Quincy Jones, Legendary Music Producer and Maestro of Entertainment, Dies at 91

Legendary producer, songwriter, composer, and musician Quincy Jones died at his home in Bel Air, California on Sunday, November 3. He was 91. Jones’ publicist Arnold Robinson confirmed that the producer “passed away peacefully” at home. No cause of death was revealed.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” read a statement by Jones’ family. “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.”

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Jones became one of the most influential figures in music, first as a musician throughout the 1950s, then as a composer, arranger, and producer in the ’60s as well as a record producer, television and film producer, and songwriter. Jones was nominated for 80 Grammy Awards and won 28 of them, along with a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.

Born March 14, 1933, in Chicago, Illinois, Jones started his career as a jazz trumpeter, eventually working his way into Dizzy Gillespie’s band in 1956. As he fine-tuned his skills as an arranger, composer, and producer, Jones began working with artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ray Charles by the late ’50s. In 1955, Jones also set the original arrangement of Big Maybelle’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” before it became a hit by Jerry Lee Lewis three years later.

During the 1960s, Jones scored his first film score with The Pawnbroker in 1965 and went on to work on the 1967 Sidney Poitier classic In the Heat of the Night and the Richard Brooks-helmed, Truman Capote-inspired In Cold Blood, and more as well as moving into television production.

Jones later crossed over from being a musician and was in greater demand as a songwriter and producer working with some of the biggest artists in pop, jazz, soul, and funk, while producing everyone from Lesley Gore and her two biggest hits “You Don’t Own Me” and “It’s My Party” and Gillespie’s 1963 album New Wave!

[RELATED: 7 Songs You Didn’t Know Quincy Jones Wrote for Other Artists]

In 1971, Jones became the first African American to take over the role of conductor and musical director of the Academy Awards. By the ’70s, Jones also produced Aretha Franklin’s 19th album Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), before suffering a brain aneurysm in 1974.

He returned in 1979 and produced Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking debut Off the Wall, and continued working with Jackson several more times after forming Qwest Records in 1980, along with producing the 1983 megahit album Thriller from 1982 and co-writing the single “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing),” followed by Bad in 1987. The two also worked on the 1985 U.S.A. for Africa charitable hit “We Are the World.” A year earlier, Jones also co-wrote Frank Sinatra‘s “L.A. is My Lady.”

Throughout the ’90s, Jones produced a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival with Miles Davis, which resulted in their 1993 collaborative album Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux. During this period, he also became intertwined in hip-hop when his song “Body Heat,” the title track of his 1974 solo album, was interpolated in Tupac Shakur‘s No. 1 hit “How Do U Want It.”

The producer was awarded the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989 and was later inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Jones recently served as a co-producer for the soundtrack to the drama Lola in 2024.

“I was blessed to have been born at a time when I could work with the greatest artists to ever walk the planet and to have accomplished all that I have in every arena,” said Jones in 2023 around his 90th birthday, “and I wouldn’t trade one note of that journey.”

Jones is survived by two sisters, Margie Jay, and Theresa Frank; a brother, Richard Jones; and his seven children: Kidada, Jolie, Martina, Kenya, Quincy III, Rachel, and Rashida.

Photo: Quincy Jones at work in a recording studio, 1963. (Gai Terrell/Redferns/Getty Images)