Quincy Jones: The Man Who Had His Hand On Everything Entertainment

News of the death of music legend, Quincy Jones II hit the airwaves on November 3, 2024. It felt surreal, because as at the last few months, the man as netizens have taken to describe him, “has been busy (in the last decades putting everyone’s business out there”. He died at the age of 91.

To millennials who grew up in the late 80s and 90s listening to Michael Jackson’s songs, the name Quincy Jones II is not one that would make an impression. At least not to those interested in dancing or rocking out to music rather music arrangement and composition.

Certainly, ‘We Are The World’, a global hit – initiated by American actor and singer Harry Belafonte to provide aid for Africa, was arranged and produced by Quincy Jones in 1985. As at the time the song was published, the focus of viewers has been on the 46 artistes including the song’s writers Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.

It wasn’t later down the years of watching Grammys award videos on the audio-visual time machine (YouTube) and hearing Jackson give accolades to his albums’ composer and producer (‘Off The Wall’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Bad’) – that Jones came into focus for me.

Jones and Jackson fallout post the ‘Bad’ album have seen the former spewing very harsh and criticizing comments which the latter, deceased, is not available to defend.

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But to give the man his due, though working with Michael Jackson blew both their names to stratospheric (global) fame, Jones who started out from a pianist to trumpeter, and from playing with big band (with Lionel Hampton), where he finetuned his composition skills to begin working with Jazz, Swing and Bebop artistes as Charly ‘Bird’ Yard, Count Bassie, Dixie Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra – who opened doors for him to network with other artistes in the early 1960s, among others.

But he wasn’t just involved in music composition and production, he was into film scoring and film production. His first venture into film scoring was for the 1954 film The Pawn Broker. He would go on to compose for films ‘In Cold Blood’, ‘In The Heat of the Night’, ‘They Call Him Mr Tibbs’ in the late 60s and 70s. However, it was his scoring for the global hit African American television series ‘Roots’, that brought Jones fame in this genre of entertainment.

He would eventually venture into film and television production, with the film, ‘The Colour Purple’, and the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

In his later career (from the 1990s to 2020s) he worked with artistes as Amy Winehouse, Dr Dre, The Weeknd, Harry Styles (in the show Harry House of Style), Ice T among others. And he has 28 Grammy Awards, including a Legend Award from the Emmys, Tonys, and Oscars in 1992.

As a ladies’ man, Jones was married to three women – Jeri Caldwell (1957-1966), Ulla Jones (1967-1974) and Peggy Lipton (1974-1990). They both gave birth to his seven legitimate children including – Rashida and Kidada Jones, the daughters of Peggy Lipton; music producer – Qunicy Jones III, Jolie Jones Levine – daughter of Jeri Caldwell; Kenya Kinski-Jones, Martina Jones and Rachael Jones.