US music supremo Quincy Jones dies aged 91
Quincy Jones, the man known simply as “Q,” was a huge influence on American music in his work with artists ranging from Count Basie to Frank Sinatra and reshaped pop music in his collaborations with Michael Jackson.
Jones died on Sunday at the age of 91, his publicist said.
There was very 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 27 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 fund-raiser “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.
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 Delight Jones Jr. was born on 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.
“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.”
