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In Memoriam: Quincy Jones

March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024

It was announced in June by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Quincy Jones would be among the honorees at the Academy’s Governors Awards that would be presented at an event on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood.

The press release from the Academy on Jones’ honorary Oscar:

A prominent figure with an illustrious musical career spanning seven decades, Jones has produced and composed an expansive body of work.  His film credits include “In the Heat of the Night” and he has earned a total of seven Oscar nominations for his work on such films as “In Cold Blood,” “The Wiz” and “The Color Purple,” receiving a Best Picture nomination for the latter.  In 1967, Jones was the first Black composer to be nominated in the Original Song category.  Throughout his career, he has collaborated with Lesley Gore, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, among others. Jones was the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1994.

When the event was held a month ago, sadly Quincy Jones was not there to accept his honorary Academy Award for his trailblazing contributions to the film community. Jones died exactly two weeks before at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles at the age of 91 on November 3, 2024. His publicist confirmed his death, while not immediately disclosing the cause of death, it was later revealed in his death certificate he died of pancreatic cancer.

Martina Jones, Rashida Jones, Quincy Jones III, Kenya Kinski-Jones accepted the Governor’s Award for their late father Quincy Jones at the 15th Governors Awards.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was a record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, band leader, and producer. Over the course of his seven-decade career, Jones received numerous accolades including 28 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for seven Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards.

Jones rose to fame in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before moving on to producing pop hit records for Lesley Gore in the early 1960s, which included “Its My Party”, and served as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between Frank Sinatra and the jazz artist Count Basie. Sinatra gave Jones the nickname “Q” in 1962, and it would stick for the duration of his legendary career, for he was the man known simply as “Q”.

“Q” would go on to produce three of the most successful albums by pop star Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song “We Are the World”, which raised funds for the victims of famine in Ethiopia. Quincy Jones would begin composing film scores in 1965 with The Pawnbroker.

Jones would go on to produce numerous film scores including for In the Heat of the Night (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), The Italian Job (1969), The Wiz (1978), and The Color Purple (1985), which was also the first film that Jones produced. He shared producing credits with director Steven Spielberg. Quincy won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for the miniseries Roots (1977). “Q” would also receive a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical as a producer for the revival of The Color Purple (2016).

Throughout his career Quincy Jones was the recipient of numerous honorary awards including the Grammy Legend Award in 1991, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1994, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the National Medal of the Arts in 2011, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014, and the Academy Honorary Award in November 2024.

Quincy Jones had a trailblazing career in Academy history beginning in 1968, when Jones became the first Black composer to receive an Oscar nomination for best original song for “The Eyes of Love” from Banning. That same year, Jones became only the third Black composer to be nominated in a scoring category, for In Cold Blood. In 1971, “Q” became the first Black musician to be hired as music director on the annual Oscar telecast, making him also the first Black musician to conduct the Academy Awards orchestra, Jones conducted the Academy Awards orchestra. Jones received a personal-best three Oscar nominations in 1986, all for his work on The Color Purple, and would become the first Black producer to be nominated for best picture. Jones was the first Black humanitarian to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. And at the Governors Awards on November 17, Jones had one more Academy-first, he was the first to recieve a posthumous honorary Oscar.

“Q” the Beginning…

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in the South Side of Chicago on March 14, 1933, he was the elder of two sons to Sara Frances (née Wells; 1904–1999), who was a bank officer and apartment complex manager, and Quincy Delight Jones (1895–1971), a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter from Charleston, South Carolina.

Jones’s family arrived in Chicago by way of the Great Migration. Jones was introduced to his love of music through his mother who was always singing religious songs, and his next door neighbor Lucy Jackson. At the age of five or six Jones remembers Jackson played a stride piano next door, and he would listen through the walls. Jackson recalled that after he heard her one-day, she could not get him off her piano. Music would be somewhat of an escape for the young Quincy Jones, due to his mother having a schizophrenic breakdown and being sent to a mental institution. His father would soon divorce her and marry Elvera Jones, who already had three children of her own: Waymond, Theresa, and Katherine. Jones had a younger brother, Lloyd, who was an engineer for the Seattle television station KOMO-TV until his death in 1998. Elvera and Quincy Sr. had three more children together: Jeanette, Margie, and Richard. The family would then move to Bremerton, Washington in 1943, where Jones’s father took a wartime job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

After the war, Jones and his family would move once more, this time to Seattle. Quincy would attend Garfield High School, and while there developed his skills as a trumpeter and arranger. His classmates included Charles Taylor, who played saxophone and whose mother, Evelyn Bundy, was one of Seattle’s first society jazz bandleaders. Jones and Taylor began playing music together, and played with the National Reserve band at the age of fourteen. Jones said he acquired more experience with music growing up in a smaller city because of the lack of competition. An early inspiration for Jones musically was Ray Charles, Jones noted that Charles overcame his blindness to achieve his musical goals.

Quincy Jones attended Seattle University on a scholarship in 1951. After only one semester, Jones transferred to what is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston on another scholarship, where he played at Izzy Ort’s Bar & Grille with Bunny Campbell and Preston Sandiford, whom Jones also creditied as being important musial influences in his life.

“Q” the Career of all That Jazz…

Quincy Jones began his career with jazz music in 1953, at the age of 20, when he traveled with jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton for a European tour of the Hampton orchestra. The tour had a profound effect on Jones culturally, as he credits the tour with changing his views of racism in the United States:

“It gave you some sense of perspective on past, present, and future. It took the myopic conflict between just black and white in the United States and put it on another level because you saw the turmoil between the Armenians and the Turks, and the Cypriots and the Greeks, and the Swedes and the Danes, and the Koreans and the Japanese. Everybody had these hassles, and you saw it was a basic part of human nature, these conflicts. It opened my soul; it opened my mind.”¹

Jones would leave the Hampton band in 1954 to settle in New York, where Quincy started writing music for anyone who would pay him as he put it. He accepted a temporary job at CBS’ Stage Show hosted by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey that was broadcast live from Studio 50 (known today as the Ed Sullivan Theater) in New York City. It was while playing second trumpet in the studio band that would bring about his encounter with a 21-year-old Elvis Presley, as the band supported his first six television appearances. Presley sang “Heartbreak Hotel“, which became his first No. 1 record and the Billboard magazine Pop Record of the year.

Soon after working as a trumpeter and musical director for Dizzy Gillespie, Jones went on tour of the Middle East and South America sponsored by the United States Information Agency. After returning, he signed a contract with ABC-Paramount and started his recording career as the leader of his band. Jones would move to Paris in 1957, where he studied composition and theory with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen and performed at the Paris Olympia. Jones became music director at Barclay, a French record company (and the licensee for Mercury in France).

In 1958, Princess Grace invited Quincy Jones to arrange a benfit concert at the Monoco Sporting Club, and he would work with Frank Sinatra for the first time in his career. Six years later, Sinatra hired him to arrange and conduct Sinatra’s second album with Count Basie, It Might as Well Be Swing (1964). Jones also conducted and arranged Sinatra’s live album with the Basie Band, Sinatra at the Sands (1966). Jones was also the arranger/conductor when Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Johnny Carson performed with the Basie orchestra in June 1965 in St. Louis, Missouri, in a benefit for Dismas House. The fund-raiser was broadcast to movie theaters around the country and eventually released on VHS. Later that year, when Sinatra and Basie appeared on The Hollywood Palace TV variety show on October 16, 1965, Jones was the arranger/conductor. Nineteen years later, Sinatra and Jones teamed up for the 1984 album L.A. Is My Lady. Jones said,

Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in ’98. He left me his ring. I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don’t need a passport. I just flash my ring.

“Q” the Breakthrough…

In 1961, Jones received a promotion and became the vice-president of Mercury, the first Black vice-president to hold the position. That same year director Sidney Lumet invited Quincy to compose the music for his 1964 film, The Pawnbroker. It would be the first of his nearly 40 motion picture scores. Jones would leave Murcury and move to Los Angeles after the success of Lumet’s film, where he would compose film scores for Mirage and The Slender Thread in 1965, and was in constant demand as a composer.

Over the next seven years, Quincy Jones’s film credits as a composer included:  Walk, Don’t Run, The Deadly Affair, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, Mackenna’s Gold, The Italian Job, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, The Out-of-Towners, They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, The Anderson Tapes, $ (Dollars), and The Getaway. He would also compose “The Streetbeater”, which would become the theme music for the television sitcom Sanford and Son, starring Quincy’s close friend Redd Foxx. The other themes for television shows that he composed included:  Ironside, Rebop, Banacek, The Bill Cosby Show, and the opening episode of Roots.

The 1960s would see Jones arranging music for  Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn, Peggy Lee, Nana Mouskouri, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington.

Jones would also compose solo recordings including:  Walking in Space, Gula Matari, Smackwater Jack, You’ve Got It Bad Girl, Body Heat, Mellow Madness, and I Heard That!!

One of Quincy’s solo recordings was the 1962 tune “Soul Bossa Nova“, which originated on the Big Band Bossa Nova album, and would later be used as the theme for the Mike Myers spy comedy satire Austin Powers films, starting with  Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery in 1997.

“Q” the Pop Music…

In 1978, while producing the soundtrack for The Wiz, the musical adaption of The Wizard of Oz, which starred Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, Jackson asked Jones to recommend some producers for his upcoming solo album. Quincy offered some names to Michael but eventually offered up himself as a name to produce the record. Jackson accepted his offer, and the resulting record, Off the Wall, sold about 20 million copies. This success resulted in Jones becoming the most powerful record producer in the industry at that time. The next collaboration betweeen Jackson and Jones, Thriller, sold 65 million copies and became the highest-selling album of all time. The rise of MTV and the introduction of music videos as album promotional tools contributed to the sales of Thriller. Jones also worked on Jackson’s album Bad, which sold 45 million copies, and was the last time they worked with each other. In the 2001 special editions of Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, there are audio interviews with Jones included.

1985 was marked with Quincy Jones’s debut as a film producer, and The Color Purple receiving 11 Oscar nominations that year, including one for Jones’s score for the Steven Spielberg-directed film. Additionally, through this picture, Jones is credited with introducing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences around the world.

Jones would take time out from filming The Color Purple to co-produce the song “We Are the World” to raise money for the victims of famine in Ethiopia.

Jones explained that to have the ability to make a collaboration of that magnitude work, he taped a sign on the entrance reading:

“Q” the Established Career…

In 1990, Quincy Jones Productions began a partnership with Time Warner to create Quincy Jones Entertainment (QJE). The company would sign a 10-picture deal with Warner Bros. and a two series deal with NBC Productions, which is now Universal Television. The television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith‘s first acting credit, began that same year, while In the House aired from 1995 to 1999. Quincy was also responsible for producing first-run syndicaton’s of The Jenny Jones Show and FOX’s Mad TV, which ran for 14 seasons.

In 1993, Jones would collaberate with David Salman to produce the concert An American Reunion, a celebration of Bill Clinton‘s inauguration as President of the United States.

Jones would publish his autobiography Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones in 2001.

The following year Michael Jackson would be asked in an interview if he would work with Jones again, Jackson suggested he might. But in 2007, when Jones was asked by NME, he said:

“Man, please! We already did that. I have talked to him about working with him again but I’ve got too much to do. I’ve got 900 products, I’m 74 years old.”²

On June 25, 2009, Jackson would pass away unexpectedly due to accidental homicide by acute propofol intoxication and Jones said:

“I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news. For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don’t have the words. Divinity brought our souls together on The Wiz and allowed us to do what we were able to throughout the ’80s. To this day, the music we created together on Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad is played in every corner of the world, and the reason for that is because he had it all … talent, grace, professionalism, and dedication. He was the consummate entertainer, and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”³

“Q” the Rightous Fight…

Quincy Jones’s social activism began in the 1960s with his support of Martin Luther King Jr. Jones was one of the founders of the Institute for Black American Music (IBAM), whose events aimed to raise funds for the creation of a national library of African-American art and music. The Black Arts Festival in his hometown of Chicago would also be co-founded by Jones.

In 2004, Jones would aid in launching the We Are the Future (WAF) project, whose purpose was to give children in poor and conflict-ridden areas a chance to live their childhhods and develop a sense of hope for the future. The program was the result of a strategic partnership between the Global Forum, the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, and Hani Masri, with the support of the World Bank, UN agencies, and major companies. The project was launched with a concert in Rome, Italy, in front of an audience of half a million people.

QUincy Jones also showed his social activism through his support for a number of organzations that included: the NAACP, GLAAD, Peace Games, AmfAR, and the Maybach Foundation.

“Q” the Man at Home…

Quincy Jones would marry three times and have seven children with five women. He was married to Jeri Caldwell from 1957 to 1966, and they had a daughter named Jolie. Jones would then have a brief affair with Carol Reynolds, and they had a daughter named Rachel. He would later marry Swedish actress Ulla Andersson from 1967 to 1974, and they had a daughter named Martina and a son named Quincy, who would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a music producer.

The day after his divorce from Andersson, Jones would marry American actress Peggy Lipton. They would have two daughters, Kidada, who was born before they were married, and Rashida, both of whom became actresses. Jones and Lipton would divorce in 1990. He would later date and live with German actress Nastassja Kinski from 1991 to 1995, and they had a daughter named Kenya, who became a fashion model. In an interview with New York Magazine Jones stated that he had dated Ivanka Trump in the past.

“Q” the Health Battle…

Quincy Jones didnt have it easy with his health early on in life, when in 1974, Jones developed a life-threatening brain aneurysm, leading to a decision to reduce his workload to spend time with his friends and family. Since his family and friends believed Jones’s life was coming to an end, they started to plan a memorial service for him. He attended his own service with his neurologist by his side, in case the excitement overwhelmed him. Some of the entertainers at his service were Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan, and Sidney Poitier.

Jones had two brain surgeries for the aneurysm, and after the second was warned to never play the trumpet again, Jones said:

“if he blew a trumpet in the ways that a trumpet player must, the clip [a metal plate in his head that was implanted after his brain aneurysm] would come free and he would die”.⁴

He ignored that advice, went on tour in Japan, and one night after playing trumpet had a pain in his head. Doctors said the plate in his brain had nearly come loose, as they had warned, and Jones never played trumpet again.

On November 3, 2024, Jones died at his home in Bel Air at the age of 91. His publicist would confirm the dath along with the cause of his death, a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.

“Q” the tributes…

President Joe Biden issued a statement after Jones’s death praising him:

“a great unifier, who believed deeply in the healing power of music to restore hope and uplift those suffering from hunger, poverty, and violence, in America and the continent of Africa“. 

Former President Barack Obama praised Jones by saying:

“building a career that took him from the streets of Chicago to the heights of Hollywood…paving the way for generations of Black executives to leave their mark on the entertainment business”. 

Former President Bill Clinton stated:

“He changed the face of the music industry forever”.

Vice President Kamala Harris called him:

a “trailblazer” and remembered him for his “championing of civil and human rights”.

Rest in power Quincy Delight Jones Jr. and may your memory be a blessing to your family and children.

1. “Quincy Jones Biography and Interview”. achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Retrieved December 26, 2022. ↩︎
2. Bychawski, Adam (May 25, 2007). “Quincy Jones snubs chance to team up with Michael Jackson”. NME. UK. Retrieved July 18, 2009. ↩︎
3. James, Frank (June 25, 2009). “Michael Jackson Dead at 50”. The Two-Way. NPR. Retrieved December 9, 2010. ↩︎
4. Maxwell, Chris Heath, Robert (January 29, 2018). “Quincy Jones Has a Story About That”. GQ. Retrieved June 4, 2024. ↩︎