Long before I embarked on a long and often frustrating part-time career as a mobile and club DJ, the music of Quincy Jones was a large part of my life, even if I didn’t realize it at first.  Many of us were unaware of his influence on the sounds we heard as young people, from the soundtracks to Sanford & Son and Ironside to the Roots miniseries.  We all knew about his genius in helming our introduction to The Brothers Johnson (Look Out for #1, Right On Time), the breakout albums Off The Wall (1979), Thriller (1982) and Bad (1987) for Michael Jackson and the We Are The World collaboration that spawned a number of similar collaborative efforts from R&B, Hip Hop, Pop and even Country artists, but fewer of us knew about his work with artists like Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington.  More of us got to know his music from his own releases such as Sounds and Stuff Like That, The Dude and Back On The Block, but he already had a massive discography by then, even of his “solo” albums.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) joined the Honored Ancestors at the age of 91.  Those of us who grew up on his music will remember him as “The Dude”, from his 1981 album of the same name.

No tribute I could write would do justice to the mountain of work he produced, and it would probably take far too long to compose such a tribute.  I will settle, at this time, for a list of some of his accomplishments, along with the links to more information.  The collaborative open-source online encyclopedia Wikipedia has a decent summary of his life, music, activism and accomplishments at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Jones.

Quincy Jones’s Discography
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Jones_production_discography)

Albums (Partial List)
Sounds and Stuff Like That
Mellow Madness
Roots Soundtrack
I Heard That!!
Back On The Block
The Dude
Q’s Jook Joint

Work as a Producer (A Very Much Partial List)
Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and Thriller albums
The Brothers Johnson
Frank Sinatra
We Are The World

Collaborations
Cannonball Adderly
Herb Alpert
Ray Anthony
Herb Alpert
Harry Arnold
Patti Austin
Count Basie
Tony Bennett
Louis Armstrong
Brook Benton
Diahn Carroll
Betty Carter
Ray Charles
Art Farmer
Sammy Davis Jr.
Billy Eckstine
Ella Fitzgerald
Aretha Franklin
Lena Horne
Donny Hathaway
James Ingram
Bob James
Little Richard
Peggy Lee
Rufus & Chaka Khan
Sarah Vaughan
Dinah Washington

Television Soundtracks
(https://www.billboard.com/lists/quincy-jones-film-tv-scores-best)
In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
The Italian Job (1967)
The Getaway (1972)
Ironside (1967)
The Pawnbroker (1964)
Sanford & Son (1973)
The Color Purple (1985)
In Cold Blood (1967)
The Roots Soundtrack (1977)

Rest in Power, New Ancestor Quincy Jones.  Your immense contributions to Afrikan American culture, Pan Afrikan culture and the musical soundtrack of our lives will resonate long after your time here on earth.  Your musical notes will continue to ring in our ears and in our collective consciousness, and we will be all the better for it.