S Poddar
Legendary music producer Quincy Jones, a 28-time Grammy winner, passed away on Sunday at 91 years old. Confirming that Jones had passed away Nov. 3 at his Bel Air, Los Angeles residence surrounded by family was his publicist.
Jones was one of the biggest icons in the music world and shaped pop culture, influencing the work of greats such as Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles. In many ways, his success came from his work with Jackson: Jones produced Michael Jackson’s 1982 Thriller, an album that is the highest-selling album of all time and forever changed the sounds of pop music. Another feather in his cap is that he composed the scores of In Cold Blood in 1967 and The Color Purple in 1985. He also managed to make a mark on television by being an executive producer for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a program that catapulted Will Smith to stardom.
He dies, leaving behind a huge fortune of revenues from the record sales, royalties, and multimedia ventures and real estate. This enormous estate he leaves behind for his seven children, including actress Rashida Jones.
Jones began playing in jazz bands until he experienced the turning point when Irving Green, president of Mercury Records, loaned him personally and appointed him vice president, thus becoming the first African American vice president in history. This exposure catapulted him from being just an artist to a producer and exposed him to so many famous musicians.
They both were close friends by then after making the first working contact with Sinatra in 1958. On his death in 1998, he had bequeathed Jones a ring that he used to carry with the Sinatra family crest on it originating from Sicily. Later, in the year 2016, Jones while sharing a Facebook post featured an image of the said ring and added a note under it stating, “This right here is the ring that bears Frank Sinatra’s family crest from Sicily.”. Francis wore it for 40 years, left it to me when he passed, and I wear it every single day. It’s one of my most prized possessions, because it has and will continue to represent our everlasting friendship. Another ring with the same crest, which Sinatra gave to Tony Bennett, sold for $63,500 at auction this year. According to Julien’s Auctions, Sinatra had ordered 12 gold pinky rings with his family’s crowned lion crest on each one for close friends and family members.
Jones wrote music for several films in the 1960s. For In Cold Blood, he received his first Oscar nomination. The film grossed $13 million in the U.S. alone when it was released, which is around $122.5 million today. He went on to have a breakthrough in his career, and most of the most significant achievements occurred during the 1980s. He won rights to Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. He could finally persuade Steven Spielberg to direct it after convincing him to collaborate. The film also featured Whoopi Goldberg. Jones produced and composed the movie. It was a huge box office success, raking in approximately $98.5 million from box offices in the United States and Canada. The Color Purple also received 11 nominations for Oscars in 1986.
He was also an executive producer on the 2023 musical revival of The Color Purple, once again working with Spielberg. This one did not do nearly as well, and it grossed a paltry $67.5 million on a budget of $100 million.
It would be with Michael Jackson that Jones formed his longest-lasting partnership. He was introduced to Jackson on the set of The Wiz in 1978, and he agreed to produce Jackson’s Off the Wall album. Off the Wall, released in 1979, sold over 20 million copies around the globe. Thriller would be a massive success in the careers of the duo. It was selling more than 32 million copies within its first year after release worldwide. The record eventually skyrocketed to nearly 70 million copies worldwide.
Yet things did not exactly go as smooth for Jones with the Jackson estate. After the death of Jackson in 2009, Jones filed a lawsuit on unpaid royalties and was granted a $9.4 million judgment in 2017. However, part of this was reversed in 2020, where the court ordered Jones to pay back $6.8 million.
Undeniable influences on music, television, and film are the life and career of Jones. He is shaping pop culture in such a way that he has paved a road for generations of artists and producers to come. Through his children and the body of work he leaves behind, his legacy lives on.
