More than a unique talent, Quincy Jones changed and shaped the culture he was a part of.

Born on the South Side of Chicago on March 14, 1933, he had a rough childhood. He lost his mother to a mental institution and lived with his younger brother Lloyd with an enslaved aunt in Louisville until the father moved the siblings to be with him in Seattle.

Because his stepmother did not accept him and his brother, they were often hungry. Looking for food at a recreation center, he touched a piano and decided that music would be his life. He joined the band and learned to play several instruments, including the trumpet. At the age of 13, he convinced the great trumpeter Clark Terry, who was touring with the great Count Basie, to give him lessons. At the age of 14, he met 16-year-old RC Robinson, later known as Ray Charles.

The list of jazz greats that Jones played with as a musician and later helped guide as an arranger and producer is an encyclopedia of the genre’s biggest stars: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Betty Carter, among others. many others.

Jones received a total of 80 Grammy nominations during his lifetime, giving him the third most wins with 28. He arranged Frank Sinatra’s classic ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ with the Count Basie Orchestra, masterminded Michael Jackson’s legendary ‘Thriller’ album and performed perhaps the biggest humanitarian single of all time with “We Are the World,” which raised money for the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s.

The eighth best-selling single of all time was created by Harry Belafonte, and Jones helped perform and capture the voices of nearly 50 singers across multiple genres. Among them were greats such as Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, good friend Ray Charles, Al Jarreau and Billy Joel, along with Lionel. Richie and Jackson, who wrote it together.

The Netflix documentary ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ colorfully describes the recording and makes it clear that it was thanks to Jones that he got so many icons in the same room.

Jones’ musical contributions easily fill volumes of books. Although his footprint in film and television is not as large, the impact is no less great. He was a pioneer. Even today, black film and TV composers are rare, and in 1968 Jones broke barriers when he and songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first black Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, from “The Eyes of Love.” the film “Forbidden.” He was also nominated for Best Original Score for ‘In Cold Blood’,making him the first black American to be nominated twice in the same year.

He helmed nearly 40 projects on film and TV, including “The Color Purple,” the breakthrough film for Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, which he also produced and whose musical version earned him a Tony.

Jones’ film credits include the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” the 1969 film “The Italian Job,” the theme song to the 1970s sitcom “Sanford and Son” starring Redd Foxx, and the soundtrack for ‘The Wiz’. ‘, the beloved Black-cast version of the iconic ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

His impact was timeless: He wrote “Soul Bossa Nova” for 1964’s “The Pawnbroker,” and the song would later become the theme to Mike Myers’ “Austin Powers” ​​comedy franchise in the late 1990s.

A cultural innovator who nearly lost his life to an aneurysm in the early 1970s, Jones never rested on his laurels. Always finding a way to merge the past with the present, he embraced hip-hop music early on and was instrumental in securing hip-hop’s place in mainstream pop culture in the 1990s as co-founder of VIBE magazine and executive producer of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” starring Will Smith, and “In the House,” starring LL Cool J and Debbie Allen.

It was extremely important to Jones to give black American culture its rightful place in the overall American cultural landscape. It’s a common thread in the two films about his life, “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones,” released in 1990 and which he helmed, and the 2018 Netflix film “Quincy,” co-written and directed by his multi-hyphenated daughter, Rashida Jones.

The EGOT winner’s impact and role in shaping the next generation was enormous, Will Smith said on social media on Monday as news of Jones’ death spread. “Quincy Jones is the true definition of a mentor, a father and a friend. He pointed out the greatest parts of myself. He defended me. He fed me. He encouraged me. He inspired me. He checked on me when necessary. He let me use his wings until mine were strong enough to fly.”

Before his death at the age of 91, Jones was still actively working on his life’s mission. In 2017, he co-founded the SVOD streamer Qwest TV, which features live performances of jazz and other music genres, including hip hop and soul, often in Europe.

Most recently, he was executive director, along with Debbie Allen, on the documentary “King of Kings,” created to give a bigger stage to the extraordinary life and legacy of legendary Chicago track runner Edward Jones, for whom his father ever worked.

“I just hope that one day America will recognize what the rest of the world already knows, that our indigenous music – gospel, blues, jazz and R&B – is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy fade into oblivion,” he once said.

Jones spent his life lifting that legacy and left behind a towering legacy of his own.

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