Music titan and ‘Thriller’ architect Quincy Jones dies at the age of 91

 

Multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, arranger, hit maker and industry giant Quincy Jones has died on November 3 in his Bel Air home at the age of 91.

His death was confirmed in a provided statement by his publicist, Arnold Robinson, who omitted the cause.

If the Mount Rushmore of music producers were to be erected today, Quincy Jones would stand at the top of the list. Not just for his longevity, but for his glowing depth, and ingenuity and for hanging his hand on the pulse of music direction throughout the decades. Jones had that Midas Touch that defined the sound of pop music, even with all of his rich associations with jazz, R&B, soul, disco and much later, hip-hop.

A career that spans over 70 years and includes an astonishing list of achievements including 28 Grammys out of 80 nominations, a National Medal of Arts and a deserved 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame within the Ahmet Ertegun division.

Born in Chicago, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. developed his musical acumen after moving to Seattle and attending Garfield High School. During this time, he met up with a young unsigned Ray Charles, where a long, respectable friendship began to develop. Jones would transfer from Seattle University after one semester to Boston’s Berkley College of Music, but later dropped out with his sights to join Lionel Hampton and his band while working as arranger and trumpeter. At the age of 20, Jones toured with Hampton — who at that point aided the careers of Wes Montgomery, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and Dinah Washington. After traveling abroad on an European leg of his act, Jones picked up light work and duties in television and radio, which included a gig playing second trumpet for CBS’s Stage Show.

He eventually organized his own orchestra in 1956 and signing to ABC-Paramount. The record label for a brief time was home to his friend, Ray Charles, who left Atlantic with a bigger record deal. Together the two paired up for the jazz label Impulse! on 1961’s Genius + Soul = Jazz, an album that put producer Creed Taylor in the company of Ralph Burns and Jones’ flying arrangements while anchored by members of the Count Basie Band. In Jones’ hands, “One Mint Julep,” an instrumental cover of the Clovers hit, struts a boss nova groove with a big badass organ solo from Charles. The song, a #1 R&B hit, netted Charles yet another Top Ten Pop smash just months from the release of “Hit the Road Jack.” He would later use those swaggy elements to develop his instrumental soul-jazz workout “Soul Bossa Nova” for his Big Band Bossa Nova LP. The song has been used so much in pop culture, from Judy Garland’s choreographed dance on The Judy Garland Show to its use in the Sidney Lumet film The Pawnbroker, which kickstarted Jones’ career in film score. It is probably most remembered for its iconic showcase in the Mike Meyers’ 1997 James Bond-parody film, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.

1961 remained a pivotal year for the rising star, which included Jones accepting a VP job at Mercury Records, becoming the first African-American to hold the position. More films score opportunities came his way, including Mirage, The Slender Thread, Walk, Don’t Run, The Deadly Affair, The Italian Job, The Lost Man, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs and dozens more. The Ray Charles-led “In the Heat of the Night” opens the 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger with the kind of soul power in Aretha’s orbit. But Jones eventually proved it could do it all. There’s Leslie Gore’s “It’s My Party,” a bubblegum jazz-pop song penned by a collective of songwriters including Wally Gold. The #1 pop hit catapults Jones, who served as its producer, into industry royalty. AllMusic’s Jason Ankeny wrote “‘It’s My Party’ remains one of the most vivid evocations of adolescent heartbreak ever waxed – Quincy Jones produced the record, although you’d swear it was Aaron Spelling instead.”

Jones continues to record on several labels (CTI, Mercury, A&M) with his band, dropping jazz nuggets like his smooth cover of Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe” (for 1969’s Walking in Space) while also working up an impressive catalog producing and arranging for others in the world of music, film and television. Eventually, Jones would develop his own production company (Quincy Jones Productions) and much later, his own record label of sorts with Qwest.

Fast forward to 1973 and we hear “The Streetbeater,” another piece of instrumental gold released on his solo LP You’ve Got It Bad Girl that eventually became the theme song for the NBC TV sitcom Sanford & Son. His work on the hit TV anthology series Roots prepared the way for his role as the musical taskmaster for the film adaption of the Broadway musical The Wiz. During those sessions with Diana Ross and a massive cast featuring Broadway stars and many of Jones’s tight-assembled personnel, including Luther Vandross on backing vocals, Jones began working with 19-year-old Michael Jackson. “Ease on Down the Road” and “You Can’t Win” become MJ’s biggest moments in the film, which became the origins of Off the Wall, the stunning 1979 solo album by Jackson.

Produced entirely by Jones under Quincy Jones Productions, Off The Wall is a creative breakthrough for Jackson, yielding thunderous climaxes to the closing era of 1970’s disco. With songs like “Working Day and Night,” “Get on the Floor,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Burn This Disco Out” and the rapturous Rod Temperton-penned combo of “Rock With You” and the funk-heavy title cut, MJ becomes the king of disco almost instantly. Only Donna Summer’s Bad Girls could out-rival this masterpiece. Thanks to the prestige production that Jones developed, while working alongside Bruce Swedien using the top-tier Acusonic recording process and a host of session angels like Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson, Greg Phillinganes on keys, members of Rufus (David Wolinski, John Robinson) and saucy horn arrangements by Jerry Hey, Off the Wall proved to be one of the greatest albums of all time.

Jackson would follow that up with 1983’s Thriller, pushing boundaries even more. Explorations of MTV rock (“Beat It”), impossible-to-shake R&B (“Billie Jean,” “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”), smooth ethereal AC (“Human Nature”) and dreamy pop (the Paul McCartney duet “The Girl Is Mine”) are all there, so are remnants of platinum disco (“Wanna Be Stettin’ Something”). But the title cut of Thriller, penned by Jones’s trusted composer on standby, becomes an epic pop culture event. Propped by a visually stunning fourteen-minute concept video directed by John Landis, who just finished An American Werewolf in London, the music video of “Thriller” broke even more barriers, mostly for becoming a heavy rotation item at MTV, and for helping push the album’s sales into platinum territory, 34 times to be exact. To date, Thriller remains the most-selling album of all time. It also went home with a whopping eight Grammy awards, including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male.

Up to this point, Jones had already worked on albums for Frank Sinatra, James Ingram, Brothers Johnson, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Patti Austin, Aretha Franklin and even Donna Summer with “Love Is In Control (Finger on a Trigger).” His own solo works of Sounds…And Stuff Like That!! and The Dude were also giving peak pop perfection thanks to the James Ingram-led “Just Once” and “One Hundred Ways.” And then the funky post-disco jam”Razzamatazz,” anchored by a fiery Patti Austin, explodes through the speakers. The latter LP would net twelve Grammy nods and securing three wins including Album of the Year.

What happened next for Jones would be considered one of the greatest philanthropic missions in pop music history. Recently exhibited in the 2024 documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, 1985’s “We Are the World” is born. It’s a cultural moment for the ‘80’s, showcasing the Who’s Who in pop music from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Billy Joel, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Paul Simon, Harry Belafonte, Cyndi Lauper, Ray Charles, Kenny Rogers, the Jacksons, the Pointer Sisters and dozens more. Under the supergroup banner of USA for Africa, this 50+ collective under the direction of Quincy Jones and songwriters Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson help raise over $80 million to help combat famine in a ravaging poverty-stricken Ethiopia.

Jones gives much of his time in 1986 to his role of musical supervisor on Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple. Inside the film based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jones’ superb score gives the story a glorious tapestry full of blissful instrumentals, period jazz and blues that perfectly match the mood, sequences and rich cinematography. Jones is also surrounded by gospel royalty with Andraé Crouch and his church choir. In the front, you hear former Motown disco singer-reformed Disciple Tata Vega pouring out her heart on “Miss Celie’s Blues” and the Sunday morning fire starter “Maybe God Is Tryin’ to Tell You Somethin’.”

In 1987, Jones returns to MJ’s side for the synth-powered Bad, a solid follow-up to Thriller. Big hits like “Dirty Diana,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Smooth Criminal,” “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” and the tough title cut are all radio favorites. Above all, the message song of “Man in the Mirror” becomes MJ’s “Love’s In Need of Love,” which continues the healing powers from “We Are the World.” This prepares Jones for his next big exercise as a solo artist with the assembly of 1989’s Back on the Block. Now crisscrossing into emerging musical styles like hip-hop, New Jack swing and urban contemporary while also digging deeper into his jazz upbringing, Jones pulls out a 60-minute fantasy adventure that harnesses the hardcore rap talent of Ice T and Big Daddy Kane while introducing more mellower R&B on the newly-discovered Tevin Campbell on “Tomorrow (A Better You, A Better Me).” It closes out with some of the heavyweights of boudoir soul (Barry White, Al B. Sure, James Ingram, El DeBarge) on the Rod Temperton-inked “The Secret Garden.” It’s a little frantic and discombobulating in places, most evident on “Wee B. Dooinit” showcasing Ella Fitzgerald and Al Jarreau scatting on Take 6’s acapella rhythms, but Jones still proves to be a delightful taskmaster and does what he needs to stay relevant in an ever-changing music industry.

Other notable works beyond Back on the Block noticeably include the establishment of VIBE Magazine, a music pub focusing on R&B and hip-hop. Also there’s Jones’s own television empire (Quincy Jones Entertainment), which oversaw the development and production work of NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. FOX’s MadTV, a snarky competitive answer to Saturday Night Live while loosely inspired by the humor mag, also hits the small screen and enjoys a fourteen-season run opening doors for comics like Debra Wilson, Nicolle Sullivan, Michael McDonald, Aries Spears, Will Sasso, Jordan Peele, Mo Collins, Alex Borstein and Keegan-Michael Key.

Jones would record two more solo albums, 1995’s Q’s Juke Joint and 2010’s Q Soul Bossa Nostra. The best of those sessions surround three mighty works: “You Put a Move On My Heart,” yet another Rod Temperton composition proving to be a timely return to peak Jones prowess featuring the golden voice of Tamia on lead vocals; “Rock With You,” a spicier urban retelling of MJ’s hit anchored by Brandy and rapper Heavy D; “Betcha Wouldn’t Hurt Me” — powered by Mary J. Blige, Q-Tip and pianist Alfredo Rodríquez — updates the overlooked jam from The Dude. Only the 2018 documentary, Netflix’s Quincy, sums up his riveting career with the type of gusto it deserves. Like a glossy encyclopedia, this two-hour of storytelling cinema from filmmakers Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones gives viewers an intimate look at the man and all the mysteries that follow him with wise precision.

In the conversation of all things music, Quincy Delight Jones lived up to his middle name. His music was always a delight to experience. Groundbreaking, in most instances. A garden of exploration and an impassioned heart for tradition. And with every bend of Jones’s baton, he often tried to blend the two. He was, simply put, The Dude. The music world mourns his silence, but will forever play his work. And even if they try not to, they will. Because the fingerprints of Jones are simply everywhere in the lexicon of music.