A man who wore a mountain of hats, Quincy Jones carried himself with dignity, determination, and gusto through a legendary and illustrious career. Being the first to shatter many glass ceilings, he never let any of his success cloud his burning love for music. A trumpeter, music and film producer, arranger, vice president at a major record label, media executive, and advocate for musicians’ rights, Quincy Jones was and will continue to be regarded as one of the greatest to have ever done it. With such a storied career, there are bound to be facts or accomplishments about him you may have missed. Therefore, in honor of his legacy, we invite you to check out the top 10 things that you may not have known about the music icon.
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Music saved his life
Quincy Jones was born on March 14, 1933, on the South Side of Chicago, an area with a past marked by violence, segregation, and poverty – challenges further intensified by one of the worst economic downturns in American history: the Great Depression. At first, Jones’ dreams were of living as a gangster. His mother’s eventual institutionalization when Jones was 7, was a loss that made him spend plenty of time in Chicago on the streets. “I wanted to be a gangster ‘til I was 11. You want to be what you see, and that’s all we ever saw,” he told Dr. Dre in the 2018 Netflix documentary, Quincy. Music, however, saved him. before institutionalization, his mother often sang religious songs and a next-door neighbor, Lucy Jackson, constantly played stride piano next door. This introduced a young Jones to music.
Even so, the true spark arrived a couple of years later, when his father moved to the state of Washington. One day, Jones and some friends broke into the kitchen of a recreation center and helped themselves to a lemon meringue pie. Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage and a piano. “I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment”, he wrote in his autobiography, Q. “That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.” Within a few years, he was playing the trumpet and had formed a close bond with a talented young blind musician, who would become his lifelong friend and musical partner. As Quincy fondly remembered in Q: “He said his name was Ray Charles and it was at first instinct for both of us.”
Jones Never Learned to Drive
Quincy Jones has never driven a car, a decision he made after a tragic accident at age 14. He and his friends were on their way to a rodeo when their car was struck by a bus, killing everyone else in the vehicle and leaving Jones as the only survivor.
The trauma from this event was so intense that he chose never to drive, citing the accident as the reason he avoided getting behind the wheel for the rest of his life. This experience marked a profound turning point for him, shaping his approach to life and contributing to his legendary resilience and focus on his career.
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Picasso Was His Neighbor and “Taught” Him How to Pay a Bill
In the late 1950s, Quincy moved to Paris to study music theory and classical composition with Nadia Boulanger, who taught many famous composers and performers of the 20th century. During the French period, he lived right across the street from Picasso.
In his autobiography Q, Jones tells a story of being in a restaurant one day with Picasso. They both ordered and enjoyed a sole meunière, one of Jones’s favorite dishes of all time from France. When Picasso was done with his fish, he pushed the plate of bones into a window to dry for a bit, then carefully arranged them on his plate and drew on them with markers. The result was a neat little Picasso design. When the waiter came for the check, Picasso gave the plate of decorated fish bones instead of cash; that was how he paid his bills. By the next day, the bones were on the restaurant’s wall.
His Music was the First to Be Played on the Moon
As an arranger, Quincy was behind some of the most iconic hits of the Sixties – among them “Soul Bossa Nova” (the Austin Powers theme tune) and Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party.” However, one collaboration truly went into orbit. In 1964, Frank Sinatra called Jones, asking if he would work with him as an arranger. The two had already worked together, and with the support of the Count Basie Band, they released It Might as Well Be Swing, which featured the classic “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Five years later, during the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts took a small tape recorder on the space shuttle. Although the tape’s primary and more common purpose was to enable space travelers to log mission notes verbally, they often used the equipment to play their favorite songs. And that’s how, from more than 150,000 miles away, “Fly Me to the Moon” ended up being played by the second man to set out on the lunar surface, Buzz Aldrin.
He Attended His Own Memorial Service
In 1974, Jones suffered from a pair of brain aneurysms, and the prognosis was pretty grim. In his autobiography, he wrote that doctors gave him only a 1% chance of surviving the surgery. Since it looked like he might not have much time left, his family and friends went ahead and started arranging a memorial service.
Although Jones was in poor health, he recovered well enough to convince his neurologist to let him attend the service, held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The doctor was worried that Jones’ health might suffer if he became too emotional during the service, so he sat next to him throughout the ceremony. He made it, even though it was not an easy task. In fact, Jones later told Newsweek that staying calm “was hard to do with Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan, and Sidney Poitier singing your praises.”
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There Was Something He Didn’t Like About Michael Jackson
Perhaps you might know this: Quincy Jones was the architect behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982), the best-selling album in history with an estimated 70 million copies sold worldwide. Thriller was only the second part of a trilogy that started in 1979 with Off the Wall and went on until 1987 with Bad. Producing Michael Jackson’s albums not only propelled the King of Pop’s career but also established Jones as one of the most influential producers in the music industry.
While the collaboration birthed these beloved records, there is one thing Jones didn’t love about Jackson: his ever-present menagerie. Bubbles the Chimp accompanied the pop star during his ‘Bad’ world tour and often escorted him to awards ceremonies; he had even learned how to moonwalk. Despite Bubbles’ fame, few people were ever aware of Jackson’s other animal buddy: a large boa constrictor named Muscles. In 2009, Jones told Details that Jackson would often bring the snake into the studio and let it wrap itself around the producer’s leg and slither across his console. “I was never comfortable with that,” as Jones briefly put it.
Social Activism Went Hand-in-Hand With His Music
Quincy Jones’s dedication to social and cultural causes started in the 1960s, a decade that also marked his rise as one of the first African American executives of a major US record label, becoming vice-president of Mercury Records in 1964 at just 28 years old. During this time, he backed Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. He continued to be actively involved in social and political advocacy over the next sixty years, particularly in support of African American music and culture, always espousing cultural causes, including upholding social justice and ending poverty.
In addition to advocating for creating a U.S. Secretary of Culture position, he supported groups like GLAAD and People United to Save Humanity; founded the Listen Up Foundation, which gives opportunities to youth; and developed the Quincy Jones Musiq Consortium to make music education more accessible for children.
Perhaps his most famous humanitarian contribution was co-organizing and producing the 1985 charity single “We Are the World,” for African famine relief, which showed his lifelong commitment to making music a force for positive change. The song has since impressively raised over $80 million for humanitarian efforts.
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Finding Solace on Marlon Brando’s Polynesian Island and His Connection with Tupac
After the success of “We Are the World” in 1985 and writing the soundtrack for Spielberg’s The Color Purple in 1986, it seemed as if Quincy Jones was on a downward spiral. Despite having a strong score, The Color Purple ended up tying with Herbert Ross’s The Turning Point (1977) for obtaining the most Oscar nominations (11) without a single win.
That disappointment coincided with a rough time in his personal life: his marriage to Peggy Lipton was a mess and he suffered a breakdown. If that were not enough, Peggy’s mother died during this time and Jones became addicted to the sleeping pill Halcion. Notably, he took a long-month trip to a group of islands in Tahiti owned by Marlon Brando (purchased when he had filmed The Mutiny of the Bounty), which helped him to recover.
Jones and Lipton eventually divorced in 1990 after 15 years of marriage but remained close. They had two daughters: Rashida, known for her acting roles in shows like Parks and Recreation and The Office, and Kidada, who was dating Tupac Shakur at the time of the rapper’s tragic death in 1996.
He Helped Shape the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Jones composed more than 50 film and TV show scores, including those for The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, In Cold Blood, The Italian Job, The Wiz, and The Color Purple. Among his many accomplishments, Jones was also instrumental in bringing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to life.
The show was originally conceived by Benny Medina, inspired by his experiences growing up as a Black teenager living with a wealthy White family. Medina teamed up with Quincy Jones, who played a key role in getting the show greenlit. It was actually during a party at Jones’ home in December 1989 that the idea for Will Smith to star in the sitcom came to fruition. Smith, then a successful rapper known for his work with DJ Jazzy Jeff, had no acting experience but was persuaded to audition for the role on the spot; the rest is TV history.
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His Commitment to Hip Hop
In the 90s, Quincy Jones founded Vibe magazine, believing that it would be to hip hop what Rolling Stone was to rock and DownBeat was to jazz. When the genre was still underground, he was among those who first backed its artistic legitimacy, recognizing its roots in jazz and viewing it as a logical progression of bebop’s inventive lyrics and intricate rhythms. “There’s a strong kinship between hip-hop and bebop,” he said in the documentary Quincy. “I could feel it, and that’s why I tried the fusion of the two—it was so natural.”
In 1989, Jones’s impact on hip-hop reached new heights with Back on the Block, which took home an astounding seven Grammy Awards. The album featured artists from different genres, including some hip-hop pioneers of that time, such as Kool Moe Dee, Ice-T, Melle Mel, and Big Daddy Kane, demonstrating his dedication to pushing artistic boundaries and bridging musical worlds.
The impact of Jones resonated much louder and deeper through the number of artists that have sampled his music, which to date stands at more than 3,500 samples. Many of these have become iconic hip-hop anthems of the 1990s, including “Passin’ Me By” by The Pharcyde, “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” by Nas, and “Shook Ones Part II” by Mobb Deep.
Quincy Jones is a Legend Within the Music Industry…
He has touched so many aspects of culture, music and society. From having his music played on the moon to being the producer of the iconic Thriller, this beloved man will be remembered for being a funky, one-of-a-kind, and revolutionary artist who imbued everything he touched with his incomparable musical sensibilities. At the age of ninety-one, Mr. Jones took his final breath, and when reminiscing on his life, it was nothing short of breathtaking. In loving memory of Quincy Jones.
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