A groundbreaking Renaissance man who memorably collaborated with everyone from Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson to Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Queen Latifah and San Diego blues-soul singer Earl Thomas, Quincy Jones has has done so many things so extremely well in the worlds of music, film, publishing, television and more, it’s difficult to succinctly state the breadth and depth of his accomplishments.

The 28-time Grammy Award winner, 2010 National Medal of Arts winner and 2016 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, died Sunday at the age of 91 at his home in Bel Air for unrevealed causes. Over the course of his nearly eight-decade career, he has established himself as a producer, composer, arranger, publisher, broadcaster and tireless champion of social change. Or, as Jones put it in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1996: “I was fortunate to be born at just the right time to witness and participate in some of the greatest cultural events in this country.” »

This interview took place just two weeks before the broadcast of the 1996 Oscars, of which he was the producer. It was a no-brainer for the Chicago native and seven-time Academy Award winner, who in 1995 became the first black artist to win the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

“I don’t feel a single drop of pressure, and the s— flies all day long, man, disasters and train wrecks and fires and all that stuff,” Jones said, referring to the Oscars telecast. (All quotes in this review article, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the multiple interviews he conducted with the Union-Tribune.)

“But, you know, everything will be fine,” he continued. “I know most of the people on the show very well; Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier and the young people — Goldie Hawn, I did (the music for) her first film (‘Cactus Flower’ in 1969), when she received her first Oscar. So I feel comfortable. It’s not an environment that makes me feel cramped.

If there was an environment that made Jones nervous, he kept it under his jacket.

Best known to pop music fans as the producer of Michael Jackson’s iconic albums “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad,” Jones also produced the 1985 fundraising single “We Are the World,” which featured Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Harry Belafonte and Cyndi Lauper among its many stars.

After launching his career in 1951, when the teenage Jones joined vibraphone jazz great Lionel Hampton’s big band, he worked with a dizzying array of artists. They include his childhood friend Ray Charles, director Steven Spielberg, author Alice Walker, Aretha Franklin, gangsta rapper Ice-T and bebop trumpeter great Dizzy Gillespie (who hired Jones, then 23, to be its musical director in 1956).

Jones has directed numerous films, including “In Cold Blood” and “The Color Purple,” both of which earned him Academy Award nominations. He founded the influential hip-hop magazine Vibe, ran his own record label, Qwest, and produced recordings by artists as varied as jazz giant Sarah Vaughan, then 16-year-old pop singer Lesley Gore, notably on his 1963 charts. press “It’s my party”.

Jones also made his mark as a film and television executive producer. His credits included everything from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The History of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ to “MadTV” and the 2023 adaptation of “The Color Purple.”

In 2016, Jones, then 83, was the oldest artist to be inducted that year into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Other honorees included Heart, Rush, Public Enemy, Booker T & The MG’s, Randy Newman and the late Donna Summer, but Jones was easily the hottest artist in the house that night at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

The audience was surprised when Oprah Winfrey appeared on stage to induct him. She thanked Jones for changing “the trajectory of my life” when he persuaded director Spielberg to cast the then little-known Chicago television host in the award-winning film “The Color Purple.”

“He is a living legend,” Winfrey said of Jones, “who defines and challenges the word ‘legend’.”

In his acceptance speech, Jones joked with the audience that he was the main honoree of the evening. “I didn’t want to get into the Hall of Fame too early, so I waited,” he said.

Recalling his early days as an aspiring jazz trumpeter and composer, Jones said, “We never thought about being famous or rich. We came from the school where we wanted to be the best musician we could be.

Striving to be the best was a hallmark of his career, no matter what musical genres Jones performed or skillfully fused.

Jones’ 1989 album, “Back on the Block,” won six Grammy Awards. It featured rappers such as Ice-T and Kool Moe Dee alongside jazz immortals such as Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.

While many listeners see little or no connection between hip-hop and the musical styles that form the basis of jazz, Jones grew up playing, he was well aware of the vital continuum that connects the millennia-old music of the griots of West Africa. (or oral historians) with the cries of black American slaves and the gospel, blues, jazz, rock, soul, funk and hip-hop traditions that followed.

“It’s the same thing!” Jones told me. “And even a lot of rappers don’t know that their roots are in the griot tradition. I am often criticized for being so eclectic. But since we were 13, we were playing everything from Sousa marches to bebop to rhythm and blues to big band music. And I’ve done that my whole life. So when I started working with Michael Jackson, a lot of beboppers were like, “(Expletive), man. He went to the swimming pool! »

“But it’s not too much for me. I always want to hear this (musical) family together. Blues, funk, bebop, R&B, hip-hop, gospel, because it all comes from the same place. And together it possesses such collective power, far more than any of its individual parts. Radio gives people the taste of the week. So you have to go up to everyone and say, “Hey, man! It’s music to celebrate — all of this. “

In 2001, Jones was the driving force behind the five-part VH1 television series, “Say It Loud!” A celebration of black music in America. It was just one of the ways he highlighted the too-often underappreciated contributions of black artists, not only to American music but to its culture as a whole.

“Too many aspects of African-American music have not been exposed,” Jones said at the time. “I have been interested in this subject for 27 years, and at the time, it was more about sociology than musicology. The real history of African Americans is all in the music, because the books were all written by the (white) victors. The coded messages in the spirituals, the enigmatic emotions in the blues – all of these things tell a real story of being here in this country.

“It has always fascinated me that there is no such thing as an “original gospel singer” or an “original blues singer.” Essentially, it is music that represents an entire life experience and an entire people, not just one person. I guess every race and religion is like that.

“There are common denominators in every era,” continued Jones, who in 2991 was also saluted alongside Van Cliburn, Jack Nicholson, Julie Andrews and Luciano Pavarotti at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC.

“In any genre, you’ll find call-and-response, whether it’s Count Basie music or doo-wop, gospel or rap,” he continued. “This music is a fascinating saga. And the proof of its depth is that, all over the planet, the youth of the world have adopted this music as their emotional Esperanto. And this is true for different generations of music, not just the newest genre, which is rap.

An educated and completely unpretentious musician, Jones was a gracious and charming host when I interviewed him for a Jazz Times magazine cover story at his Bel-Air mansion in 2003, following the publication of his captivating book, “Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones.

“You have to know what you can do and what you can’t do,” Jones says when asked to assess his strengths and weaknesses. “And what you can’t do, you try to find the people who are the best in the world to do it. To me, it’s logical, it makes sense.

“I guess it comes down to being lucky enough to have enough wins to keep going. Because many steps that lead to defeat make you introverted and set you back. And it’s just the opposite when you take a chance, take a step and make that step become victorious. And when you win, you’re almost there. The next step you take will be a giant leap, because this is how we are built as human beings – this promise that we have within us that God has put there.

“Stravinsky said that the great responsibility of an artist is to be a great observer and to be truly attentive. Be careful! The things that have guided my life are being attentive, being true to yourself, and understanding. That’s really what it’s about. My life was turned upside down when I was young, but so what? Get over it. Understand it. Just breathe in every second of life.

Originally published: November 4, 2024 at 10:55 a.m. PST