Quincy Jones died: The music titan produced, among other things, Michael Jackson's “Thriller”.

Quincy Jones, the Multi-talented music titan its huge legacy His career ranged from producing Michael Jackson's historic “Thriller” album to writing award-winning film and television scores to collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other artists.

Jones' publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight it is with full but broken hearts that we share the news of the passing of our father and brother Quincy Jones,” the family said in a statement. “And while this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life he led and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones He rose from running with gangs on Chicago's South Side to the heights of show business, becoming one of the first black executives to succeed in Hollywood and amass a large following exceptional music catalog which contains some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely that there was a music lover who didn't own at least one record bearing his name, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who didn't have some connection to him.

Jones kept company with presidents and foreign executives, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for “Roots” and “In the Heat of the Night,” organized President Bill Clinton's first inauguration ceremony and oversaw the all-star recording from “We Are the World,” the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.

Lionel Richie, co-writer of “We Are the World” and one of the featured singers, would call Jones “the master orchestrator.”

In a career that began when records were still played at 78 rpm on vinyl, his productions with Jackson are likely to receive top honors: “Off the Wall”, “Thriller” and “Bad” were albums that were unique in their style and their appeal was almost universal. Jones' versatility and imagination helped bring forth Jackson's explosive talents as he transformed from child star to “King of Pop.” On such classic tracks as “Billie Jean” and “Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson created a global soundscape of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&B and jazz as well as African songs. On “Thriller,” some of the most memorable touches came from Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-blending “Beat It” and enlisted Vincent Price for a spooky voiceover on the title track.

“Thriller” sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and competed with, among others, the Eagles' “Greatest Hits 1971-1975” as the best-selling album of all time.

“When an album doesn't do well, everyone says, 'It was the producer's fault'; So if things go well, it should be your “fault,” Jones said in a 2016 interview with the Library of Congress. “The traces don’t suddenly appear. The producer must have the skill, experience and ability to bring the vision to completion.”

The list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography “Q,” including 27 Grammys at the time (now 28), an honorary Oscar (now two) and an Emmy for “Roots.” He also received the French Legion of Honor, the Rudolph Valentino Prize from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center honor for his contributions to American culture. He was the subject of a 1990 documentary, “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones,” and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoirs made him a best-selling author.

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones credited the hymns his mother sang in the house as the first music he remembered hearing. But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey, “There are two kinds of people: those who have caring parents or caregivers, and those who don't.” There's nothing in between.” Jones' mother suffered emotional problems and was eventually institutionalized, a loss that made the world seem “pointless” to Quincy. He spent much of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.

“They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man,” he told the AP in 2018, showing off a scar from his childhood.

Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a neighbor in Chicago had a piano, and soon he was constantly playing it himself. When Quincy was 10, his father moved to Washington state and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center. Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and treated themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. There was a piano on the stage.

“I walked there, paused, stared, and then fiddled with it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I started to find peace. I was 11. I knew it was right for me. Forever.”

Within a few years he was playing the trumpet and befriended a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. He was talented enough to win a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones then worked as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teenager, he supported Billie Holiday. In his mid-20s he was touring with his own band.

“We had the best jazz band in the world, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music and that the music business existed. If I wanted to survive, I had to learn the difference between the two.”

As a music executive, he broke racial barriers by becoming vice president at Mercury Records in the early 1960s. In 1971, he became the first black music director of the Academy Awards. The first film he produced, “The Color Purple,” received eleven Oscar nominations in 1986. (But much to his disappointment, there was no victory). In a partnership with Time Warner, he founded Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold in 1999 for $270 million.

“My philosophy as a businessman has always had the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from,” Jones wrote in his autobiography.

He was familiar with almost every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra's “Fly Me to the Moon” with a punchy, lilting rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Charles' soulful “In the Heat of the Night” with a lusty melody Tenor saxophone solo. He has worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, Rapper) together and singer Queen Latifah).

“We are the World” alone featured performances by Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen, among others. He co-wrote hits for Jackson – “PYT (Pretty Young Thing)” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)” – and sampled songs by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the sitcom “Sanford and Son.”

Jones was a mediator and creator of the stars. He gave Will Smith a major breakthrough in the hit TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which Jones produced, and through The Color Purple he introduced moviegoers to Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. From the 1960s onwards he composed more than 35 film scores, including for “The Pawnbroker”, “In the Heat of the Night” and “In Cold Blood”.

He called scoring “a multifaceted process, an abstract combination of science and soul.”

Jones' work on the soundtrack for The Wiz led to his partnership with Jackson, who starred in the 1978 film. In an essay published in Time magazine in 2009 after Jackson's death, Jones recalled that the singer carried pieces of paper with him containing thoughts from famous thinkers. When Jones asked about the origin of a passage, Jackson replied “Socrates” but pronounced it “SO-crayts.” Jones corrected him: “Michael, those are SOCK-ra-tees.”

“And the look he gave me at the time made me say, because I was impressed by all the things I'd seen in him during the rehearsal process, 'I'd like to try and produce your album,'” Jones recalled itself. “And he went back and told the people at Epic Records, and they said, 'No way – Quincy is too jazzy.' Michael persisted and he and his managers went back and said, “Quincy is producing the album.” And we went ahead with producing “Off the Wall.” Ironically, it was one of the best-selling black albums at the time, and that album saved all the jobs of the people who said I was the wrong guy. That’s how it works.”

Tensions rose after Jackson's death. In 2013 Jones sued Jackson's estateand claimed he was owed millions of dollars in royalties and production fees for some of the superstar's biggest hits. In a 2018 interview with New York Magazine, he called Jackson “as Machiavellian as it gets” and claimed he borrowed material from others.

Jones was addicted to work and play and sometimes suffered because of it. He almost died of a brain aneurysm in 1974 and became severely depressed in the 1980s after The Color Purple was rejected by Oscar voters; He never received a competitive Oscar. Jones, a father of seven children from five mothers, described himself as a “dog” who had countless lovers around the world. He was married three times and his wives included actress Peggy Lipton.

“To me, loving a woman is one of the most natural, blissful, life-enhancing — and dare I say, religious — acts in the world,” he wrote.

He was not an activist in his early years, but changed after attending the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral in 1968 and later becoming friends with Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jones dedicated himself to philanthropy, saying, “The best and only useful aspect of fame and celebrity is having a platform to help others.”

His causes included the fight against HIV and AIDS, the education of children and the care of the poor around the world. He founded the Quincy Jones Listen Up! Foundation to connect young people with music, culture and technology, and said he had been driven “by a sense of adventure and a criminal level of optimism” throughout his life.

“Life is like a dream, said the Spanish poet and philosopher Federico Garcia Lorca,” Jones wrote in his memoirs. “Mine was in Technicolor, with full Dolby sound through THX amplification, before they knew what those systems were.”

In addition to Rashida, Jones is survived by daughters Jolie Jones Levine, Rachel Jones, Martina Jones, Kidada Jones and Kenya Kinski-Jones; son Quincy Jones III; brother Richard Jones and sisters Theresa Frank and Margie Jay.

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AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton and former AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.