Quincy Jones, the iconic musician, producer, songwriter, composer, and arranger whose work over the course of his 70-year career made an indelible impact on various corners of popular music, died on Sunday at age 91.

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

Born Quincy Delight Jones Jr. on the South Side of Chicago, IL on March 14th, 1933, Jones was exposed to music at an early age via his mother Sarah Frances‘ love for church songs and his neighbor Lucy Jackson‘s frequent stride piano playing, which he would listen to through the walls. During his early years in Chicago, Jones was involved in street crime and gang activities. After Jones’ mother suffered a schizophrenic episode when he was a boy, she was institutionalized. His father subsequently remarried to a woman named Elvera Jones, who already had three children of her own, and later they had three more children together. Quincy often noted that he and his older brother felt they were treated poorly by their new stepmother as compared to her biological kids.

Quincy Jones later moved west with his family to Washington as a teen. When he was 14, he introduced himself to a 16-year-old Ray Charles after watching Charles perform at The Rocking Chair in Seattle. As he once explained in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, he was inspired by the life Charles had already made for himself as a musician, with an apartment of his own, a live-in girlfriend, and a record player. “When Ray moved to Seattle [in 1947], his name spread like a plague. He was 16 and already he could sing like Charles Brown and Nat Cole, and Nat was the king. When Ray would sing songs like ‘I Love You for Sentimental Reasons,’ the girls would fall down. And he played jazz, too: bebop alto. We’d play our white gigs from seven to ten at night—the money gigs—then we’d go to the black clubs till one in the morning.”

Quincy Jones Explains His Circuitous Path To Music – The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (2016)
 

Jones initially accepted a scholarship to Seattle University but soon transfered to what is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He eventually left the school when he was offered a chance to tour as a trumpeter, arranger, and pianist with bandleader Lionel Hampton in 1953, marking his first professional gig.

Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger, and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band. “We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones once told Musician magazine of that time. “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.”

As The Associated Press explains, “As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice president at Mercury Records in the early ’60s. In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony. The first movie he produced, The Color Purple, received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986. In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.”

As he wrote in 2001’s Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, “My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from.”

That philosophy, along with his business-minded approach, led him to work on impactful projects from diverse corners of the music spectrum. He arranged songs for Ray Charles, scored a #1 pop hit producing Lesley Gore‘s “It’s My Party” (1963), formed a lifelong friendship with Frank Sinatra while arranging his seminal 1964 album Fly Me to the Moon, and composed the funky song to beloved sitcom Sanford & Son in the early ’70s.

Lesley Gore – “It’s My Party” (Produced by Quincy Jones)

Frank Sinatra – “Fly Me To The Moon” (Arranged by Quincy Jones)

Quincyu Jones – “The Streetbeater” (Sanford & Son Theme Song)

In 1978, Quincy Jones produced the soundtrack for The Wiz, the musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. Jones and Jackson formed a lasting (though often contentious) relationship from there: Quincy went on to produce Michael’s next three albums—1979’s Off the Wall, 1982’s Thriller, and 1987’s Bad—a run of releases that cemented a grown-up Jackson as the biggest pop star on the planet. Thriller, in particular, remains the best-selling album of all time to this day.

Michael Jackson – “Thriller” (Official Music Video) [Produced by Quincy Jones] 

In 1985, Quincy Jones served as the producer and conductor of “We Are The World”, the famed charity song for Ethopian famine relief co-written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and featuring recorded contributions by Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Bruce Springsteen, Daryl Hall, John Oates, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Waylon Jennings, Smokey Robinson, Bette Midler, Harry Belafonte, Lindsey Buckingham, Huey Lewis, and more. When asked about how he was able to wrangle so many enormous stars to work together, Quincy noted that he taped a simple sign to the studio door—a sign that summed up his time-tested approach to collaboration: “Check your ego at the door.”

“We Are The World” – (Produced, Conducted by Quincy Jones) 

He also forged an impressive resume as a film scorer. Starting in the 1960s, he composed more than 35 film scores, including for The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, and In Cold Blood. He called scoring “a multifaceted process, an abstract combination of science and soul.”

In addition, Jones enjoyed a successful career as a film producer. His debut film as a producer, 1985’s The Color Purple, received 11 Academy Award nominations (including one for Jones’ score) and helped introduced film audiences to both Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. He also served as an executive producer on TV projects like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and is credited with convincing the show’s eventual star Will Smith, to make his acting debut for the project. Through his Quincy Jones Entertainment film production company, he also served as a producer on In The House, The Jenny Jones Show, and MadTV.

It’s difficult to understate the breadth of his influence on decades worth of popular music. Quincy Jones worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers of various eras (Lesley Gore, Michael Jackson), and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, Queen Latifah). He continued to advocate for rising artists into his later years.

His work has also influenced many artists in the modern hip-hop world: In the 2018 documentary on Jones’ life and work, Quincy, Kendrick Lamar is shown telling Jones that he was the inspiration for “combining hip-hop and jazz.” Hip-hop sample database Who Sampled? features more than 3,500 listings of songs that sample tracks written, produced, or recorded by Jones. For generations, it seemed virtually any permutation of popular music could be traced back to Jones and his influence on some level.

The Pharcyde – “Passin’ Me By” (Official Music Video) [Sampled from Quincy Jones’ “Summer in the City”]

Beyond the musical influence of his wide-ranging body of work, Quincy Jones was seen as a pioneer for Black musicians and music executives. In 1968, Jones became the first Black composer to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. That same year, he was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on In Cold Blood, making him the first Black person to be nominated twice in the same year. In 1971, Jones became the first Black musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first Black artist to receive the academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

He was also a noted philanthropist and activist. A supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, Jones was one of the founders of the Institute for Black American Music (IBAM). In the 1970s, he formed the Quincy Jones Workshops, a series of educational workshops in L.A. aimed at honing the skills of inner-city youth in musicianship, acting, and songwriting. He worked closely with Bono (U2) on a number of charitable causes and founded the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, a nonprofit that built more than 100 homes in South Africa and aimed to educate youths in the region in technology, culture, and music. He was a spokesperson for the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, which annually awards the Quincy Jones Exceptional Advocacy Award.

In 2013, Quincy Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category. He was also named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time. Over the course of his career, he earned 28 Grammy Awards on 80 nominations, as well as a Grammy Legend Award, to go along with seven Academy Award nominations and an Emmy Award (for his score for Roots in 1977).

Jones leaves behind seven children with five different women, including actor Rashida Jones and model/actor/designer Kidada Jones.

Quincy (2018)– Official Documentary Trailer