4th November, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
American record producer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer, Quincy Delight Jones Jr, has died at 91.
Arnold Robinson, Jones’ publicist, disclosed that he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.
“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.
“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.”
Jones worked with a plethora of notable names in the entertainment industry including Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Will Smith.
Among his best-known credits was as the producer of Jackson’s historic ‘Thriller’ album. The project sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and is among the best-selling albums of all time
The music composer and songwriter also oversaw the all-star recording of the 1985 charity record ‘We Are The World’.
Jones was born on March 14, 1933, in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and he came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores.
Jones moved easily between genres, producing pop hit records for Lesley Gore in the early 1960s (including “It’s My Party”) and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.
In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “The Eyes of Love” from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of the most successful albums by pop star Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song “We Are the World”, which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.[3]
In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each.
In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category.[4] He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.
His career spanned over 70 years, with 28 Grammy Awards won out of 80 nominations,[2] and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
