Music supremo Quincy Jones dies aged 91

Quincy Jones, known simply as "Q," was a huge influence on American music in his work with artists ranging from Count Basie to Frank Sinatra and reshaped pop music in his collaborations with Michael Jackson.

Jones died on Sunday at the age of 91, his publicist said.

There was very little Jones did not do in a music career of more than 65 years. He was a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, composer, producer, and winner of 27 Grammy Awards.

A studio workaholic and a virtuoso at handling delicate egos, he shaped recordings by jazz greats such as Miles Davis, produced Sinatra, and put together the superstar ensemble that recorded the 1985 fund-raiser "We Are the World," the biggest hit song of its time.

FILE PHOTO: 2018 Governors Awards- Show - Hollywood, California, U.S., 18/11/2018 - Musician and producer Quincy Jones arrives on stage. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo

Jones was also a prolific writer of movie scores and co-produced the film The Color Purple and the 1990s television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which launched Will Smith's career.

Jones' circle of friends included some of the best-known figures of the 20th century. He dined with Pablo Picasso, met Pope John Paul II, helped Nelson Mandela celebrate his 90th birthday, and once retreated to Marlon Brando's South Pacific island to recover from a breakdown.

Everything he did was stamped with his universal and undeniable hipness. U2 frontman Bono called Jones "the coolest person I've ever met."

Jones' most lasting achievements were in collaboration with Jackson. They made three landmark albums - "Off the Wall" in 1979, "Thriller" in 1982, and "Bad" in 1987 - that changed the landscape of American popular music. "Thriller" sold as many as 70 million copies, with six songs on the album becoming top 10 singles.

Musical Break-in

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933. As a boy, he aspired to be a gangster like those he saw in his rough neighborhood. He was 7 when his mother was taken to a mental institution. His father, a carpenter, remarried and moved the family to Bremerton in Washington state, where young Quincy pursued a life of petty crime.

Jones said his interest in music bloomed in Bremerton when he and some friends found a piano after sneaking into the community center in the segregated wartime housing project where they lived.

He experimented with different instruments in the school band before settling on the trumpet. By 13, he was playing jazz, popular music, and rhythm-and-blues in nightclubs. In Seattle, at age 14, Jones met 16-year-old Ray Charles, not yet famous, who taught him to arrange and compose music.

Basie and trumpeter Clark Terry also mentored the young Jones, who won a scholarship to what would become the Berklee School of Music in Boston. However, he gave it up to go on the road with Lionel Hampton's band as a teenage trumpet player in the early 1950s.

FILE PHOTO: 2018 Governors Awards - Arrivals - Hollywood, California, U.S., November 18, 2018REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo

"Music was the one thing I could control," Jones wrote in his autobiography. "It was the one world that offered me freedom ... I didn't have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, penciled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool."

In the late 1950s, he went on U.S. government-sponsored tours worldwide with a band organized by bebop jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie. Jones then led his band through Europe. He was deeply in debt in the early 1960s when he took a job at Mercury Records in New York, becoming one of the first Black executives at a white-owned record company.

There, Jones ventured out of the jazz genre and produced his first hit single, "It's My Party," a Lesley Gore song that topped the U.S. pop chart in 1964.

FILE PHOTO: Legendary American producer Quincy Jones poses during a ceremony to rename a concert hall to his name and celebrate his 85th birthday during the opening night of the 52nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, June 29, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

Jazz purists called him a sell-out for making pop music, but Jones later told Rolling Stone: "The underlying motivation for any artist, be it Stravinsky or Miles Davis, is to make the kind of music they want and still have everyone buy it."

Jones got his first movie-scoring job at Mercury, Sidney Lumet's "The Pawnbroker." He went on to score nearly 40 films, including "In the Heat of the Night," "In Cold Blood," "Mackenna's Gold," "The Wiz" and part of the television mini-series "Roots".

The people Jones worked with would populate a jazz or R&B hall of fame - Basie, Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin. He also produced in other genres, including Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer.

He arranged Sinatra's hit "Fly Me to the Moon," which astronaut Buzz Aldrin played a cassette recording of during the first moon landing in 1969. Years later, Jones told GQ magazine that Sinatra "called me up, and he was like a little kid: 'We got the first music on the moon, man!'"

His recordings were just as eclectic, from jazz to soul, African to Brazilian. In 1991, his "Back on the Block" record won the Grammy for album of the year and also Grammys in the rap, rhythm and blues, jazz fusion, and instrumental categories.

Jones' work with Jackson was historic, although Jackson's record company initially thought Jones was too jazzy to be his producer. They started in 1979 with "Off the Wall," after the singer split from his brothers in the Jackson 5 and assembled a mix of dance tracks and ballads. The album featured four songs that became top 10 hits.

Their 1982 collaboration, "Thriller," became a cultural touchstone of the 1980s. Jones and Jackson wanted to broaden Jackson's fan base, so they added rock elements, getting guitarist Eddie Van Halen to play a blistering solo on "Beat It," which became one of Jackson's biggest hits ever. Complemented by dazzling videos featuring Jackson's mesmerizing dancing just as MTV was coming of age, "Thriller" made the entertainer one of the biggest stars in the world.

Divine Collaboration

Hits like "Beat It," "Billie Jean," and the title song made "Thriller" the biggest-selling album of all time. Jones won three Grammys, and Jackson won seven.

They followed that in 1987 with "Bad," which had five No. 1 hits, including "Smooth Criminal" and "Man in the Mirror."

In 1985, Jones, Jackson, and singer Lionel Richie organized "We Are the World," a record to raise money to fight Ethiopia's famine. The huge all-star chorus featured Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, and Smokey Robinson. Jones set the tone for the recording session with a sign that said: "Leave your ego at the door."

Jackson died in 2009, and Jones later sued the estate, testifying that he was "cheated out of a lot of money" in royalties. In July 2017, a Los Angeles jury awarded Jones $9.4 million.

Jones started his own record label, Qwest, and Vibe, a magazine that covered the hip-hop world. He also had various foundations and humanitarian projects.

He kept launching new projects well past the traditional retirement age. In 2018, Jones, then 84, told GQ magazine: "I never been this busy in my life."

Jones was married three times. His first wife was his high school sweetheart Jeri Caldwell, with whom he had one daughter; his second wife was Swedish model Ulla Andersson, with whom he had two children, including Quincy III, who became a hip-hop producer.

His third wife was "Mod Squad" actress Peggy Lipton, with whom he had two daughters, including actress Rashida Jones. He had two other children outside his marriage, including one with actress Nastassja Kinski.