Legendary producer, composer and music executive, Quincy Jones, is dead.
Jones died on the night of Sunday, November 3 at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family. He was aged 91.
A statement issued by his family, reads: “Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing. 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.”
In an influential music career spanning seven decades, Quincy Jones worked as a composer, record producer, artist, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, label executive, film/TV producer, magazine founder, multi-media entrepreneur, and humanitarian.
He earned 80 Grammy Award nominations, including 28 wins across various categories: jazz, R&B, pop, rap, spoken word, children’s, cast album, instrumental arrangement, music film, and music video, not to mention Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Producer of the Year.
His seminal work in the 1950s and 1960s saw him work with icons such as Lionel Hampton, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Count Basie (with whom Jones won his first Grammy in 1963), Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, LaVern Baker, Leslie Gore, and Frank Sinatra.
Jones’ career also saw him collaborate with Michael Jackson, producing some of the late pop star’s biggest-selling albums, including Off the Wall (1979) and Thriller (1982), as well as Bad (1987).
As the first black composer embraced by the Hollywood establishment in the 1960s, and starting with Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker in 1964, Jones scored nearly 40 major motion pictures, including The Deadly Affair, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, The Italian Job, The Out-of-Towners, The Anderson Tapes, and The Getaway.
In 1968, he made history as the first African American to be nominated for two Academy Awards in the same year. In 1985, Quincy Jones co-produced and wrote the music for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which garnered 11 Oscar nominations.
Alongside his work composing and producing for other artists, Jones released a number of recordings of his own, including 1962’s Soul Bossa Nova, which has been featured in multiple film and TV projects, from The Pawnbroker to the Austin Powers series theme song to Glee.
His 1989 album, Back on the Block – which won the Grammy for Album of the Year – brought legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Miles Davis together with Ice T, Big Daddy Kane, and Melle Mel to create the first fusion of bebop and hip-hop.
Jones’ 1995 recording, Q’s Jook Joint, scored seven Grammy nominations and featured artists including Bono, Ray Charles, Phil Collins, Gloria Estefan, Herbie Hancock, Heavy D., Chaka Khan, Queen Latifah, Tone Loc, Shaquille O’Neal, Joshua Redman, the Broadway musical troupe Stomp, Barry White, Nancy Wilson, and Stevie Wonder, among others.
In 2010, Jones released Soul Bossa Nostra, featuring Usher, Ludacris, Akon, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, T-Pain, Robin Thicke, LL Cool J, John Legend, Snoop Dogg, Wyclef Jean, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Bebe Winans, and more.
Jones was also an influential music industry executive. He was named Vice President of Mercury Records in 1961, becoming the first high-level black executive of an established major record company.
In 1980, he founded his own Qwest Records, a joint venture with Warner Records that boasted such artists as New Order, Tevin Campbell, Andre Crouch, Patti Austin, James Ingram, Siedah Garrett, Gregory Jefferson, and Justin Warfield. The label also released a series of soundtracks, including Boyz n the Hood, Sarafina!, and Malcolm X.
In 1990, Jones’ life and career were chronicled in the Warner Bros. film, Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. In 2001, he became a best-selling author following the publication of Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones.
The audio recording of the book earned Jones his 27th Grammy Award, in the ‘Best Spoken Word’ category. In conjunction with the autobiography, Rhino Records released a box set of Quincy Jones’ music, entitled Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones.
In 2008, The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions featured a foreword by Clint Eastwood, preface from Bono, an introduction by Maya Angelou, and an afterword by Sidney Poitier.
2010’s Q on Producing: The Soul and Science of Mastering Music and Work recounted his six-decade long career working in the recording studio with countless musical icons. In 2018, Jones won his 28th Grammy Award for the Netflix documentary, Quincy.
In 1991, he founded VIBE magazine, devoted to R&B and hip-hop music and culture. That same year, he helped launch NBC-TV’s hit series, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, for which he served as an executive producer.
In 1994, he formed Qwest Broadcasting, one of the largest minority-owned broadcasting companies in the US. He produced the award-winning 2014 documentary, Keep On Keepin’ On, the story of jazz legend Clark Terry.
Quincy Jones is the recipient of several awards and accolades. In 2016, when he received a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for the Broadway production of The Color Purple, it made him a rare EGOT winner – the exclusive club of artists who have received Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. Jones is also a recipient of the Recording Academy’s prestigious Trustees Award and the Grammy Legend Award.
In 1990, France recognized Jones with its most distinguished title, the Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur. He was also awarded with the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s coveted Polar Music Prize and the Republic of Italy’s Rudolph Valentino Award.
In 2001, Jones was named a Kennedy Center Honoree, for his contributions to the cultural fabric of the United States of America.
In 2010, he was bestowed with the National Medal of Arts, the country’s highest artistic honor. And in 2013, at the age of 80, Quincy Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Oprah Winfrey, who presented him with the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
In 2023, Quincy Jones received the first-ever Peace Through Music Award from Recording Academy and US State Department.