Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones was 11 when he broke into an armory recreation center in Bremerton, Washington, hunting for food, and found an upright piano in a back room. He touched the keys and, by his own account, never wanted anything else. He had come from the South Side of Chicago, where his mother's schizophrenia had taken her to an institution and his father remarried and moved the family west to a segregated wartime housing project by the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. In Seattle he took up trumpet, played clubs at 14, and met a 16-year-old pianist calling himself R.C. Robinson, later Ray Charles. A scholarship took him to Berklee. He left it for the road with Lionel Hampton, then Dizzy Gillespie.

Count the rooms he worked in. He arranged for Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. Mercury made him a vice president in 1961, the first African American to hold the post at a major label. He scored In the Heat of the Night and The Italian Job when studios were not hiring Black composers. Then he produced Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad with Michael Jackson, and ran the overnight session that turned most of American pop into We Are the World. Thriller remains the best-selling album anybody has made.

In 1974 a blood vessel burst in his brain. Surgeons found a second aneurysm ready to go, operated twice, put metal in his skull, and gave him a one-in-100 chance. Friends began planning a memorial service, and he attended it with his neurologist beside him. The warning afterward was blunt: blow a trumpet the way a trumpet player must and the clip comes loose and kills you. He toured Japan anyway, felt the pain, and never played again. He was 41. He spoke later about a nervous breakdown in the 1980s and about depression underneath the output. In a 2018 Vulture interview he made a run of claims about other people, among them that the Chicago mob killed John F. Kennedy, and apologized days later after his daughters staged what he called a family intervention, blaming his own wordvomit.

He won 28 Grammy Awards, an Emmy for the Roots score, and a Tony as a producer, and was nominated for seven Academy Awards without ever winning a competitive one. The Academy handed him an honorary Oscar in June 2024, five months before the end. He died at his home in Bel Air on November 3, 2024, at 91, of pancreatic cancer. What is hard to convey is the spread: bebop trumpet, big-band arranging, Sinatra and Basie, film scores, television themes, Lesley Gore, the biggest pop record ever made, and a 1989 album where Ella Fitzgerald and Ice-T share a track list. Few Americans have shaped as many different kinds of popular music.

Quincy Jones's life against the full span of the corpus.

• In the Heat of the Night film
  Score for the Sidney Poitier picture that took Best Picture 1967
• The Italian Job film
  Score, including On Days Like These and the terrace-chant finale 1969
• Off the Wall album
  Michael Jackson's first adult solo record, and the start of the run 1979
• Thriller album
  The best-selling album ever made 1982
• We Are the World song
  Produced and conducted for Ethiopian famine relief 1985
• Back on the Block album
  Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane on one record 1989

• 1943 aged ~10 The family moves to segregated wartime housing in Bremerton, Washington His father took a job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
• 1944 aged ~11 Breaks into an armory recreation center and finds an upright piano He was 11 and looking for food. He kept coming back until a supervisor left the door unlocked.
• 1951 aged ~18 Takes a scholarship to Seattle University, then transfers to Berklee One semester in Seattle, then Boston on a second scholarship.
• 1953 aged ~20 Tours Europe at 20 with Lionel Hampton's orchestra He said the trip rearranged what he thought racism was.
• 1961 aged ~28 Named a vice president of Mercury Records The first African American to hold the post at a major label.
• 1974 aged ~41 Two brain aneurysms nearly kill him and end his trumpet playing Friends planned a memorial service. He went to it.
• November 30, 1982 aged 49 Thriller is released Nothing has outsold it since.
• January 28, 1985 aged 51 Runs the overnight We Are the World session after the American Music Awards The sign he taped to the studio door told everyone to check their egos at it.
• November 3, 2024 aged 91 Dies at his home in Bel Air at 91 The cause was pancreatic cancer.

• Michael Jackson 1958–2009
  Performer whose recordings, choreography, and music videos redefined global pop stardom. produced
• Ray Charles 1930–2004
  Singer and pianist who fused gospel, blues, jazz, and country into a foundational sound of soul and modern American popular music. met as a teenager in Seattle
• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. arranged for
• Count Basie 1904–1984
  Kansas City bandleader whose rhythm section reset what a big band could swing like. arranged for
• Dizzy Gillespie 1917–1993
  Jazz trumpeter who co-founded bebop and invented Afro-Cuban jazz musical director for
• Berry Gordy b. 1929
  Founder of Motown, who turned an 800-dollar family loan into the Sound of Young America contemporary