What was Quincy Jones famous for?

Quincy Jones, the man known just as “Q”, has had an enormous influence on the US music industry and his work with artists varying from Frank Sinatra to Count Basie would leave a lasting impact.

Quincy reshaped pop music by collaborating with Michael Jackson.

Quincy died on November 5, Sunday at age 91, according to his publicist.

Quincy Delight Jones Jr was born in Chicago on March 14, 1933, during the Great Depression.

As a boy, he always wanted to grow up and become a gangster, which he witnessed growing up in his rough neighbourhood.

He was 7 years old when his mother was admitted into a mental institution and at that time, his father, a carpenter, remarried and moved to Bremerton in Washington state.

His love for music flourished in Bremerton, when some of his friends stumbled upon a piano after sneaking into a community centre in the segregated wartime housing project they were living in.

He experimented with a number of instruments in his school band before finding his love in the trumpet and by 13, he was playing jazz, popular music, and rhythm-and-blues in nightclubs.

At 14, Jones met a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle, not yet famous, who taught him to arrange and compose music.

Basie and trumpeter Clark Terry would also become mentors to the young Jones and he secured a scholarship to what would later become the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

When he was a teenager, he gave it up to tour with Lionel Hampton’s band in the early 50s.

There was little Quincy did not achieve in his music career that spanned more than 65 years.

He was a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, composer, producer and winner of 28 Grammy Awards, and got 7 Oscar nominations, and eventually was the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner. Jones also received multiple honorary awards and honorary doctorates.

He was scheduled to receive an honorary Oscar this month.

He shaped recordings by jazz greats such as Miles Davis, produced Frank Sinatra. He also casted the ensemble for the 1985 fundraiser.

His noteworthy achievements lie in his collaborations with MJ.

They made three monumental works — “Off the Wall” (1979), “Thriller” (1982), and “Bad” (1987), which forever changed the landscape of popular music.