Legendary music producer and composer Quincy Jones has died at the age of 91.
Jones' publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.
His vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson's historic Thriller album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists.
"Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones' passing," his family said in a statement
"And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.
“He is truly one of a kind and we will miss him dearly; we take comfort and immense pride in knowing that the love and joy, that were the essence of his being, was shared with the world through all that he created.
“Through his music and his boundless love, Quincy Jones’ heart will beat for eternity.”
Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalogue that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song.
Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, film stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders.
He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for "Roots" and "In the Heat of the Night," organized President Bill Clinton's first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of "We Are the World," the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.
Lionel Richie, who co-wrote "We Are the World" and was among the featured singers, would call Jones "the master orchestrator."
Among Jones’ best-loved work were his productions with Michael Jackson: Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad were albums near-universal in their style and appeal.
Jones' versatility and imagination helped transform Jackson from child star to the ‘King of Pop’, working with him on such classic tracks as Billie Jean, Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Thriller, and Beat It.
Thriller sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone, making it one of the best-selling album of all time.
"If an album doesn't do well, everyone says 'it was the producers fault'; so if it does well, it should be your 'fault,' too," Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016.
"The tracks don't just all of a sudden appear. The producer has to have the skill, experience and ability to guide the vision to completion."
The list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography ‘Q’. To date, he has won including 28 Grammys, two honourary Academy Awards, and an Emmy for Roots.
He also received France's Legion d'Honneur, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center tribute for his contributions to American culture.
He was the subject of a 1990 documentary Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoir made him a best-selling author.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones would later cite the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he could remember.
But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey that "There are two kinds of people: those who have nurturing parents or caretakers, and those who don't. Nothing's in between."
Jones' mother suffered from emotional problems and was eventually institutionalised - a loss that made the world seem "senseless" for Jones. He spent much of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.
"They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man," he told news agency AP in 2018, showing a scar from his childhood.
Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a Chicago neighbor owned a piano and he soon played it constantly himself. His father moved to Washington state when Jones was 10 and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center.
Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage was a piano.
"I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment," he wrote in his autobiography. "That's where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever."
Within a few years he was playing trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend.
He was gifted enough to win a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band.
"We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving," Jones later told Musician magazine. "That's when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two."
As a music executive, Jones overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice president at Mercury Records in the early '60s.
In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony.
The first movie he produced, The Color Purple, received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986.
In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.
"My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from," Jones wrote in his autobiography.
He was at ease with virtually every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon to a punchy, swinging rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Ray Charles' soulful In the Heat of the Night with a lusty tenor sax solo.
He worked with jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington; with rappers including Snoop Dogg, and LL Cool J and Queen Latifah; crooners Sinatra and Tony Bennett; pop singers like Lesley Gore; and rhythm and blues stars such as Chaka Khan.
On We Are the World - a 1985 charity album that raised money for famine relief efforts in Ethiopia - alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen.
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