Quincy Jones: Nine facts about the American music producer

Quincy Jones on stage during the 53rd Montreux Jazz Festival in 2019. Photo: AFP / Fabrice Coffrini

Few people in the music world can match the accomplishments of Quincy Jones, who died at the age of 91.

Jones died on Sunday at the age of 91, his publicist said.

The man known simply as "Q," was a huge influence on American music in his work with artists ranging from Count Basie to Frank Sinatra and reshaped pop music in his collaborations Michael Jackson.

Here are nine facts about Jones:

* Jones' work reached the moon. He said Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon on the Apollo 11 lunar mission in 1969, told him that he played Frank Sinatra's 1964 Jones-produced recording of 'Fly Me to the Moon' before setting out on the lunar surface.

* In addition to scoring more than 30 movies, Jones composed the theme songs for the television shows Sanford and Son, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Ironsides.

* Jones lived in Paris in the 1950s, studying music theory and composition with Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Virgil Thomson.

* Sinatra not only gave Jones the nickname "Q," he left instructions that after his death, Jones be given his ring bearing the Sinatra family crest from Sicily.

* Jones attended his own memorial service in 1974. He suffered a brain aneurysm that year and wrote in his autobiography that doctors gave him only a 1 percent chance of surviving surgery. Pessimistic friends went ahead and arranged a service for him but within a month Jones had recovered so well that he attended the service, which featured music by Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles and Cannonball Adderley.

* In 1986 Jones said he suffered a mental breakdown as he was in the midst of a divorce from actress Peggy Lipton. He went to Marlon Brando's private island in Tahiti for a month to recover.

* Jones referred to Michael Jackson as "Smelly" during their collaborations but it had nothing to do with odour. When he was working with Jones, Jackson avoided saying curse words and would use "smelly" as an alternative.

* In 2013 Jones filed suit against Jackson's estate seeking millions of dollars in royalties for music that was used after the singer's death in a documentary and a Cirque du Soleil show. In 2017, a jury awarded Jones US$9.42 million.

* Rapper Tupac Shakur once upbraided Jones in a magazine interview for his relationships with white women, including his three wives. Shakur later dated Jones' daughter Kadida and was engaged to her at the time of his death in 1996.

- Reuters

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