The life and legacy of Quincy Jones

The accomplishments of the composer, arranger, producer, and musician Quincy Jones, who died in November at 91, are the stuff of legends.

Reared amid poverty and familial dysfunction, he discovered the trumpet in junior high and began rapidly developing the skills that would fast-track his acceptance by high-profile jazz bands several years later. By 25, he’d become friends with Ray Charles, earned a scholarship to the Schillinger House (later the Berklee College of Music), logged time with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, accompanied for Nat King Cole in Europe, and put together a show for Frank Sinatra.

Those names along with over 800 others populate the index of Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, a 2001 memoir in which Jones takes turns narrating with his friends and family members (including two of his three ex-wives and three of his seven children). The list of people that he knew reads like a Who’s Who of 20th-century movers and shakers. Cary Grant, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Oprah Winfrey—Jones’ talent, affability, and work ethic opened one door after another, and he walked through them all.

When jazz big bands began facing extinction, he composed soundtracks for mainstream blockbusters such as The Pawnbroker and In Cold Blood, breaking color barriers along the way. When pop beckoned, he produced Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” beating Phil Spector (who’d recorded a version with the Crystals) to the punch. He composed the theme songs for Ironside and Sanford and Son. Not everything that he touched turned to gold, but much of it did, and he touched a lot. He died worth $500 million.

In 1978, four years after undergoing—and surviving—two brain operations, Jones supervised the music of The Wiz. One of its stars was a 19-year-old former teen idol named Michael Jackson. Over objections from Epic Records that Jones was just a jazz guy, Jackson recorded his first grown-up album, Off the Wall, with Jones at the helm. It went multiplatinum. Eight years later, Jackson’s Jones-produced Bad did too. In between, Jones oversaw the recording of U.S.A. for Africa’s star-studded charity single “We Are the World” and produced Jackson’s Thriller, the bestselling album of all time.

The pious tone of the “Acknowledg­ments” at the end of Jones’ autobiography (“Most importantly, I have to thank the Creator, who uses us as instruments of His divine grace …”) is at odds with his admission in the chapter “My Life as a Dog” that for many years he was an enthusiastic womanizer. (“As far as I’m concerned,” he wrote, “celibacy is a highly overrated virtue.”) But he eventually earned the love and respect of each of his children, an accomplishment that ultimately speaks more loudly than his recordings, awards, and success combined.