A look at the life of the extraordinary Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones, the famed music producer who helped artists dominate popular music for half a century, has died.

His publicist says he died peacefully at his home in California. He was 91 years old.

NPR’s Walter Ray Watson described Jones’ talent as one that produced music that captivated ears, warmed hearts and set feet to dancing.

Together with Michael Jackson he broke open the pop music world with the production of songs such as Bad, Billie JeanAnd Rock with you. His contributions have sold more than a hundred million records, including Thrillerthe best-selling album of all time.

It may be hard to imagine now, but record executives questioned whether Quincy Jones was the right person to produce Michael Jackson’s debut as an adult solo artist.

An unlikely success story

Born Quincy Delight Jones Jr., he was the son of a Chicago carpenter and a housewife mother, who sang church songs at home.

Jones experienced gang violence as a child of the Great Depression. And at age 10, his family moved to Seattle, where his father joined the war effort and worked in a shipyard.

“Gangsters. A lot of them are gangsters. In the 1930s, that’s all I ever saw with machine guns,” he described his childhood in Chicago in a 2008 interview with NPR’s Michele Norris.

As a child he was a leader of mischief. And one day he and a bunch of guys targeted a room full of freshly baked pies at a recreation center. They broke in and ate all the cakes. Then Jones opened a door.

“And I saw – in the shadows I saw a piano. Then I almost closed the door, and then something deep inside me said, ‘Open the door again.’ And I went back into the room and walked slowly to that piano, and I felt goosebumps and everything.”

That changed his life, he said. In high school, Jones picked up the trumpet. Soon after, he made a lifelong friend in a blind 16-year-old pianist named Ray Charles.

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A musical superpower

Jones was still a teenager when he was hired by legendary vibraphonist and bandleader Lionel Hampton. His talents opened the door and his skills took him everywhere.

After producing and scouting for some of the industry’s top talent, Mercury Records promoted Quincy Jones to executive, a first for a black man at a major record label. His taste and instincts led him to cultivate some of the biggest hits and artists of the past decades.

Listen to the full episode of Consider this to hear Watson describe Jones’ extraordinary life and achievements.

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