Quincy Jones

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois on March 14, 1933, the elder of two sons to Sarah Frances (née Wells; died 1999), a bank officer and apartment complex manager, and Quincy Delight Jones, a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter from Kentucky.

Jones's paternal grandmother was an ex-slave from Louisville, and Jones later discovered that his paternal grandfather was Welsh.

In 1943, the family moved to Bremerton, Washington, Jones's father took a wartime job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

After the war, the family moved to Seattle, where Jones attended Garfield High School and developed his skills as a trumpeter and arranger.

His classmates included Charles Taylor, who played saxophone and whose mother, Evelyn Bundy, was one of Seattle's first society jazz bandleaders.

Jones and Taylor began playing music together, and at the age of fourteen, they played with a National Reserve band.

Jones said he acquired more experience with music growing up in a smaller city due to the lack of competition.

At age 14, Jones introduced himself to 16-year-old Ray Charles after watching him play at the Black Elks Club.

Jones cites Charles as an early inspiration for his own music career, noting that Charles overcame his blindness to achieve his musical goals.

He credited his father's sturdy work ethic with giving him the means to proceed and his loving strength with holding the family together.

Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores.

He moved easily between genres, producing pop hit records for Lesley Gore in the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.

Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year.

In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning.

In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards.

With the help of the author Alex Haley in 1972 and Latter-day Saint researchers in Salt Lake City, Jones discovered that one of his mother's ancestors was James Lanier, a relative of poet Sidney Lanier.

Jones said, "He had a baby with my great-grandmother [a slave], and my grandmother was born there [on a plantation in Kentucky]. We traced this all the way back to the Laniers, the same family as Tennessee Williams."

Learning that the Lanier immigrant ancestors were French Huguenots who had court musicians among their ancestors, Jones attributed some of his musicianship to them.

Jones produced three of the most successful albums by pop star Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987).

In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.

His career spans over 70 years, with 28 Grammy Awards won out of 80 nominations, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.

In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each.

Jones had a younger brother, Lloyd, who was an engineer for the Seattle television station KOMO-TV until his death in 1998.

Jones was introduced to music by his mother, who always sang religious songs, and next-door neighbor Lucy Jackson.

When Jones was five or six, Jackson played stride piano next door, and he would listen through the walls.

Jackson recalled that after he heard her one-day, she could not get him off her piano.

When Jones was young, his mother had a schizophrenic breakdown and was sent to a mental institution.

His father divorced her and married Elvera Jones, who already had three children of her own: Waymond, Theresa, and Katherine.

Elvera and Quincy Sr. later had three children together: Jeanette, Margie, and Richard.

For the 2006 PBS television program African American Lives, Jones had his DNA tested, and genealogists researched his family history again.

His DNA revealed he is mostly African, but also has 34% European ancestry on both sides of his family.

Research showed that he has English, French, Italian, and Welsh ancestry through his father.

His mother's side is of West and Central African descent, specifically the Tikar people of Cameroon.

His mother also had European ancestry, including Lanier male ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, making him eligible for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Among his ancestors is Betty Washington Lewis, a sister of president George Washington.

Jones's family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration.

In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.