QUINCY JONES,
1933-2024
Quincy Jones, one of the most important figures in modern music, died 11/3 at the age of 91 at his home in L.A.'s Bel Air. No cause was provided.
Tributes are pouring in from music-world luminaries.
"Michael Jackson had tremendous admiration for Quincy’s spirit and vision," the artist's estate said in a statement. "Together, they produced Michael’s three massive worldwide hit albums, enduring masterpieces of contemporary music: Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller, the cultural and media phenomenon that remains the biggest-selling album of all time. Another collaboration, 'We Are the World,' written by Michael and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy, became one of the biggest-selling singles ever and raised funds for the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia. Quincy changed the course of popular music numerous times during his illustrious career, widening its horizons and bringing his take on jazz, R&B and pop to the mainstream. We celebrate his spirit and honor his tremendous contribution to our understanding and appreciation of music."
"Quincy Jones was a true giant of music," said Clive Davis. "Whether it was jazz, pop, R&B or rock, no genre of music escaped his genius. Say 'We Are the World' and say The Color Purple and you’ll understand the range of his music. He was the ultimate music Renaissance man and a true inspiration to all of us in music."
Added legendary production/songwriting team Gamble and Huff in a joint statement, “Quincy was an example for all of us who came behind him in the music business. While Quincy always admired the success of the [Philadelphia International] record label, we more than respected him and his multifaceted success as a producer, songwriter, musician and overall entertainment-industry business mastermind and genius."
“We join billions of music fans around the world as we mourn the loss of the great Quincy Jones and celebrate his immeasurable contributions to the culture," said Warner Chappell Music heads Guy Moot and Carianne Marshall in a joint statement. "Words like titan, genius and GOAT will be used today and he deserves it all. Quincy was a producer, artist, composer and activist, but above all, he was a songwriter. He leaves behind an extraordinarily powerful, diverse body of work that will light the way for future generations. Our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends.”
“For all of us who value what Quincy Jones contributed to art, society and the human race, he was the world and we are his children," said Steven Spielberg. "Never to be forgotten for his inimitable talent and legendary contribution to music and culture and the goal of healing the world, Q was also a profoundly wonderful mentor, a doer and a uniter. Most of all, he was our friend. All of us who were lucky enough to be in his circle were given nicknames by Q. Mine was 'Carl,' because in 1980 when we met, my answering machine had a voice message where you heard me doing a terrible impression of Carl Sagan. He never called me by my first name again. He was deeply committed to family. Everyone close to him felt special and blessed just to listen and learn and laugh. Just yesterday, like he had for the past 33 years, he sent flowers to my wife Kate for her birthday. We will miss him, but there is so much of him surrounding us to keep him close.”
What follows is from an appreciation by Willie Aron we published here in March to commemorate Jones' 91st birthday. It originally appeared in our 2024 Black History Month special issue.
Jones produced the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s 1982 Thriller. He also presided over the production of “We Are the World,” the groundbreaking, star-studded 1985 single that raised more than $60m for humanitarian aid. But those endeavors don’t begin to tell the story of this endlessly creative force.
Here’s a short list of Jones' roles: big band and jazz trumpet virtuoso, (multiple) Grammy-winning composer, record producer, recording artist, film producer, arranger, conductor, TV producer, record executive, magazine founder, social activist, philanthropist and multimedia entrepreneur.
Jones' oeuvre has extended to seemingly every musical genre under the sun; he assayed pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music, molding these disparate forms into dazzling amalgams on records, of course, but also in live performance, film and television.
As a producer, he coaxed brilliant performances from not only MJ but the likes of Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. He wrangled superstars and showed young strivers how to bring their “A” game. Remember the funky, blues harmonica-drenched theme to Sanford and Son? What about the urgent, synth-driven theme to Ironside or “Hikky Burr,” the relentlessly groovy opening to The Bill Cosby Show? All were composed and arranged by Jones. His scores called upon his multi-genre mastery to move the sound of film forward.
The man’s impeccable chops and versatility raised the level of every room he’s entered, and, not coincidentally, he won every accolade imaginable. He was also a fearless truth-teller whose words could occasionally scorch. But his gravitas, even to those on the receiving end of his fiercest broadsides, was undeniable. He earned his bona fides in the course of an astounding personal and professional odyssey—suffused with triumph and fraught with challenges—that is also the story of modern musical culture.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. grew up in Seattle. His best friend from adolescence onward was another musical maverick, Ray Charles. Besides a mutual love of jazz, the pair shared a more destructive pursuit; according to Q, it was Brother Ray who introduced the young bebop trumpeter to heroin, whose use was rampant among jazz musicians during the ’40s and ’50s. Quincy’s consumption ended after he fell down five flights of stairs after returning home one night.
The jazz life continued to beckon, however, and Jones left Seattle University after a single semester for Boston’s renowned Berklee School of Music. While there, he accepted an offer to tour Europe and the Soviet Union with famed jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. Jones soon learned that institutional racism was not the exclusive domain of the Jim Crow South, later reflecting, “It gave you some sense of perspective on past, present and future. It took the myopic conflict between just black and white in the United States and put it on another level, because you saw the turmoil between the Armenians and the Turks, and the Cypriots and the Greeks, and the Swedes and the Danes, and the Koreans and the Japanese. Everybody had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these conflicts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.”
The remainder of the 1950s saw Jones becoming musical director for bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, touring the Middle East and South America courtesy of the U.S. Information Agency, signing a recording contract with ABC/Paramount, moving to Paris to study with composers Oliver Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger and assuming the role of music director for Barclay, a French subsidiary of Mercury Records.
In 1959 he arranged and produced what is widely considered one of Charles’ towering achievements, The Genius of Ray Charles, for Atlantic Records. Jones’ sumptuous string and brass charts are a masterful combination of beauty and power, as exemplified by the lush orchestration of the ballads “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” and the swinging opening track, “Let the Good Times Roll.”
Not long after the album’s release, Jones embarked on yet another European tour, this time leading an 18-piece ensemble called The Jones Boys, which featured bassist Eddie Jones and trumpeter Reunald Jones (neither of whom were related to him). After a critically acclaimed but financially disastrous string of shows, Q came to a sobering, but ultimately liberating, conclusion: “We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were… starving. That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two.”
Thanks to the support of Mercury Records boss Irving Green, Jones became vice president of the company―his position was the highest ever attained by a Black person at a major label. Continuing his career as a recording artist for Mercury, Q released an album in 1962, Big Band Bossa Nova, that fused brassy, jazzy horn arrangements with the Brazilian genre that was then sweeping the world. The album’s signature tune, “Soul Bossa Nova,” would become the theme song for 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the success of which returned the wildly swinging track to prominence.
Q’s pop breakthrough came in 1963 with his production of teen sensation Lesley Gore’s hits “It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn To Cry” and the enduring proto-feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me.” All were million-sellers. A year later he was enlisted by Sinatra to arrange an album backed by the great Count Basie, 1964’s It Might As Well Be Swing, which yielded the definitive version of the standard “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Sinatra would employ Jones many times over the years as arranger and producer; the projects to which Q lent his talents included another collaboration with the Count Basie Band, 1966’s classic Sinatra at the Sands. During this period he also produced recordings by such jazz luminaires as Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine and Art Farmer.
Also in 1964, Jones was invited by director Sidney Lumet to write the score for The Pawnbroker. Thus began a four-decades-long foray into film composition; the list of his scores spans In Cold Blood (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), The Getaway (1972), 1978’s The Wiz (for which he both composed and adapted music, having been a producer of the stage production), 1986’s Oscar-nominated blockbuster The Color Purple (which he also co-produced) and many others.
Q’s musical star continued to rise, and he released a series of successful solo albums with hit songs like “Walking in Space” (1969), “Smackwater Jack” (1971) and “Body Heat” (1974).
He was also increasingly busy as a producer. The 1970s and ’80s saw him behind the boards with, among others, Aretha, Donna Summer, George Benson, Patti Austin, The Brothers Johnson, Rufus With Chaka Khan, The Winans, Lena Horne and James Ingram, several of whose releases came out on Q’s own label, Qwest, which he launched in 1980.
Despite this staggering litany of accomplishments, Quincy Jones will probably—and perhaps unfairly—be best remembered for the game-changing albums he produced for Michael Jackson, 1979’s Off the Wall and, of course, Thriller.
Unhappy with the musical direction his solo career was taking, Jackson had settled on Q as his producer only after Jones promised the singer creative control. Off the Wall’s innovative mix of disco, R&B, pop, and funk resulted in Jackson’s first solo blockbuster, with 20m albums sold worldwide. Quincy later extolled Jackson’s vocal prowess during the sessions, insisting, “[Michael had] some of the same qualities as the great jazz singers I’d worked with: Ella, Sinatra, Aretha, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington. Each of them had that purity, that strong signature sound and that open wound that pushed them to greatness.”
For the follow-up album, Jackson insisted that every song be approached as if it were a hit single, as opposed to an album featuring a few hit songs accompanied by many more “album tracks.” It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the relationship between Jones and Jackson was strained during the making of the record, but the result, Thriller, sold 70m copies worldwide and remains the biggest-selling album in history. Evergreen hits abound: “Billie Jean” (on which Jackson tested Jones’ patience by insisting on extending the intro because it made MJ want to dance), “Wanna Be Starting Something,” “Beat It” (featuring a blistering Eddie Van Halen guitar solo), “Human Nature” and the relentless title track, which yielded an epic (13-minute, 42-second) yet phenomenally popular music video thanks to continuous airplay on the nascent MTV.
All of the above barely scratches the surface of Jones’ decades-long contributions to music. It’s hard to imagine another figure with his unerring Midas touch—or one whose influence embraces so much of the music that shaped the last half-century.
