Music producer and Ahmet Ertegun Award recipient Quincy Jones attends the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame 2013 Inductees announcement at Nokia Theatre L.A.
Kevin Winter/Getty Pictures
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Kevin Winter/Getty Pictures
Music producer and Ahmet Ertegun Award recipient Quincy Jones attends the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame 2013 Inductees announcement at Nokia Theatre L.A.
Kevin Winter/Getty Pictures
Quincy Jones, the famed music producer who helped artists dominate in style music for half a century, has died.
His publicist says he handed away peacefully at his dwelling in California. He was 91 years previous.
NPR’s Walter Ray Watson described Jones’ expertise as one which produced music that hooked ears, warmed hearts and moved ft to bounce.
Together with Michael Jackson, he broke open the pop music world with manufacturing on songs like Dangerous, Billie Jean, and Rock with You. His contributions had greater than 100 million data bought, together with Thriller, one of the best promoting album of all time.
It is perhaps laborious to think about now, however file execs doubted whether or not Quincy Jones was the proper match to provide Michael Jackson’s debut as a solo grownup artist.
An unlikely success story
Born Quincy Delight Jones Jr., he was the son of a Chicago carpenter and a housewife mom, who sang church songs at dwelling.
Jones confronted gang violence as a baby of the Nice Melancholy. And at age 10, his household moved to Seattle, the place his dad joined the warfare effort, working in a shipyard.
“Gangsters. Lot of them are gangsters. Again within the thirties, it was all I ever noticed with machine weapons,” was how he described his Chicago neighborhood rising up in a 2008 interview with NPR’s Michele Norris.
As a child, he was a ringleader of mischief. And someday with a bunch of boys, he focused a roomful of freshly baked pies at a rec middle. They broke in, ate all of the pies. Then Jones opened a door.
“And I noticed – within the shadows, I noticed a piano. Then I nearly closed the door, after which one thing deep inside me mentioned, ‘Open the door once more.’ And I went again into the room and slowly went over to that piano, and I felt the goose bumps and every little thing.”
That modified his life, he mentioned. By highschool, Jones picked up the trumpet. Quickly after, he gained a lifelong good friend in a blind 16-year-old pianist named Ray Charles.
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A musical superpower
Jones was nonetheless a teen when he was employed by legendary vibraphonist and band chief Lionel Hampton. His skills opened the door, and his abilities took him all over the place.
After producing and scouting for a number of the greatest expertise within the business, Mercury Data promoted Quincy Jones to an government, a primary for a Black man at a serious file label. His tastes and instincts led him to domesticate a number of the greatest hits and artists of the previous many years.
Hearken to the total episode of Contemplate This to listen to Watson element the extraordinary life and accomplishments of Jones.
This episode was produced by Marc Rivers and Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Patrick Jarenwattananon. Our government producer is Sami Yenigun.
