Quincy Jones, musical maestro and titan of the entertainment industry, has died at the age of 91

He produced Michael Jackson's hit album Thriller, as well as Steven Spielberg's adaptation of The Color Purple and the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – projects that helped cement his legacy as a hitmaker and media mogul.

Jones has received numerous honors and awards, including recognition at the John F. Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2010, and induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. In In 2021, he joined James Brown and Otis Redding as one of the first three “founding inductees” of the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame in Atlanta.

“A masterful inventor of musical hybrids, he has blended pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling fusions using virtually every medium, including records, live performances, films and television,” Obama said in his remarks.

Jones won 28 Grammys, This puts him in second place on the all-time winners list. He won an Emmy in 1977 for writing the theme for the first episode of the miniseries “Roots” and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1994 Academy Awards.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago to Quincy Delight Jones, a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter, and Sarah Frances, a bank teller and apartment complex manager.

Jones was first exposed to music through his mother, who sang religious songs. She later suffered a schizophrenic breakdown; Jones' parents eventually divorced and his father remarried.

In the early 1940s, Jones and his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, where he studied trumpet and worked with a young pianist/singer named Ray Charles, who is said to have helped Jones continue his interest in the musical arts.

Jones studied briefly at the prestigious Schillinger House (now known as Berklee College of Music) in Boston in the 1950s. He then began touring as a trumpeter and arranger with jazz great Lionel Hampton.