It is big Quincy Jonesa “titan” of American entertainment, died at the age of 91 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, surrounded by his family. A producer and musician, he has worked with the biggest stars from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson and Will Smith.
“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of the passing of our father and brother Quincy Jones,” the family said. “While this is an incredible loss, we celebrate the amazing life he lived and know there will never be another like it.”
Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century. Among others he made an album Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad by Michael Jackson in the 1980s, the singer became the biggest pop star of all time. Jones has also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.
Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson (Getty)
In his long career, spanning more than 60 years, Jones has connected with foreign presidents and leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and entrepreneurs. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hamptonarranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the scores for ‘Roots’ and ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ organized the first celebration of the President of the United States Bill Clinton and supervised the recording of the ‘We are the World’, The song was created in 1985 for a charity to fight against famine in Africa.
He was also one of the executive producers of the television series ’Willy the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’launched by Will Smith, and won 26 Grammys out of 76 nominations, as well as a Grammy Legend Award in 1991.
Quincy Jones and Frank Sinatra, 1991 (Getty)
Huge artistic production
Recorded by Quincy Jones over 2,900 songs and more than 3,000 albums Between his own and those produced, he composed around fifty soundtracks for cinema and television: the music for the films “The Hot Night of Inspector Tibbs” (1967) with Norman Jewison, “Cactus Flower” (1969) stand out) by Gene Saks and “Getaway!” (1972) with Sam Peckinpah; as well as the music written for television series such as “Ironside”, ”Sanford and Son”, “Radici” and “The Bill Cosby Show”.
Jones’ extraordinary ability to expertly blend sounds from the most disparate musical genres soon became his trademark as a composer and producer. He made his pop debut to arrange the 1963 hit, “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore.
Over the next thirty years of his career, his productions for some of music’s most important artists, including Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Nana Mouskouri, Dinah Washington and Michael Jackson, influenced the pop music landscape. However,
he did not stop his own productions, as “Big Band Bossa Nova” (re-released forty years later as the soundtrack to all three Austin Powers films), “Walking in Space”, “Gula Matari”, “Smackwater Jack”, “Body Heat”, ”Mellow Madness”, “I Heard That” and ” The dude”.
Quincy Jones, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder in 1986 (Getty)
Quincy Jones he also produced two albums in Italy: the first is the 45 rpm single by Tony Renis “Cara fatina/Lettera a Pinocchio” from 1964, the second, in 1973, for a single by the singer Lara Saint Paul, which contained the songs “Ná bí buarta/ Adesso ricomincerei “, for which he took care of the arrangements and conducted the orchestra. For the studio recordings he chose, among others, musicians such as Gianni Basso and Gianni Bedori on tenor saxophone, Oscar Valdambrini on trumpet and flugelhorn , Pino Presti (also present in 1964) on electric bass, Tullio De Piscopo on drums, Angel ‘Pocho’ Gatti and Victor Bacchetta on piano.
The sick mother, poverty, the piano
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born. on March 14, 1933, in Chicago, to a mother who suffered from schizophrenia and ended up in an asylum when he was a boy. He and his brother Lloyd lived with their grandmother, a former slave, in Louisville, Kentucky, at a time when it was so difficult for the family to eat fried rats. As a preteen, he returned to Chicago to live with his father, who worked as a carpenter for the mob. “Until I was 11 years old I wanted to be a gangster,” Jones said in a 2018 Netflix documentary about his career, directed by his daughter, actress Rashida Jones. Then the Jones brothers moved to Seattle, where Quincy discovered his talent for the piano instead of a hobby and the story began. “I had found another mother,” she wrote in her 2001 autobiography.
From clubs to the Grammys
Jones began playing clubs, writing his first compositions, developing musical arrangement skills, and taking up playing the trumpet. He met a teenage Ray Charles after a performance by the future blues and bebop pioneer, and the duo became key contacts in the local music scene. He then briefly studied at Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts before joining Lionel Hampton on tour, then moving to New York, where he attracted attention as an arranger for the likes of Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, Count Basie and, of course, Ray Charles. .
In the 1950s he returned to touring, particularly in Europe. He played second trumpet on Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”, collaborating with Gillespie for several years before moving to Paris in 1957, where he studied with renowned composer Nadia Boulanger.
He crossed Europe with many jazz orchestras, but began to understand that name and talent did not always translate into money. Deeply in debt, he entered the music business, landing a job at Mercury Records where he eventually became vice president.
For Hollywood he composed soundtracks for films and television programs. He began working with Sinatra, for whom he arranged the most famous version of “Fly Me To The Moon”, and a musical and personal relationship was born that would continue until the singer’s death. While producing the soundtrack to the musical “The Wiz” with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, Jones began the collaboration that would create “Thriller,” the industry’s best-selling album of all time. A phenomenon that even surprised him, so much so that he defined it as “inexplicable”. “It’s not something you can build on thefly, that you can aim for,” he told Rolling Stone, “that’s why I keep a sign in the studio that says ‘Make room for God to enter the room always.”
He founded a label, a hip-hop magazine and produced the ’90s TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” discovering Will Smith. He gave Oprah Winfrey to the masses, transforming her from a Chicago talk show host to an Oscar-winning performer in “The Color Purple” directed by Steven Spielberg, whom he introduced her to.
He insisted Martin Luther King Jr and some humanitarian causes, especially in Africa. To raise money for the famine in Ethiopia in 1985, he gathered many pop stars for a now legendary operation: “We Are the World”.
A regular on the VIP party circuit, where he knew everyone who mattered, he was miraculously spared when he forgot the invitation to dinner at Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the Manson family’s historic massacre .
He had three wives: the actresses Jeri Caldwell and Peggy Lipton and Ulla Andersson, a Swedish actress and former model and they had seven children, all but one girl, with five different women. He suffered from several health problems, including a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 1974, which forced him to stop playing the trumpet. He had a “nervous breakdown” from overwork in 1986, and in 2015 went into a diabetic coma and suffered a massive blood clot, prompting him to give up alcohol Among entertainment’s most decorated figures, Jones has won almost every major award in his lifetime, including 28 Grammy Awards, an Emmy, Tony and an honorary Oscar.
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Legacy of Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones’ impact on music and culture is immeasurable. With a career spanning over six decades, he became a pivotal figure in the music industry, known for his innovative production techniques and ability to bridge gaps between various musical genres. His work with iconic artists and contributions to major cultural moments have established him as a legend.
Jones has not only been celebrated for his musical genius but also for his philanthropic efforts, advocating for numerous causes through both his art and financial support. His collaborations with various artists and his ability to adapt to changing musical landscapes have kept him relevant and respected in the industry.
Today, Quincy Jones stands as a testament to the power of music in bringing diverse groups together and transforming lives, ensuring that his legacy continues through both his extensive catalog of work and the generations of musicians he has inspired.