Fifty years ago, Quincy Jones received a gift from jazz giant Duke Ellington that predicted the future.
“Before he passed, we did the ‘Duke Ellington … We Love You Madly’ TV special; my first television credit as a producer,” Jones told Revolt TV in 2021. “My blessed brother, Duke, gave me a photo of him, signed, ‘To Q, who will be the one to de-categorize American music.’” Jones spent the rest of his life fulfilling Ellington’s prophecy.
Jones died at his Bel-Air home in the late evening hours of Nov. 3. He was 91. At the time of Ellington’s prediction in 1974, he was already a towering figure in music. Jones left this earth as an absolutely singular contributor to music, media, film, television and popular culture in general.
“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the 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.”
The eighth biggest selling single, USA For Africa’s “We Are The World,” and the biggest selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” have Jones’ name on them. The fact that these milestones are footnotes among many achievements during his paradigm-shifting, 80-year career further cements his legacy.
An attempt to list his honors and distinctions – which include 28 Grammy Awards (including a Grammy Legend Award), 80 Grammy nominations, a 2001 Kennedy Center Honors recipient, a 2011 National Medal of the Arts recipient and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee to name a few – would be pointless. In fact, his best-selling 2001 book Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones has nearly 20 full pages of accolades. Another dozen or so would probably be necessary to include the distinctions he has received since its original publication. He closed his eyes for the final time in much different surroundings from the humble beginnings that “Q” details.
From the South Side to Seattle
One of millions of sons and daughters of the Great Migration, Quincy Delight Jones Jr. came into the world on March 14, 1933, on the South Side of Chicago. He was the elder of two boys born to Quincy Delight Jones Sr., a carpenter, and Frances Jones, a bank officer.
His mother struggled with her mental health and his father was a workaholic. As small children, Jones and his younger brother were forced to fend for themselves. A feat made more difficult in the height of The Great Depression.
“We fought. We stole. We ran with gangs. We ran from gangs,” Jones said in the Netflix documentary “Quincy,” which is co-directed and co-written by his daughter Rashida Jones. “By that time, I was carrying a knife and doing whatever I thought I had to do to survive.” He was eight years old.
The next year his father found himself overwhelmed by raising the two of them alone, so they were sent to live with their maternal grandmother. “Grandma was a former slave,” Jones said. “She cooked whatever she could get her hands on, mustard greens, okra, possums and rats. We ate them because that’s all there was to eat.”
By the time he was 10, Jones was with his father and his brother on a Trailways Bus to a better life. They ended up in Washington state. His life appeared to be headed in a similar direction as in Chicago, but fate intervened. He and a group of friends broke into an armory. On a stage in the building was an upright piano. He gravitated to the instrument – and found his passion.
“I tinkered on it for a moment,” Jones said in the documentary. “And I knew that was it for me. Forever.”
When other boys his age were dreaming of becoming the next Jackie Robinson, Jones had his heart set on jazz.
“I couldn’t get enough,” Jones said. “Just that idea of seeing Black men who were dignified and proud. I said, ‘That’s what I want to be.”
The trumpet became his instrument of choice.
“I was in night clubs, playing five night clubs a night at 13,” Jones said in a 2014 interview with Dinner Party Download to discuss the release of the film “Keep on Keepin’ On,” which featured St. Louis native Clark Terry as a subject. That same year he convinced a reluctant Terry to teach him more about the instrument.
“At 13, you’ve heard somebody like that with high notes, and with all that dexterity and personality, it was mind-boggling,” Jones said.
Jones spoke of being “the first” formal student of Terry’s with the same pride one might assume he would have with his endless list of awards. Out of that instruction came a mentorship – and friendship that spanned 65 years until Terry’s passing in 2015. Jones wrote the preface to Terry’s 2011 autobiography titled “Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry.”
When Jones was 14, he met another musician in Seattle who would become a lifelong friend and fellow music legend. His name was Ray Charles.
Into the music stratosphere
After working with the likes of Lionel Hampton, a 22-year-old Jones was asked by Dinah Washington if he would produce and arrange on her upcoming album. Washington’s label protested, saying that she should employ someone with a bigger name and an established reputation.
“I’ve got a name for your [expletive],” Jones recounted in the documentary. “Dinah [expletive] Washington.”
He went on to arrange for Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and more before embarking on tours that kept him in Europe into the early 1960s. He returned stateside in 1961 as the first Black vice-president of a white-owned record label – which eventually paved the way for his own label, Qwest Records.
Jones was also the arranger/conductor when Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Johnny Carson performed with the Count Basie orchestra in June 1965 in St. Louis in a benefit for Dismas House. The show was broadcast in movie theaters around the country and eventually released on VHS.
Over the course of his career, Jones became a titan in the entertainment industry. He was a musician, record producer, label executive, arranger, conductor, composer, television producer, film producer, scorer, media mogul and overall influencer. But perhaps the greatest gift Jones possessed was his ability to not only be on the pulse of popular music, but to create the tempo for which it to beat.
He launched the careers of many. Revived the careers of many more – including his own. Jones was an icon maker within the realm of music. He vouched for the legitimacy of hip hop at a time when his musical peers refused to accept the genre as “real music.”
“I fell in love with hip hop because it reminds me of bebop,” Jones told Revolt.
And Jones received the same level of respect from Tupac Shakur – who was engaged to his daughter Kidada – to Frank Sinatra, who was the first to call him “Q” in front of mass audiences.
“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,” the family’s statement read. “Through his music and his boundless love, Quincy Jones’ heart will beat for eternity.”