Quincy Jones Biography

Quincy Jones worked as an arranger, composer and producer for some of the greatest performers of swing, jazz, blues and hip-hop, from Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra to Little Richard and Michael Jackson. He won 28 Grammy Awards in a career that stretched across seven decades.

Quincy Jones was raised in Seattle, where he fell in love with music and learned to play the trumpet and other instruments. A musical prodigy, he began studies in Boston at the prestigious Schillinger House (later Berklee College of Music) in Boston in 1951. But he left to tour with the band of Lionel Hampton, later touring with Dizzy Gillespie and others. He soon gained a reputation as an arranger and composer, and by the end of the decade he was leading his own bands.

His first album under his own name, “This Is How I Feel About Jazz,” was released in 1956. Among many other musical roles, he arranged and conducted Frank Sinatra’s celebrated 1966 live album with the Count Basie band, Sinatra at the Sands.

Nicknamed “Q,” Jones eventually moved to Los Angeles and became a noted composer of film and television scores. He was especially active in the 1960s and 1970s: he composed moody, jazzy scores for films like In the Heat of the Night (1967, starring Sidney Poitier), The Anderson Tapes (1971, starring Sean Connery) and The Getaway (1972, starring Steve McQueen).

In his next incarnation, Jones became a superstar producer. He produced Michael Jackson’s biggest hit albums, including Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987), and was also the producer and conductor for the famous “We Are The World” charity single in 1985. Thriller became the best-selling album of all time; by the time of Jones’s death in 2024, it had sold 70 million copies worldwide.

Quincy Jones is also the founder of VIBE magazine and Qwest Broadcasting. He was nominated for Grammy Awards 80 times, winning 28. Quincy Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.