- Quincy Jones was the quintessential musical producer and arranger, from bebop to hip-hop. With his unparalleled skill at fusing jazz, rhythm and blues, and classical orchestration, he enhanced the voices of hundreds of performers, most notably Michael Jackson, but also Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin.
- He became a renaissance music, film, and television tycoon by the time of his death on November 3 at the age of 91 at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He helped launch the careers of Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey and broke down barriers for other African Americans. In a family statement and through his publicist, Arnold Robinson, Mr. Jones’s death from undisclosed reasons was reported.
- Mr. Jones’s seven-decade career was nothing short of Zelig-like. He brimmed with anecdotes about his encounters with figures from Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl to Sinatra to the rap star Tupac Shakur, who was engaged to one of Mr. Jones’s daughters before his murder in 1996.
- Mr. Jones famously told the London-based Sunday Telegraph, “Man, it takes a lot of guts to tell Sinatra what to do.” He doesn’t mince words, so you had better get it perfect if you ask him to leap without a net. … He would either roll you over with a truck and then reverse, or he would love you.
- In 1979, Mr. Jones ushered the child singing prodigy Jackson into adulthood by producing the album “Off the Wall.” Three years later, he followed up with “Thriller,” the top-selling pop release of all time. He produced the all-star charity song “We Are the World” in 1985, a best-selling single that raised $50 million for African famine relief.
- Mr. Jones had an incalculable influence on popular music in America. In “Baby Be Mine,” he encircled Jackson’s vocals with a funky bass line reminiscent of John Coltrane’s saxophone. In “Beat It,” he added an electric guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen to give the softish high tenor a rock edge.
- He founded a media empire that included his record label (Qwest Records), a film and TV production company (QDE Entertainment), and the Black music magazine Vibe. Mr. Jones received 28 Grammys (out of 80 nominations); only singer Beyoncé and conductor Georg Solti have won more Grammys, with 32 and 31, respectively). Mr. Jones received seven Oscar nominations, won the Motion Picture Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995 and was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2001.
