Quincy Jones

Quincy Delight Jones Jr., better known as Quincy Jones, was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. He rose to fame in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor, later gaining recognition in the early 1960s for producing pop hits for Lesley Gore, including the chart-topping "It's My Party." He also worked as an arranger and conductor on several notable collaborations between Frank Sinatra and jazz legend Count Basie. Jones went on to produce three of Michael Jackson’s most iconic albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987).

Jones composed a wide range of film scores, including those for The Pawnbroker (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), The Italian Job (1969), The Wiz (1978), and The Color Purple (1985).

Throughout his seven-decade career, he earned numerous accolades, including 28 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award, along with nominations for seven Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. Jones also received many honorary distinctions, including the Grammy Legend Award in 1992, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995, 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 June 2024. Time magazine recognized him as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century.

Jones cited Ray Charles as one of the early influences on his music career.

• He was born in the South Side of Chicago on March 14, 1933.
• Jones's family relocated to Chicago during the Great Migration.
• Jones was first introduced to music by his mother, who frequently sang religious songs, and by their next-door neighbor, Lucy Jackson.
• When Jones was around five or six years old, he would listen through the walls as Jackson played stride piano.
• She later recalled that once he heard her play, she could never get him off her piano.
• Jones attended Garfield High School, where he honed his talents as a trumpeter and arranger.
• Among his classmates was saxophonist Charles Taylor, whose mother, Evelyn Bundy, was one of Seattle’s first prominent society jazz bandleaders.
• Jones and Taylor began performing together, and by the age of fourteen, they were playing in a National Reserve band.
• Reflecting on his upbringing, Jones noted that growing up in a smaller city allowed him to gain more musical experience due to the limited competition.
• In 1951, Jones received a scholarship to Seattle University.
• After completing one semester, he transferred to what is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston on another scholarship.
• There, he performed at Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille alongside Bunny Campbell and Preston Sandiford, both of whom he later credited as significant influences on his music.
• At the age of 20, in 1953, Jones joined jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton for a European tour with the Hampton orchestra.

Jones comes from a close-knit family.

• He was the older of two sons born to Sara Frances (née Wells; 1904–1999), a bank officer and apartment complex manager, and Quincy Delight Jones Sr. (1895–1971), a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter from Charleston, South Carolina.
• Quincy Jr.’s paternal grandmother had been enslaved in Louisville, and he later learned that his paternal grandfather was of Welsh descent.
• His younger brother, Lloyd, worked as an engineer for Seattle’s KOMO-TV until his passing in 1998.
• When Jones was a child, his mother experienced a schizophrenic breakdown and was committed to a mental institution.
• His father later divorced her and married Elvera Jones, who had three children from a previous relationship: Waymond, Theresa, and Katherine.
• Together, Elvera and Quincy Sr. had three more children: Jeanette, Margie, and Richard.
• In 1943, the family relocated to Sinclair Park, a segregated community in Bremerton, Washington, where Jones’s father took a wartime job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
• Jones was married three times and fathered seven children with five women.
• His first marriage was to Jeri Caldwell, from 1957 to 1966, with whom he had a daughter named Jolie.
• He had a short affair with Carol Reynolds, resulting in a daughter named Rachel.
• Jones’s second marriage was to Swedish actress Ulla Andersson, lasting from 1967 to 1974.
• Together, they had a daughter named Martina and a son named Quincy, who also pursued a career as a music producer.
• The day after his divorce from Andersson, Jones married American actress Peggy Lipton.
• They had two daughters, Kidada, who was born before they were married, and Rashida, both of whom became actresses.
• Jones and Lipton eventually divorced in 1990.
• From 1991 to 1995, he was in a relationship with German actress Nastassja Kinski, with whom he had a daughter named Kenya, who later became a fashion model.
• In an interview with New York Magazine, Jones also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump.
• In 1994, rapper Tupac Shakur publicly criticized Jones for his relationships with white women, leading Jones's daughter Rashida to write a strongly worded open letter in response, which was published in The Source.
• Despite the controversy, Jones's other daughter, Kidada, later entered into a romantic relationship with Shakur.
• The two became engaged and had been living together for four months when he was killed.