He produced Michael Jackson’s smash album “Thriller,” as well as Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of “The Color Purple” and the NBC sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — projects that helped cement his legacy as a hitmaker and media mogul. .

Jones has received numerous awards and honors, including recognition in the John F. Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2010, and induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2021, he joined joining James Brown and Otis Redding as one of the first three “foundational inductees” of the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame in Atlanta.

“A master inventor of musical hybrids, he has blended pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling fusions, crossing virtually every medium, including records, live performances, films and television,” Obama said in his comments.

Jones won 28 Grammys, putting him second on the all-time winners list. He received an Emmy in 1977 for writing the theme for the first episode of the miniseries “Roots” and later received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars in 1994.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933, the son of Quincy Delight Jones, a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter, and Sarah Frances, a bank officer and apartment complex manager.

Jones was first exposed to music by his mother, who sang religious songs. Later she had a schizophrenic breakdown; Jones’ parents eventually divorced and his father remarried.

In the early 1940s, Jones and his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, where he studied trumpet and worked with an aspiring pianist/singer named Ray Charles, who reportedly helped convince Jones to pursue his interest in musicals. art.

Jones studied briefly at the eminent Schillinger House (now known as the Berklee College of Music) in Boston in the 1950s. He then began touring with jazz great Lionel Hampton as a trumpeter and arranger.