Obituary: Quincy Jones is best known as Michael Jackson’s producer, but his handprint is everywhere

American musician, orchestra leader and producer Quincy Jones has died. He was 91, born in Chicago on March 14, 1933.

His spokesperson told news agency AP about the death Arnold Robinson. According to Robinson, Jones died Sunday night at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by his family.

Quincy Jones was one of the most important American jazz and pop music producers and arrangers of the last century. He is known especially for cooperation Michael Jackson’s with, but before Jackson, Jones had time to work with numerous key American musicians Lionel Hamptonista to Miles Davis, to Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatraan.

Jones’ father was a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter, mother a bank teller. Jones’ mother suffered from mental health problems, which eventually led to a divorce. Jones’ father Quincy Jones Sr. remarried, as a result of which young Quincy grew up in a rather large new family.

The talented young man received a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Before that, he had already met another future star, a pianist-singer to Ray Charleswhich greatly influenced Quincy’s musical development.

In the early 1950s, Quincy Jones was hired by veteran musician Lionel Hampton in the trumpet section of his orchestra. While playing in Hampton’s orchestra, Jones also began arranging music, which eventually led to professional arranging work in New York.

Jones also played in the 1950s Dizzy Gillespien in the orchestra before he founded his own orchestra, where many famous jazz musicians played.

Jones was not an innovator as an arranger or orchestra leader, but he developed a very distinctive style for his orchestra, fresher and more soulful than the traditional big band sound. The orchestra’s numerous recordings from the 1950s and 1960s have stood the test of time.

However, maintaining the orchestra became financially impossible, and Jones accepted a job as music manager at the Mercury record label. Around the same time, Jones’ career as a film composer and pop record producer began. He produced, among other things, a pop star Lesley Goren very successful pop records and composed music for over 30 films, the first of which was Pawnbroker (1964).

At the end of the sixties, Quincy Jones also started making solo records in the funky pop-jazz spirit of the era. They were successful, although looked down upon by jazz purists. The most popular of them was The Dude from 1981.

In the 1960s, Jones arranged songs by, among others, Frank Sinatra Count Basien recordings made with the orchestra, but in the 1980s he hit a real gold mine by producing Michael Jackson’s wonderful records Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad.

“Everyone is always talking from Thriller, because it’s the best-selling album in the world. You should remember that we made an even better album with Michael Jackson before that, ie Off the Wallin”, Jones commented on his liaison with Jackson for HS in 1994.

Jackson’s besides the hits, Jones’ most famous pop production was a charity single released in 1985 We Are the Worldwhich was performed by a group of the biggest American stars of the pop world. The single became number one in more than 20 countries and its revenue, more than 80 million dollars, was directed to helping the victims of the famine in Ethiopia.

In the late 1980s, Jones also began producing TV shows. His company’s greatest success was The Prince of Bel-Air series that raised the young Will Smith’s as a star.

In 1991, Jones briefly returned to jazz when he served as orchestra leader at a Miles Davis concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The album made from the concert was the last live recording of the ailing Davis.

Quincy Jones was nominated for a Grammy 79 times and won the award 28 times. For his film scores, Jones was nominated for an Oscar seven times.

As a producer, Quincy Jones brought out such musicians as, among others James Ingram, Patti Austin ja The Brothers Johnson.

Jones was also the first black American composer to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Motion Picture Score and, even in 1968, for Best Motion Picture Score.

In addition to orchestral records, Quincy Jones made twenty of his own records between 1969 and 2010. With them, he explored a wide range of musical styles and collaborators in supreme style, mixing jazz, soul, Latin influences, r&b and rap music.

Quincy Jones was married three times and has seven children. The second oldest of them, Rashida Joneshas been successful as an actor and director. In 2018, he directed together by Alan Hicks with a documentary about Quincy Jones Quincywhich received a Grammy Award for Best Musical Film of the Year.

For Helsingin Sanomat Jones said in 1994 that he was no longer allowed to play his beloved instrument, the trumpet. A piece of metal was placed on his head after surgery, and all activities that cause pressure, such as diving or playing a fan, were prohibited.

“Sometimes I jump on my trumpet, and I wonder if I should still try. But for now I like life too much,” the musician said.

In the same context, Jones complained that the others don’t seem to be calling anymore either. Jones felt that computers and sequencers had made musicians lazy. Still, he admitted that he was curious about the new technology.

“I want to look that beast in the eye, and see if I could find anything useful in its territory,” Jones mused to HS.

As a super producer, Jones was tight on time. For example, he understood the great cultural influence of hip-hop and was just at the time of the HS interview 30 years ago, founding a hip-hop magazine.

“Hip-hop is not so much music as it is a sociological phenomenon,” Jones stated. “It’s a lifestyle where be bop used to be.”