American musician, a prolific, protean talent as a composer, arranger, conductor and instrumentalist. He wrote music for 52 movies as well as for TV shows.
Jones’ parents were divorced early. He helped his carpenter father make ends meet by shining shoes and delivering dry cleaning. He became aware of music at age five from his baby sitter who played the piano. After the family moved to Seattle, Jones became obsessed with the school band and orchestration.
When he was 14 he met 16-year-old Ray Charles who had moved to Seattle and was soon learning how to write arrangements in Braille. Lying about their ages, they played gigs all around the city. He was asked to join Lionel Hampton’s band when he was 15, but Mrs. Hampton made him return to school. After high school and a semester at Seattle University, Jones transferred on a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He finally joined the Hampton band and was working in the company of jazz greats like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
Steeped in soul and also classically trained in musical composition in Paris, he first came to public attention as a trumpeter with Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie bands in the ’50s. As a producing artist and the first black executive with Mercury Records, he produced and arranged for many of the popular music greats. In 1956, Jones and Dizzy Gillespie were sent on a tour sponsored by the State Department to promote U.S. culture in many trouble spots of the day such as Beirut, Damascus, Athens, Tehran, Pakistan and Buenos Aires. “Music helps neutralize things; people cannot think about that kind of hostility when they are engaged in music,” he said. Notably he brought together the 46 artists who participated in the “We Are the World” benefit recording that raised more than $55 million for Ethiopian famine relief.
Jones is also an entrepreneur, a film and television producer who has worked with just about everyone from Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles to Ella Fitzgerald and Donna Summer. Barbra Streisand calls him a Renaissance man who displays “as much integrity personally as he does professionally.” Jones has won just about every entertainment award over his career.
He was married to Jeri Caldwell, his childhood sweetheart and Ulla Anderson, a Swedish model who bore his only son, Quincy III. His 1972 marriage to white actress Peggy Lipton ended in a divorce in 1990; they had two daughters. Following his breakup with Lipton, he was on the verge of a breakdown and went on a spiritual retreat for 31 days, building a spiritual base to carry him the rest of his life.
In August 1974, he had a cerebral aneurysm, burst blood vessels leading to the brain, with two dramatic surgeries that brought him close to death. By 1992 he was a couple with Nastassja Kinski; their baby Kenya was born 2/09/1993 but they separated two years later. All together, Jones has one son and six daughters.
“Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones” was published in 2001, a book in which his loving zest showed through in every page.
Link to Wikipedia biography