JONES, Quincy Delight, Jr.

(b. 14 March 1933 in Chicago, Illinois), prolific composer, arranger, musician, producer, businessman, and winner of twenty-five Grammy Awards for his motion picture soundtracks and recordings.

Jones's father, Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., was a carpenter. At the time Jones was born, his father worked as a carpenter for the Jones Boys, an African-American gang that controlled much of South Chicago. His mother, Sarah, was mentally ill and prone to violent outbursts; in 1941 she was sent to Mantina State Hospital in Kankakee, Illinois, from which she often escaped. Jones and his younger brother, Lloyd, were sent to live with their maternal grandmother in Kentucky, whose home had no electricity and where meals often consisted of fried rats caught on the banks of a nearby river.

In 1943 their father gathered the boys up and settled with them in Bremerton, Washington, a suburb of Seattle; he had landed a job as a carpenter in the Puget Sound naval shipyard. After divorcing their mother, Jones's father married Elvera Miller, who already had three children of her own, and they had three more children. Miller was cruel to Jones and his brother, often humiliating them. It was in 1943 that Jones took an interest in music and began to play the trumpet. When he was fourteen years old, Jones met the "soul" musician Ray Charles, who was two years older than Jones and already living on his own, supporting himself mainly by playing jazz. Jones peppered him with questions about composing and arranging music, which Charles answered patiently. They became lifelong friends.

Jones attended Garfield High School, where he met his first wife, Jeri Caldwell. They tried to get married when she was eighteen and he was nineteen, but their marriage papers were deemed improper when government clerks discovered that Caldwell, who was white, was marrying a black man. They lived together as man and wife and had the first of their two children, until they were able to make their marriage official in 1956. When Jones graduated from high school, he received a music scholarship to Seattle University's music program, but he did not find the school challenging enough and applied to a better school, Schillinger House (later renamed Berklee College of Music) in Boston, on a scholarship.

At the prestigious Berklee, he learned classical music composition, helping him make music for large bands and orchestras. In 1957 he went on a U.S. government– sponsored goodwill overseas circuit with the jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and in 1957 he toured Europe with the legendary vibraphone player Lionel Hampton's band, in both cases serving as a trumpet player and music arranger. From 1959 to 1960, Jones arranged the music for Harold Arlen's blues opera Free and Easy, which died for lack of funding in France. Jones had put together a fine orchestra, so when the show closed in February 1960, he persuaded the band to stay in Europe and barnstorm. He took on the responsibilities of finding gigs for the band and keeping track of their money. Traveling with the band were the families of the musicians and singers, making the job of keeping track of everyone, especially while traveling by train, very difficult. The stress Jones endured was severe, but from 1960 to 1961, he learned about the business end of music—how to negotiate deals and how to lead. Even though the band was admired by critics and jazz fans, it did not make enough money to cover expenses.

In 1961 Jones accepted a job offer from Irving Green, the president of Mercury Records, becoming a music director for Mercury's studio. In 1963 he received his first Grammy (an annual award given by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) for best instrumental arrangement for "I Can't Stop Loving You," performed by the jazz pianist Count Basie. In 1964 Green made Jones the vice president of Mercury Records, with responsibilities in all aspects of the recording business. He became the first African-American executive in a recording company owned by whites. That year he and Jeri separated; they divorced in 1966. In 1963 Jones wrote his first motion picture sound-track for the Swedish film Pojken i Trader (The Boy in the Tree). The producer Sidney Lumet was impressed by Jones's work and invited him to write the soundtrack for The Pawnbroker (1965), an opportunity that greatly enhanced his reputation among moviemakers. He remembered writing the musical score in two months and then recording it in two days.

In 1964 Jones formed a friendship with the singer Frank Sinatra, with whom he had worked on arrangements for Sinatra's albums. Jones also helped arrange the music for Sinatra's appearances in Las Vegas. Sinatra hired bodyguards for each band member; Jones's bodyguard was from Yugoslavia and taught Jones to speak Serbo-Croatian. He wrote the score for the 1966 motion picture The Slender Thread, and then work began pouring in. Soon Jones was constantly writing, not only motion picture scores but also music for television shows. In 1968 he was offered a contract for $50,000 per year for twenty years to remain with Mercury Records, but Jones turned the offer down and resigned from the company to strike out on his own. In the late 1960s, he married his second wife, Ulla Anderson, with whom he had two children. They soon divorced.

Jones wrote musical scores for the motion pictures In the Heat of the Night and In Cold Blood, both released in 1967. He received an Academy Award for best original music score for In Cold Blood, and he received a nomination for best original song for the motion picture Banning. It was his score for In Cold Blood that made him famous; people outside the entertainment business began remembering his name. In 1967 he agreed to write the music for the television series Ironside; he labored to write original music for each episode. In 1968 he fell ill with appendicitis, narrowly receiving treatment in time.

In 1969 Jones won a Grammy for best instrumental jazz performance, large group or soloist with large group, for his tune "Walking in Space." By then he had found that constantly writing motion picture scores, television scores, and music for bands was too much of a strain on him, so he eased away from writing scores, focusing more on the recording business. He continued to write television scores and motion picture scores on occasion; for instance, for the 1977 miniseries Roots and for the 1985 motion picture The Color Purple.

In 1974 Jones married again, to the actress Peggy Lipton; they had two children and divorced in 1990. The same year that he married Lipton, Jones suffered two brain aneurysms (burst blood vessels in the brain) and underwent surgery that left him with metal plates in his skull; six months after lifesaving surgery, he returned to work. After his divorce from Lipton, he went on to have a live-in relationship in the mid-1990s with the actress Nastassja Kinski, with whom he had his seventh child. His interests turned toward business, and he founded Qwest, his own record label, and invested in cable television and television stations, becoming very wealthy.

The Autobiography of Quincy Jones (2001), an entertaining narrative, is frankly told and includes chapters about Jones by people who knew him. The best complete biography is Raymond Horricks, Quincy Jones (1985). Lee Hill Kavanaugh, Quincy Jones: Musician, Composer, Producer (1998), leans toward a teenage audience.

Kirk H. Beetz