Quincy Delight Jones was just 14 years old when he introduced himself to Ray Charles.  Though the pianist-singer was just two years older, he was already an inspiration to the younger musician.  Charles had the gift of synthesizing the various strains of music - jazz, folk, country, pop, soul, rhythm and blues, and gospel, among them - into a sound both wholly new and wholly American.  Jones was struck by how Charles overcame adversity, and their shared ethos became one which shaped young Quincy's future - and that of popular music itself.  He wrote in 2020, "We met right after I moved to Seattle as a kid & I quickly learned that he never allowed his limitations to be limitations. A titan of a musician...and he would tell me that music was a gigantic gumbo to be stirred, not something to be separated out into different bags. Good music is GOOD music! It was one of the most important lessons I ever had the pleasure of learning...Seeing Ray's outlook made me realize that it's only when we stop confining ourselves to the restrictions that categories place on our creativity, that we can fully unlock the power of music in its purest form."  With Jones' passing yesterday at the age of 91, an era has come to a close.  He left an indelible stamp on music, television, film, stage, print media, and beyond, ensuring that his influence remains as powerful as ever.

Quincy Jones left his studies at the prestigious Berklee College of Music to accept an invitation to join bandleader-vibraphonist Lionel Hampton on the road as a trumpeter, pianist, and arranger.  (He had been hired by Hampton years earlier at age 15 but was summarily dismissed by Hampton's wife, who felt he needed to finish his schooling.)  He credited his travels with the Hampton band throughout Europe as deepening his perspective on the American racial divide, and he would spend the rest of his life uniting people through song.  His early C.V. augured for the broad eclecticism of his future work: playing trumpet behind Elvis Presley for CBS Television, conducting for Dizzy Gillespie, studying with Nadia Boulanger, collaborating with Harold Arlen, and forming his own big band.

In a rarity for a black musician, he was tapped for key staff positions at Barclay Records in France and then Mercury Records stateside.  At the latter, he signed the likes of Gerry Mulligan and Shirley Horn but recognized the potential of the burgeoning youth pop market.  He shepherded the career of Lesley Gore, producing her chart-topping "It's My Party."  Mercury responded by promoting Jones to Vice President in 1964, the first time a black man held that title at any white-owned record label.  The corporate world didn't suit him, though - not when he had film soundtracks to write!  Director Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1964) would become the first of some 40 films Jones would score.  (That's not counting television shows such as Sanford and Son for which Jones would provide the themes or his contributions to the groundbreaking miniseries Roots.)  The same year, he continued his friendship and association with Frank Sinatra, which had begun at a 1958 concert, when the future Chairman invited him to arrange and conduct It Might as Well Be Swing, a collaborative album with Count Basie.  Sinatra bestowed the nickname "Q" upon Jones - one which would stick with him for the rest of his life.  It wasn't all Sinatra gave him. "He left me his ring," Q remembered in 2015.  "I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don't need a passport. I just flash my ring."  The close friendship between these consummate musicians and passionate civil rights crusaders would endure for the rest of both their lives.  Sinatra at the Sands, the 1966 live album arranged and conducted by Jones, remains one of the undisputed high points of the Sinatra discography.

Even as his arrangements enlivened albums by Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald, Jones resumed his own recording career.  He relaunched it at the artist-focused A&M Records, bringing a contemporary vibe and unerring musicianship to jazz, funk, and R&B grooves on such albums as Walking in Space, Smackwater Jack, Body Heat, and The Dude.  He remained busy in film and television and also lent his talents to other artists, such as The Brothers Johnson, during this period.  Although he remained on A&M through 1981, he formed his own Qwest label and production company in 1980, championing such talents as George Benson and Patti Austin.

When old friend Sidney Lumet signed on to direct a big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical The Wiz, there was only one choice to transform William F. Brown's stage score into a widescreen fantasia.  Jones was more than up to the task, fusing a sizzling theatricality with a powerful sense of drama through a soul-funk-disco lens.  While working on The Wiz, Jones first worked with the artist with whom his name became synonymous: that film's Scarecrow, Michael Jackson.  Their partnership would yield three albums - Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987) - whose collective sales amount to roughly 46 million in the United States alone, with Thriller comfortably ensconced as the best-selling album of all time.  What can be said about Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson that hasn't been said before?  They brought out the best in one another, producing a trilogy of albums that are as fresh today as the day they were released due to that patented fusion of disparate musical elements.  In Jackson, Jones met an innovator worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as Sinatra, and one whose voice captured the imagination of the world.  Their albums together weren't "mere" pop albums, or soul albums, or dance albums, or R&B albums.  They were all of those things, and something else entirely.  The Jones/Jackson team would also yield the E.T. audiobook, music for Disney's Captain EO, and the once-in-a-lifetime charity single "We Are the World."  The four-time Grammy-winning song became the music industry's first-ever multi-platinum single.

Jones was instrumental in bringing Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple to both screen and stage; he co-produced and scored director Steven Spielberg's 1985 film version and co-produced the Broadway musical version's 2005 and 2015 stagings.  His affiliation with the material came full circle in 2023 when he returned to co-produce the film adaptation of the musical.

Even as his music branched out into directions that would have once been unthinkable, he remained true to his jazz roots.  In 1991, he convinced another iconoclast and trailblazer, Miles Davis, to once again play the music which made his famous.  He reunited Davis with the arrangements of the late Gil Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival; as Davis died just three months later, it was a remarkable "last hurrah" for the trumpet titan.

Along the way, Jones gave further voice to black culture when he helped start the hip-hop-focused magazine Vibe; he also co-published Spin and Blaze.  He encouraged young musicians, many of whom had sampled his classic recordings and fused them into new hip-hop compositions.  Chief among these was Tupac Shakur, whose chart-topping "How Do U Want It" incorporated Q's "Body Heat."

When Q called, everyone answered.  His 1991 album Back on the Block could have been a grand send-off, but Jones had no desire to retire.  The LP welcomed such artists as Ice-T, Ella Fitzgerald, Dionne Warwick, Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, Luther Vandross, Sarah Vaughan, Barry White, Dizzy Gillespie, Al B. Sure!, El DeBarge, and others.  He never stopped answering others' calls, too.  In 2020, he guest-starred in a music video for Travis Scott and Young Thug, and in 2022, he joined The Weeknd to perform the monologue in "A Tale by Quincy."

In 1997, Jones scored an unexpected hit when his whimsical 1962 instrumental "Soul Bossa Nova" - a truly groovy composition, recorded before the word was in common use - was selected as the theme to Mike Myers' International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers.  Once again, Quincy Jones had proven just how ahead of his time he was.

The life of Quincy Jones has been told in countless box sets, documentaries, books, and beyond.  The accolades tell an extraordinary story, too: 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 wins, a Grammy Legend Award, seven Academy Award nominations, The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, one Emmy Award, one Tony Award.  But he will be remembered most for the music, ever transporting: "Fly Me to the Moon."  "Thriller."  "Billie Jean."  "We Are the World."  "Just Once."  "It's My Party."  "One Mint Julep."  Though his language was famously colorful and his recollections almost too candid, he never lost sight of his role as a mentor and the importance of supporting the next generation.  In a 2019 GQ interview, he beamed of the young jazz musicians coming up, "These motherfuckers are so talented. I just love seeing young people who got their shit together, man. They're taking music back where it belongs. Because it's not going anywhere right now. It's champagne-selling noise."  Forget the champagne.  The joyful noise created by Quincy Jones over 70 years will continue to stir the soul and spark the imagination...ever-thrilling, indeed.