In memory of Quincy.
Probably the best pop song of them all,
Quincy Jones’s 10 best hits: from Fly Me to the Moon to Thriller
The pop producer, who has died aged 91, brought his magic touch to songs by Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson’s disco-funk masterpiece Thriller continues to be a monster
, Chief rock and pop critic
Monday November 04 2024, 5.15pm GMT, The Times
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It is hard to rank Quincy Jones’s work because it stretched over such a wide range. Comparing the pop innocence of, say, his production of Lesley Gore’s It’s My Party with the dirty funk of Jones’s own Cool Joe, Mean Joe (Killer Joe) is a fool’s errand. What really shines through, though, is his way of masking any complexities under a carapace of the things that make music flow by yet stick in the mind: tunefulness, grooviness, something unique to make it stand out. With that in mind, here are ten of the best, spanning the length and breadth of his varied career.
10. Ai No Corrida (1981)
Jones threw himself into disco funk abandon with a surprise cover of a song by the British singer Chaz Jankel, former member of Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Named after the notorious Japanese erotic movie, it became a favourite at Studio 54 in New York, the 1970s epicentre of disco hedonism.
9. Theme from Ironside (1967)
The ultra-cool theme tune to everybody’s favourite television show about a wheelchair-using detective introduced the synthesizer to mainstream America. It also brought together Jones’s favourite session players, the bassist Carol Kaye and organist Jimmy Smith among them, and featured on his 1971 album Smackwater Jack, a record collector’s staple.
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8. Evening in Paris (1957)
Given his pop associations decades later, it is easy to forget that Jones started out as a jobbing jazzer, doing any number of sessions while learning the rudiments of classical composition and arranging. Herbie Mann and Charles Mingus are among the giants who contributed to this wonderfully laid-back early composition.
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7. Misty (1958)
Sarah Vaughan’s definitive version of the jazz standard featured an arrangement by a 25-year-old Jones and it was recorded in Paris with an orchestra, also conducted by Jones, which featured Zoot Sims on tenor sax. It was one of the first recordings that marked him out as a serious talent.
6. Summer in the City (1973)
Jones totally transformed the Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 pop favourite, with the neurotic intensity of the original replaced by a mood of sunshine-soaked laziness, thanks to languid vocals from Valerie Simpson and flowing organ from Eddie Louis.
Frank Sinatra and Quincy Jones in 1991
KYPROS/GETTY IMAGES
5. Fly Me to the Moon (1964)
Jones credited Frank Sinatra with being one of the first world-famous white singers to see beyond race and work with whoever was best. Jones’s light, swinging arrangement for one of Sinatra’s signature tunes forged a collaboration that led to a lifelong friendship.
4. Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough (1979)
Having first worked with Michael Jackson on the disastrous The Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation The Wiz, Jones produced the 20-year-old emerging solo sensation’s breakout hit: an irresistible disco classic, made for dancing to.
• Quincy Jones understood what pop needs — a catchy hook, charm and a star
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3. State of Independence (1982)
Jon and Vangelis wrote the original, but it was the Quincy Jones-produced, classic rock version by Donna Summer that became a hit. Alongside extensive use of synthesizers and saxophones, Jones’s masterstroke was in having an all-star choir to back up Summer — Michael Jackson, Dionne Warwick and Lionel Richie among them.
2. Soul Bossa Nova (1962)
You’ll know this flute-laden classic even if you don’t realise it. After being used on countless television shows it ended up as the theme to Austin Powers, making it the last word in 1960s easy-listening grooviness.
1. Thriller (1983)
In producing an album on which “every song was a killer”, according to Jackson, Jones needed an absolute monster for the title track. So he had Vincent Price provide spooky spoken-word vocals on Rod Temperton’s disco-funk masterpiece, for which the engineer Bruce Swedien stuck his Great Dane in a barn overnight to record the wolf howls. In the event, the dog didn’t offer so much as a whimper. Jackson did the howls himself.
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Quincy Jones, titan of popular music whose collaborators included Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra
He won 28 Grammy Awards, and his arrangement of Fly Me to the Moon for Sinatra was the first record to be played on the Moon
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04 November 2024 9:08am GMT
Quincy Jones in 2008 Credit: Guang Niu/Getty Images
Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91, was one of the most important and versatile figures in the history of 20th-century music; in a career that spanned 70 years, he enjoyed success as a trumpeter, producer, composer and record label executive, and perhaps above all showed succeeding generations of black artists the heights to which they could legitimately aspire.
Jones started work in music in 1950. Then as now, it was a profession where prospects were marginally less secure than the job he had had as a boy in the Chicago ghetto, shining the shoes of the neighbourhood pimps. Indeed, one of the first lessons he learnt in the jazz business was when Charlie Parker failed to pay back money he had borrowed from the teenage Jones.
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Soon, however, his fortunes improved as his precocious talents were recognised, and he secured work as an arranger for Dinah Washington and Tommy Dorsey. He then joined Lionel Hampton’s orchestra as a trumpeter before moving on to Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble in 1956.
Jones with his Big Band in Vienna c. 1960 Credit: Franz Hubmann/Imagno/Getty Images
The following year, already hailed as the heir apparent to Duke Ellington as America’s finest bandleader, he went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. As well as being a laboratory of bebop, the city was a magnet for artists of all kinds, and Jones struck up friendships with Igor Stravinsky, Françoise Sagan, and Pablo Picasso – who taught him the value of money to creativity: that it guarantees freedom of action.
In 1959, however, the failure of a tour he had organised landed him in debt, and he was forced to find steadier work with the Barclay jazz label in Paris. At first he produced records by Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel, but soon he was entrusted with the management side of the company as well. His ability caught the attention of Mercury, who had an association with Barclay, and in 1961 he returned to the United States as a senior vice-president with them, becoming the first black executive to be hired by a major American record label.
As the dominance of jazz began to be challenged by pop, Jones started to focus his energies on the new sound. His first hit as a producer was It’s My Party for Lesley Gore, and later in the 1960s he worked with Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon. He had already released several LPs of his own (notably This Is How I Feel about Jazz in 1956) and now also began to write film scores, most memorably for In the Heat of the Night and In Cold Blood (both 1967), The Italian Job (1969) and The Getaway (1972). He would eventually compose music for more than 30 films, and was nominated for three Oscars. Decades later, his tune Soul Bossa Nova from 1962 became the opening soundtrack to the Austin Powers spy spoofs.
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Jones also wrote many themes for television programmes, including the shows of his friends Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey, for the mini-series Roots (which brought him an Emmy), and for Ironside, which featured one of the first uses of a synthesiser.
Jones with his six Grammys in 1991 Credit: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
In 1964 Jones returned to his earlier influences, working with the Count Basie Orchestra on Frank Sinatra’s LP It Might as Well Be Swing. He later produced Sinatra’s first concert album, At the Sands (1966), and one of his last, LA Is My Lady (1984). It was Jones who quickened the tempo of the arrangement of Fly Me to the Moon, originally in waltz time. His reward was to captivate, among others, Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 accordingly ensured that the record was the first piece of music to be played on the Moon. Walking in Space, the jazz-fusion album Jones released the same year, was also a success.
The furious pace of his labours – which took a heavy toll in Jones’s personal life – did not slacken in the early 1970s. He produced records for Rufus and Chaka Khan and the Brothers Johnson, among others, before falling victim in 1974 to two brain aneurysms in the space of two weeks. He took this as a sign to slow down – a little.
Arguably, however, the work that would have the widest impact was still ahead of him. In 1977 he was asked to write the score to The Wiz, a black version of The Wizard of Oz that starred Diana Ross, and an adolescent Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. Jackson was then struggling to make the transition to adult pop star, and Jones became his principal mentor (as Basie had been his).
The first fruits of their relationship was the LP Off the Wall (1979), which repositioned Jackson from the teen balladeer of Ben to a prince of disco. Tracks such as Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough introduced the world to the vocal swoops, shrieks and gasps – devised by Jones for Jackson – that henceforward characterised his music.
Jones’s genius for bringing the best out of awkward talent and for creating avant-garde production was never better displayed than on Jackson’s next record, Thriller (1982), which stands as the masterpiece of both men. The album’s blending of Jackson’s clear soul voice with innovatory techno- rhythms (most notably on Billie Jean) established the singer’s status as the king of contemporary pop and, some 70 million copies later, it remains the best-selling LP ever.
Jones also produced its follow-up, the almost equally successful Bad (1987). Meanwhile, in 1984, he had produced We Are the World, the American music industry’s response to the famine in Ethiopia. It was half a lifetime, and another world, from Charlie Parker and the ghetto.
With Stevie Wonder in 1987 Credit: Sunny Bak/AP
Quincy Jones, Jr – he later also assumed his father’s middle name, Delight – was born in Chicago on March 14 1933. His early years were difficult in the extreme: the family was poor, and he lived in two rooms with nine other people.
Moreover, his mother suffered psychiatric problems, and when he was eight she was consigned to an asylum (though not before she had thrown one of Quincy’s birthday cakes through a window). His father remarried, and in 1943 moved the family to Seattle so he could seek work in the wartime shipyards.
At high school Quincy formed a lifelong friendship with an older boy who was also keen on jazz – Ray Charles. The two of them took every opportunity to learn from the musicians who entertained the city’s many military bases, and by his mid-teens Jones was already being encouraged in his trumpet-playing by Basie. At 17 he won a scholarship to study music at Schillinger House (now Berklee College of Music) in Boston, but after a year he left to pursue opportunities for arranging in New York.
Jones was a short, compact, soft-spoken man, blessed with svelte good looks when young, and with poise and energy when older. In his fifties – when, in truth, he began to lose his keen sense of musical direction (his failure to appreciate the potential of hip-hop was a particular weakness) – he turned his hand to producing films and television programmes, something that was still a rarity for a black American.
His first release was The Color Purple, a tale of racial discrimination directed by Steven Spielberg. The subject was one close to Jones’s heart, and he gave much of his time and money to projects that aimed to display the talents of black youth. Among his protégés was the rapper Will Smith, who made his name as an actor in a television comedy produced by Jones’s company in the early 1990s, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Jones himself lived in that same super-wealthy part of Los Angeles, sharing his house with the record label he ran and with his collection of a record-breaking 28 Grammys (plus three Special Awards). He carried on working into his ninth decade, and in 2022 he made an appearance on the album Dawn FM by the Weeknd.
Aside from never passing his driving test, Jones’s principal failure was as a father and husband. He married, first, in 1957, his childhood sweetheart Jeri Caldwell; they had a daughter but divorced in 1966. The following year he married Ulla Andersson, a Swedish model; they had a daughter and son but divorced in 1974.
Jones with Oprah Winfrey at the 1995 Oscars with his Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Credit: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty
The day after the divorce was finalised Jones married the actress Peggy Lipton. They had two daughters but divorced in 1989 – prompted in part by his having devoted two years’ ceaseless work to The Color Purple, which contributed to the nervous breakdown he suffered that year.
He recovered at Marlon Brando’s house in the South Pacific: Jones was renowned as having the best address book in Los Angeles – his other friends included Bono, with whom he did much philanthropic work, and Nelson Mandela.
He admitted regretting not having spent more time with his son and six daughters – including one from an affair with Carol Reynolds. His youngest daughter came from his relationship with the actress Nastassja Kinski, some 30 years his junior, with whom he lived from 1992 to 1996.
Jones’s children accepted that he had long since given his life over to the gifts which marked him out as one of the great talents in the history of American music. “Some of that stuff you did with Mike Jackson,” the elderly Basie once told him, “Hell, me and Miles couldn’t have touched that.”
Quincy Jones, born March 14 1933, died November 3 2024
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“A great man to drink a pint”. Wow, what a thing to be remembered for, stout farts and pub guff from the high stool.
Can you imagine what they’ll say about roy?
Kathleen Watkins RIP
Kathleen Watkins died the other day and it hasn’t been mentioned on TFK, 
Is it a case of ‘if you can’t say something good say nothing at all’
She seemed like a daycent enough sort, she put up with Gay long enough
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It’s literally the post above mine, unless you have someone on ignore 
It’s almost like he’s signaling
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Never saw that. May she RIP
Would have thought she would def be worthy of this thread
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She turned 90 this year so thread title probably stopped it been posted
The cork siren sounded
That’s only to stop posting who they think might die during the year, at the beginning of the year. You know the Jimmy Carter crew.
So it’s grand to post an actual death over 90.
Jon Kenny RIP
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Ah no, 
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From D’Unbelievables?
Ah no. That’s hit me.
D’unbelievables were brilliant. He was great , great story teller.
I remember going to see him in the Dome, Waterford the night of the Munster New Zealand game. We went in early to watch the game and he came down and sat with us for the game. A gent.
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Yep