocalists, called Jones his “master arranger.”

In a career that began when records were still played on 78 rpm vinyl, the highest accolades are likely to go to his productions with Jackson: “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” were near-universal albums in Her style and charm. Jones’ versatility and imagination helped unleash Jackson’s explosive talent as he transformed from child star to “King of Pop.” On classic tracks like “Billie Jean” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson shaped a global soundscape of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&B, jazz, and African songs. For “Thriller,” some of the most memorable touches came with Jones, who enlisted Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-fucking “Beat It” and brought in Vincent Price for a harrowing voiceover on the title track.

“Thriller” sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone, rivaling the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits 1971-1975” among others as the best-selling album of all time.

“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says, ‘It was the producers’ fault.’ If it does well, it should be your fault, too,” Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016. “The tracks don’t just appear out of the blue. The producer must have the skill, experience, and ability to guide the vision toward completion.

A list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography “Q,” including a then-record 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 Prize of the Republic of Italy, and a Kennedy Center Honor for his contributions to American culture. He was the subject of the 1990 documentary Listen: The Life of Quincy Jones and a 2018 film by his daughter Rashida Jones. His memoirs made him a best-selling author.

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones cites the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he remembered. But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey: “There are two kinds of people: those who have parents or caretakers, and those who don’t. There’s nothing in between.” Jones’ mother suffered from emotional problems and was eventually institutionalized, a loss that made the world seem “meaningless” to Quincy. He spent most of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.

“They pinned my hand to the fence with a penknife, man,” he told the AP in 2018, explaining a scar from his childhood.

Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a neighbor in Chicago owned a piano and soon he was constantly playing it himself. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10 and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center. Jones and some friends stormed into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage there was a piano.

“I went up there, stopped, stared, and then thought about it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “This is where I started to find peace. I was 11 years old. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”

Within a few years he was playing the trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. 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 went on to work as a freelance composer, bandleader, arranger and producer. As a teenager, he supported Billie Holiday. By his mid-twenties, he was touring with his own band.

“We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I could survive, I had to learn the difference between the two.”

As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers when he became vice president of Mercury Records in the early 1960s. In 1971, he became the first black music director for the Academy Awards. The first film he produced, The Color Purple, received 11 Academy Award nominations in 1986. (But to his great disappointment, it did not win any.) In partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the popular culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.

“My philosophy as an entrepreneur always stems from the same roots as my personal creed: take talented people on their 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 almost every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” to a swinging beat and plaintive flute or opening his production of Charles’s soulful “In the Heat of the Night.” Tenor sax solo. He has worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), singers (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Leslie Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Shaka Khan, the rapper). And singer Queen Latifah).

On “We Are the World” alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen. He has co-written hits for Jackson – “PYT (Pretty Young Thing)” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)” – and has sampled songs by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. The song is the theme song for the comedy series “Sanford and Son”.

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