Quincy Jones' collaboration with Frank Sinatra, Aretha Frankin or Michael Jackson forever changed the understanding of popular music and paved the way for today's music stars
Quincy Jones, musician and producer whose collaboration with Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra or Aretha Franklin changed history forever music, died at the age of 91 at his home in Los Angeles.
"While this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life he lived and know there will never be anyone like him," Jones' family said in a statement.
Versatile musician
Jones is rightly considered by many to be the most versatile music production figure of the 20th century, with his signature and stamp behind such seminal pop albums as "Thriller" and "Bad," which established Michael Jackson as the King of Pop. 1980s, and many will say the king of pop of all time.
In addition to Jackson, Jones produced music for Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.
He was also a successful film music composer and had numerous chart hits to his name.
Jones was a jazz big band leader and arranger for jazz legends such as Count Basie, but also a multi-instrumentalist, most skilled on trumpet and piano.
He has had 80 Grammy Award nominations, making him third all-time on that list, behind Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Also, Jones is third all-time in the number of Grammy Awards won with a total of 28 titles.
Collaboration with jazz greats
Jones was born in Chicago in 1933, and at the age of 14 he started playing in a band with the then 16-year-old Ray Charles in clubs in Seattle. At only 15 years old, he played with the unsurpassed blues giant Billie Holiday.
He studied music at Seattle University, but transferred east and continued in Boston, after which he moved to New York where he played in the band of the famous Lionel Hampton.
In New York, he was also a member of the band in Elvis Presley's first TV appearances. There he also met the apostles of bebop Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Miles Davis' final performance, two months before the famed trumpeter passed on to legend.
At the age of 23, he toured South America and the Middle East as musical director and arranger for the incomparable Dizzy Gillespie's band.
In the race for an Oscar
Working for Mercury Records he produced and arranged for such greats as Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughan.
He also created film music, so the music for the iconic "The Italian Job" is part of his legacy. In 1968, he became the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and had a total of seven such nominations.
His work with Frank Sinatra began in 1958 when Grace Kelly, wife of the Prince of Monaco, hired him to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued to work on projects until Sinatra's final album in 1984.
Jones' solo music career began in the late 1950s, when he recorded albums under his own name as the leader of jazz ensembles that also featured jazz giants such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.
Star moments with Michael Jackson
His biggest production success was working with Michael Jackson, as "Thriller" was and remains the best-selling album of all time. In cooperation with Jackoson, Quincy Jones produced the albums "Off the Wall" and "Bad" and practically created a synthetic funk-rock star from a flexible player with unique movements, thus paving the way for all the greats of today's pop scene.
Finally, Quincy Jones was the pillar of one of the most important musical charity actions, the legendary "We Are The World" project, which in 1985 collected aid for people affected by an unprecedented famine in Ethiopia.
At that time, Jones and Lionel Richie gathered a huge number of the most influential musicians at the time to record that single, which no one has managed to do since then.
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