MARIA BASTONE-AFP
Quincy Jones, who died at the age of 91, was a jazzman, composer, and tastemaker whose studio chops and arranging prowess connected the dots between the 20th-century constellation of stars.
From Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, jazz to hip-hop, Jones tracked the ever-fluctuating pulse of pop over his seven-decade-plus career -- most often manipulating the beat himself.
Gregarious and candid with a mischievous smirk, Jones' life itself embodied the course of music history: He was teenage buddies with Ray Charles, musical director for Dizzy Gillespie, arranger for Ella Fitzgerald, and the ringleader behind Miles Davis' last major performance, which became the live album "Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux."
The child of Chicago's south side produced everyone from Aretha Franklin to Celine Dion and triggered a cultural earthquake by launching the solo career of one young Jackson—a musical marriage that produced "Thriller" and changed pop forever.
He and his brother Lloyd lived with their grandmother, a former slave, in Louisville, Kentucky, during which time he recalls eating pan-fried rats.
As a pre-teen, Jones returned to Chicago to live with their father, who did carpentry for the mob.
"I wanted to be a gangster until I was 11," Jones said in the 2018 Netflix documentary on his illustrious career, directed by his daughter, actress Rashida Jones.
"You want to be what you see, and that's all we ever saw."
The elder Jones moved the two boys to Seattle, where Quincy discovered a knack for the piano at a recreation centre --, and history began.
"I'd found another mother," he wrote in his 2001 autobiography.
He played second trumpet on Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel", teaming with Gillespie for several years before moving to Paris in 1957, where he studied under the legendary composer Nadia Boulanger.
He traversed Europe with several jazz orchestras but began to realize that a name and talent did not always translate into money.
Finding himself in deep debt, Jones joined the business side of music, getting a job at Mercury Records, where he eventually rose to vice president.
He wrote his hits, like the addictively cacophonous "Soul Bossa Nova", while arranging at a breathless pace for dozens of stars across the industry.
The musician began working with Sinatra, for whom he arranged the most famous version of the oft-covered "Fly Me To The Moon." He forged a musical and personal relationship with the crooner that would continue until the singer's death.
As much hype master as an orchestral wunderkind, Jones had a nose for talent and launched star after star, crafting hit after hit.
While producing the soundtrack for the musical The Wiz, starring Diana Ross and Jackson, Jones started the partnership that would birth "Thriller," which is thought to be the industry's best-selling album.
He introduced Oprah Winfrey to the masses, taking the Chicago talk show host to the silver screen by connecting her to Steven Spielberg, who cast her in his film "The Color Purple". She scored an Oscar nomination for the role.
He backed Martin Luther King Jr and several humanitarian causes, particularly in Africa.
In 1985, Jones gathered dozens of pop stars to sing the now-classic "We Are the World" to raise money for the Ethiopian famine crisis.
A regular on the glitterati's party circuit who knew everybody who was anybody, Jones even said he was meant to have attended Sharon Tate's dinner party where The Manson Family carried out its brutal murders -- but forgot.
"It's just unbelievable, man," he told GQ 2018 of his fortunate slip. "Life is a trip."
He had three wives: the actors Jeri Caldwell and Peggy Lipton and Ulla Andersson, a Swedish actor and former model. He fathered seven children, all girls but one, with five different women.
In 2018, when Jones was 84, he told GQ he maintained 22 girlfriends everywhere from Sao Paulo to Shanghai.
He suffered several health scares, including a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 1974, after which he stopped playing the trumpet for fear the pressure would unfasten the staples in his brain.
Jones said he suffered a "nervous breakdown" in 1986 from overworking himself, and in 2015, he went into a diabetic coma and had a massive blood clot, prompting him to give up alcohol.
Among entertainment's most decorated figures, Jones has virtually every major lifetime achievement award, including 28 Grammy Awards.
He's also won an Emmy, a Tony, and an honorary Oscar.
In her documentary, his daughter Rashida asked Jones how he kept his ego in check while living such a remarkable life.
© Agence France-Presse
