It was said that everyone knows Quincy JonesAlthough no one is exactly sure what Quincy Jones does, his name is. If this fact is true, there is good reason for it. With a huge and versatile career spanning the music and entertainment industries over eight decades, Jones—who “passed away peacefully” last night at the age of 91, according to his publicist—was practically everything, everywhere, all at once, and thus nearly impossible to pin down. He was a producer, composer, arranger, instrumentalist, impresario, author, mentor, magazine founder, and famous father of famous children. Along the way, Jones may have rarely taken center stage, but he has infused a dizzying variety of musical genres—jazz, pop, R&B, easy listening—with sparkle and sophistication, all while shaping the creative trajectories of some of the world’s giants. Recorded music including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Michael Jackson.

Jones, an accomplished home cook, once said of her culinary skills, “I cook gumbo that will make you slap your grandmother.” He used the same magic touch in the recording studio, combining surprising ingredients, adding just the right amount of spice, heat and sweetness, and always creating a feast for the ears. To put it bluntly, Jones was among the greatest record producers who ever lived.

Jones has released 16 albums under his own name, 10 of which topped the Billboard jazz charts. As a performer/composer/producer, 1962’s “Soul Bossa Nova,” with its lively flutes and farty brass, was his best-known song: a distillation of Jet Age insouciance. It would become a key part of the revival of lounge music in the 1990s; Austin Powers film series that adopted it as a theme song. Jones was the arranger of Sinatra’s 1964 recording of “Fly Me to the Moon”, which was released five years later. Apollo 10 Astronaut Eugene Cernan played the tape while orbiting the Moon. (This thought Buzz Aldrin Playing out on the lunar surface is likely an urban or extraterrestrial legend, and one that Jones is understandably keen to promote.)

Created soundtracks for films (Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night) and television (Sanford and Son). He produced Jackson’s 1982 film. IncomeOne of a trilogy of records produced by Jones that remains the best-selling album of all time and cemented Jackson’s superstardom. Jones had a rare command of the industry that allowed him to team up with his ringmaster. Lionel Richie To collect people like Jackson, Bruce Springsteen,

Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Cyndi Lauper, Ray Charles and Bob Dylanas chef and co-producer (with Michael Omartian) from the 1985 all-star charity single “We are the World.” cultural critic Greil Marcus He likened the song to a Pepsi jingle but provided millions of dollars in aid to Africa. (The event was recently showcased in this year’s documentary. Pop’s Greatest Night.)

Video footage of Jones working on the song with Dylan shows a producer with the kind of encouraging enthusiasm one might associate with a favorite Little League coach. Jones once said: “A conductor and arranger must take an emotional X-ray of the singer and discover her creative spirit.” In fact, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, and Peggy Lee are among the many vocalists with whom she has given stunning performances, while accumulating 80 Grammy nominations and 28 wins. These awards rank alongside the Emmys roots Oscar for soundtrack, humanitarian work, and Tony for the 2016 revival Color PurpleIt is added to the EGOT situation. (Jones co-produced the 1985 film version.) Color PurpleHe helped found a talk show host named. Oprah Winfrey on the national map.)

By his own account, Jones was lucky to have endured a difficult childhood on Chicago’s South Side, where he was born in 1933. He bore a literal scar from those days: “They nailed my hand to a fence. Switchblade, man,” he would say, painting a picture of a dark childhood in the Al Capone era, where unruly toughs dealt violence every day. His father, Quincy Delight Jones, Sr. He worked as a carpenter, and his mother, who attended Boston University and was multilingual, suffered from mental illness and required hospitalization. In one particularly brutal teenage scene, described in Jones’s 2001 memoir, QHe watched in horror as he ate his own feces. Needless to say, there was little emotional connection between them; It’s a gap that Jones describes as a factor that shaped him as an artist and person. Jones and his younger brother Lloyd were sent to Kentucky for a time to live with their formerly enslaved grandmother, who occasionally served them fried rats for dinner. Later, when he moved to the Seattle area with his father at the age of 11, young Quincy discovered the piano. “I found another mother,” he wrote in his autobiography.

He soon picked up the trumpet, the instrument that would become his introduction to music, and taught himself to make arrangements. By the time he was 14, he was playing in the National Guard band (he identified himself as 18). On their way to a concert in Yakima, a car carrying Jones and four of his bandmates collided with a Trailways bus. Only Jones survived. (He later recovered from a pair of brain aneurysms.) After high school, he headed to Boston for a stint at Berklee College of Music, dropped out and was hired as a trumpeter by vibraphone legend Lionel Hampton, and found himself playing for President Dwight. D. Eisenhower took office in 1953. He was only 19 years old.

His first full-length album as a band leader was released four years later. In the midst of this work (and while also writing charts for Count Basie’s big band), Jones switched to a day job as an A&R guy at Mercury Records. In 1963, he signed a young pop singer named Lesley Gore and paired her with a song: “It’s My Party.” It took Jones’ career to a new commercial level.

But it was Sinatra, he said, who “took me to a whole new planet.” There seemed to be an instant and unbreakable bond between the two. “The man was larger than life,” Jones wrote, describing the singer’s musicianship as “pure economy, power, style and skill.” Jones would continue to work with Sinatra for decades and produce his final studio album. Los Angeles is My LadyIn 1984. “I worked with him until he passed away in ’98,” Jones recalled. “He left me his ring. I never take it off.”

His creative collaborations with Michael Jackson represented another kind of stratosphere; Jones’ production added polish and sparkle to the albums. Outside the Wall, IncomeAnd Bad. Jackson became the reigning pop icon of the 1980s. But Jones’s relationship with Jackson turned out to be more fragile and fraught than his relationship with Sinatra. In 2017, he sued Jackson’s production company for $9.4 million in unpaid royalties. (The lawsuit was successful, but the award was later rescinded.) Jones also stated that he combed through 800 songs to find those on the list. IncomeThus, he implied, even an artist as volatile as Jackson couldn’t get anywhere without great songs and a great producer.

Jones wasn’t afraid to throw around his harsh opinions, making it a dream interview for generations of journalists and documentarians. As he approaches 90, he decries the state of contemporary music: “It’s not going anywhere at the moment. “The noise of people selling champagne.” (This is from the co-founder VibrationA music magazine that he launched with great fanfare in 1993.) He also went after sacred cows and declared: Paul McCartney “worst bass player I’ve ever heard.”

2018 Netflix documentary, quincydirected by his daughter, Rashida Jones, Although somewhat crippled by the ravages of time and fame, it showed the man in full, eloquent power. It’s an awe-inspiring and stylish portrait that stands out in its frankness, putting the man behind so many musical superstars front and center: a place that feels right, given his vibrant charisma and good looks. He was, after all, a famous Casanova who boasted about his appetites in the film despite being in his eighties, recalling three marriages, including one to the Swedish model-photographer-actress. Ulla Andersson And Mod Team star Peggy Lipton (Rashida’s mother and kidada) and a partnership with the player Nastassja Kinski. He was the father of five other children (Jolie, Rachel, Martina, Quincy III, And Kenya) was expanded by four other partners, turning the extended Jones family into a modern entertainment dynasty of sorts.

The kid from Chicago’s South Side had come a long way with many accomplishments as well as long-distance encounters with the great, the famous, and the historically significant that made him the self-described “Ghetto Gump.” ” (Many paid tribute to Jones at his 90th birthday party at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023.) Twenty-four years ago, the activist and U2 singer bond Jones to Pope John Paul II. He invited him to the Vatican with John Paul. At the meeting, Jones was impressed by the pope’s shoes, which he remembered as having “burgundy wingtips.” As he went to kiss the Pope’s hand, the producer blurted out: “Oh, my man’s wearing pimp shoes.” “He heard me,” the Pope said. It was impossible not to hear Quincy Jones.