A Tribute to Quincy Delight Jones, the Pop Music King of Bel-Air

That warm, impish smile. Infectious laugh. Eyes that literally twinkled as he talked about music and life. Those were the first things that came to mind after learning of Quincy Delight Jones’ death on Nov. 3. And how lucky I was to get the chance to chat several times with someone who truly personified every sense of the word “legend.”

It just so happened that the day before Jones died, I was cleaning out some old files and came across the yellowed pages of the first interview I ever did with him when I was an editor at the trade publication Radio & Records. It was November 1984: two years after Michael Jackson’s seismic success with Thriller in 1982 and a year before pulling an epic all-nighter with Jackson, Lionel Richie and a collection of music superstars to record “We Are the World.” When I interviewed him for a special Radio & Records feature, “Master of Music,” the perpetually multitasking Jones was co-producing, with director Steven Spielberg, the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple. 

“The primary motor of pop music, as we know it today, has always been Black music,” he told me then before pulling back the curtain on his creative strategy. “The one thing I fight for is the selection of tunes,” he said. And he was way ahead of the industry’s globalization, shouting out Africa as a music “gold mine” and, in subsequent chats, South Korea and Indonesia. 

Rereading the interview all these years later, it also shows Jones was more than just a creative wunderkind. He was insatiably curious, always searching for the next. Given the advent of computers at the time, he spoke about the “archaic record distribution system,” while presciently envisioning that “it could be possible in five years for you to have no inventory in your house; no records, tapes, anything. If you had access to a satellite, a code book/catalog and a television set, you could punch up anything you wanted anytime.” 

A few weeks after that interview was published, I learned what a thoughtful and humorous person Jones was as well. One of my treasured mementos is a signed personal note card of thanks (stamped with an embossed “Q” in the upper left-hand corner): “With the great editing you did, I was made to look like I know what I’m talking about.” Such a simple but impactful gesture. 

That was just one facet of Quincy Jones. Born in Chicago and raised in Seattle, he jumpstarted his estimable legacy as a big band- and jazz-loving trumpeter who, beginning at the age of 14, played for Billie Holiday and Billy Eckstine. After a year on scholarship at the Berklee College of Music, he toured with Lionel Hampton’s band, adding “pianist” and “arranger” to his résumé. Within a few years, he was working with Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey. In 1957, he joined Mercury Records as an A&R director and later vice president, becoming the first Black senior executive at a major label. 

Best friends with Ray Charles since their teen years in Seattle (“He taught me my first music in braille”), Q — a nickname given to him by Frank Sinatra — arranged Brother Ray’s classic albums The Genius of Ray Charles and Genius + Soul = Jazz. He went on to discover and produce “It’s My Party” and other hits for early 1960s pop darling Lesley Gore, while simultaneously earning the first of his eventual 28 Grammy Awards and 80 nominations for arranging Basie’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” And there’s no forgetting Jones’ momentous collaborations with Basie and Sinatra, which produced the timeless romantic romp “Fly Me to the Moon.” 

Thanks to the initial unwavering support of actor Sidney Poitier and filmmaker Sidney Lumet, Jones racked up credits for film scores to In the Heat of the Night, The Wiz, The Italian Job and The Color Purple, as well as TV series Roots and theme songs for Ironside and Sanford and Son. Jones’ own musical output was prolific and demonstrated a rare talent for evolving with contemporary music. Signing with A&M Records in 1969, he released the Grammy-winning instrumental jazz set Walking in Space that year, which sparked further forays into jazz, funk, R&B, pop and dance through 1981, with albums such as Body Heat, I Heard That!, Sounds … and Stuff Like That!! and The Dude, the last of which introduced newcomer James Ingram (“Just Once”). 

Jones’ work with Jackson is well known, but his innate ear also brought other hit-makers to the forefront, such as George Benson, Patti Austin, Tevin Campbell and Tamia, through his Warner joint venture, Qwest Records, which he founded in 1980. 

In the latter part of his career, Jones ventured into media that explored and celebrated Black culture and music. He produced The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which made Will Smith a bankable star, and launched Vibe as both a magazine and talk show. 

After various encounters at industry events over the ensuing years, I got the chance to interview a still-indefatigable Jones — who survived two brain aneurysms in 1974 and a diabetic coma in 2015 — for Billboard during his 80th and 85th birthday celebrations in 2013 and 2018. His gait was more measured and later, he began making his rounds in a wheelchair. But his musical and entrepreneurial drive had not slowed: He established an artist management consultancy, partnered with Harman on a line of AKG headphones and squeezed in time to write his 2001 autobiography, Q. 

On both occasions, we sat in the screening room of his home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles. It was decorated with vintage posters of the films he had worked on, and its hallway walls were jam-packed with Jones-produced album covers and autographed sheet music for “We Are the World.” Display cases held his 28 Grammys. 

Having traded wine for protein-rich smoothies at this point, Jones discussed such topics as co-founding Qwest TV, the first subscription, video-on-demand service for jazz, and how music had substituted for the absence of his mother, who was hospitalized for mental illness when he was 7. It had served him well. 

Never content to stay the course, Jones kept evolving from musician, arranger, composer and producer to label owner, artist manager, mentor, business entrepreneur and global ambassador. As he declared in 1984, “If I had 200 more years, I still wouldn’t have enough time to do all the things I dream about.”

This story appears in the Nov. 16, 2024, issue of Billboard.