Legendary US producer Quincy Jones died at the age of 91 overnight on Sunday, November 3 in his Los Angeles home, surrounded by his family, his agent announced to the AP on Monday, November 4.
He is known as one of the most influential artists and producers of his time, and was incredibly prolific across a range of genres of music, from traditional jazz to pop, bebop, soul and funk. He won 28 Grammy Awards.
France and Fontainebleau
In 1957, already well into his career as a musical arranger and professional artist, he moved to Paris. He enrolled at the prestigious Fontainebleau music school to study composition and music theory with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen.
Ms Boulanger was herself a legendary music and teacher in France, known as one of the most influential composition teachers of the 20th century. Some of her other well-known students include Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Philip Glass.
Ms Boulanger later became artistic director of his record label, which produced the albums of stars including Henri Salvador, Michel Legrand, and Charles Aznavour.
Mr Jones played at the Paris Olympia and became musical director of the Barclay label. Altogether, he spent almost five years in France. He also forged links in the country with vocal group Double Six.
Every year, Mr Jones spent time in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Saint Tropez, particularly to spend time with his friend, the French record producer Eddie Barclay.
Mr Barclay’s wife, Caroline Barclay - who knew the star through her husband, and also spent considerable time with him at his home in Los Angeles - has paid tribute to the late producer in the newspaper Nice Matin.
She explained how much he loved going out in Saint-Tropez, enjoying the music in nightclubs and bars. He loved French food and wine, Mrs Barclay said, and “wanted to know everything and see everything, and never saw himself as a star, despite being close with ]Presidents] Chirac, Clinton and Obama,” she said.
And when he was visiting their house in France, Mrs Barclay added, other musicians and stars would gravitate towards it, becoming friends. These included Liza Minnelli and Elton John.
Through Mr Barclay, he also got to know such legends as the Spanish artist Picasso, French actress Brigitte Bardot, US actor Jack Nicholson, and met Frank Sinatra in Monaco.
Pre-Paris highlights
Mr Jones first came to Paris having already toured Europe with US jazz musician Lionel Hampton at the age of 20, after Mr Hampton invited him to tour as a trumpeter, arranger, and pianist. He later said that the experience changed his view of racism in the United States.
In the early 1950s, he won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, receiving commissions from famous artists such as Ray Charles, who became a friend, as well as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.
He would appear on television in 1956, in a group that accompanied the then-young Elvis Presley. He later went on tour with Dizzy Gillespie as trumpet player and musical director.
In 1960, he formed a big band, The Jones Boys, with other musicians who happened to share the same surname. The head of the Mercury music label lent Mr Jones money when the band ran into financial difficulties, and hired him as musical director of the New York branch of his label.
Mr Jones took well to business, and in 1961, he became the first African-American ever to become vice-president of the company.
In the early 1960s, Mr Jones wrote his first film score of his career for The Boy in The Tree, a Swedish film by Arne Sucksdorff. He would go on to write more than 40 scores in his life.
A musical childhood
Born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Quincy Delight Jones was first exposed to music when his mother sang church songs to him as a child, and by listening to a neighbour playing jazz piano through the walls.
After his parents divorced, he moved to Seattle with his father, where he began to learn the trumpet and began arranging music at school. He became friends with a student saxophonist, whose mother directed a local jazz orchestra, and the two would play together in a band.
Mr Jones always attributed Ray Charles as one of his major sources of inspiration, who he met aged 14. Mr Charles, who was only two years older, came to town to play in a local club.
Sinatra, Jackson, Davis
Mr Jones’ work is so prolific it is almost impossible to summarise, but his production projects include hit songs for international stars including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn, Peggy Lee and Nana Mouskouri.
Mr Jones began working on a charity concert in Monaco in 1958, at the initiative of Princess Grace, with Frank Sinatra. The two would continue working together, and in 1964, he arranged and directed the album It Might As Well Be Swing, which Mr Sinatra recorded with Count Basie's orchestra.
This album included the legendary cover of Fly Me To The Moon, a song that would become associated with the era-defining Apollo space mission.
Mr Jones continued to work with Mr Sinatra until the 1980s.
Yet, arguably the producer’s most prolific and successful partnership was with singer Michael Jackson, who he met on the set of the 1978 film The Wiz, the soundtrack of which was being produced by Mr Jones’ own production company, Qwest Productions.
Mr Jones produced Mr Jackson's first adult album (without his brothers), Off the Wall. Released in 1979, it sold 20 million copies, and made Mr Jones the most powerful producer in the industry.
Mr Jones later co-produced the 1982 smash hit album Thriller, which won eight Grammy Awards, and would go on to become the best-selling album in history. He would also co-produce Mr Jackson’s 1987 Bad.
In 1981, Mr Jones released his own hit, Ai No Corrida on his funk-soul album The Dude.
He also worked with Mr Jackson to assemble a panel of stars for the song We Are The World, which was released to help support the fight against the famine then affecting Ethiopia.
As well as his work in film, Mr Jones worked with Time Warner in the 90s to create Quincy Jones Entertainment, producing hit television programmes including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which launched actor Will Smith's career.
In 1991, Mr Jones persuaded Miles Davis to revisit his old repertoire (which he had previously refused to do), and held a special concert on July 8, 1991 at the Montreux Festival in Switzerland.
Mr Davis, who had been ill at the time of the concert, died a few months later in September 1991. A live album of the legendary concert, Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux, was released in 1993.
By the 2010s, Mr Jones was so legendary that he worked as a mentor to many young artists, including pianists Alfredo Rodriguez, Emily Bear and Justin Kauflin, guitarist Andreas Varady, singer Nikki Yanofsky and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier.
In 2001, he published his autobiography, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. The book was translated into French by his friend Mimi Perrin, the former leader of the group Double Six, under the title Quincy, published by Robert Laffont in 2003.
In 2014, Mr Jones also produced three tracks for the album Paris by French singer Zaz.
He continued to innovate throughout his life, and in the 2010s took part in podcasts, and launched an interactive piano learning method, with Harry Connick Jr.
In 2017, he launched a video on demand partnership, Qwest TV, with French producer Reza Ackbaraly. This was seen as a jazz and music version of streaming platform Netflix. It features concerts, documentaries and interviews.
