Mention Quincy Jones to a large number of people and I am sure that each person will highlight a different achievement. There are so many milestones that to name them all would take up much more space than I am given here. Jones was an Oscar-winning music composer, the arranger of great jazz albums by legends like Frank Sinatra, a bandleader and musician in his own right, and the producer of the best-selling album of his era, Michael Jackson’s. Thriller.

And that’s just the beginning of this artist’s legendary career, which spanned 70 years and broke several barriers before ending on November 3, 2024. With nothing left to prove, Quincy Jones left the land of the living to find the many legends he knew about this plane of earthly existence. He was 91 years old.

Jones was a guy whose many works lived up to his middle name: Delight. Q, as he was known to his friends, had so many different types of success that it defies imagination. He worked on tracks as white as Lesley Gore’s classic “It’s My Party” and as soulful and bluesy as Ray Charles’s theme song for the 1967 Oscar-winning best picture, “In the Heat of the Night.” Put this disc on and you suddenly find yourself in Sparta, Mississippi, in the sweltering heat with Sidney Poitier’s Mr. Virgil Tibbs.

Born on the South Side of Chicago on March 14, 1933, Jones met Charles when they were both teenagers in Seattle, Washington. He was a promising trumpeter and arranger; The slightly older Charles was, well, Ray Charles. The maker of hits like “What’d I Say” became an inspiration for Jones early on, and the two worked together on several occasions.

I’d be nicknamed for days if I listed everyone Q worked with: Elvis, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Lionel Richie, Sarah Vaughn, Sinatra, Peggy Lee, everyone on the “We are the World” record and, indirectly, Austin Powers. Yes, “Soul Bossa Nova,” the unofficial theme song for Mike Myers’ ’60s parody spy series, was a Quincy Jones composition. He also wrote the theme for the TV series “Ironside,” which Quentin Tarantino used to great effect in his “Kill Bill” films.

In addition, Jones has composed scores for 40 films as varied as “The Pawnbroker” (his debut), “The Italian Job,” “Cactus Flower,” “The Color Purple” and the score that earned him the premiere of his seven Oscar nominations, in 1967. “In Cold Blood.” He wasn’t the first black person to receive a nomination for best music (that would be Duke Ellington for “Paris Blues” six years prior), but he was the first to receive a nomination for best song (for “The Eyes of Love” from 1968). “Prohibition”).

The Dude (his other nickname) has had so many fantastic accomplishments! The best I can do is summarize this tribute to the question I always ask myself when someone I admire leaves us: what did this person’s art mean to me?

To answer this question, I’ll start with the first time I heard of Quincy Jones: the 1978 film adaptation of the Broadway hit, “The Wiz.” This musical was the first thing I saw on Broadway – and it scared the hell out of me. Jones not only beefed up the score to fit movie theater speakers (and earned an Oscar for his troubles), he added more gospel flavor to “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” This number was sung by the person who scared me on Broadway, Mabel King’s Evillene, The Wicked Witch of the West. Even though I was watching from the Pix theater, I was still terrified.

Jones also adapted the musical “Believe in Yourself,” starring another legend he would work with, Lena Horne. He and Horne won the 1982 Grammy for the soundtrack to his 1981 Broadway show, The Lady and her musicone of Q’s 80 Grammy nominations. Coincidentally, I also saw this show on Broadway.

My Pops had Jones’ 1981 album The guy in his album case. James Ingram’s song “Just Once” was a big hit from this album. When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand what Jones was doing on albums like this and “You’ve Got it Bad, Girl” — everyone seemed to be singing along except him — but now I know.

As for Michael Jackson ThrillerI had the album with Jackson’s photo on the vinyl record. As much as I love songs like “Billie Jean,” “Human Nature” and “Beat It,” I’ll die on the hill who says the previous Jones-Jackson collaboration, “Off the Wall,” is a better album.

Time passed and I went from “The Wiz” to “The Dude” to “The Color Purple”. The film that gave the world Oprah Winfrey’s Miss Sofia and Whoopi Goldberg’s Miss Celie was one of the few Steven Spielberg films that didn’t have music composed by John Williams. My flattering love ode to this film will have to wait until it turns 40^th birthday next year. For now, I’ll just point out that on this film, Jones became the first black person to earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

Being notoriously resistant to change as a young adult, it took the gift of a CD player from my mother for me to start buying compact discs. The first one I bought was the Back on the block album. I consider this to be Jones’ masterpiece. This work of art encapsulates all facets of black music; jazz, soul, R&B, funk and rap coexist peacefully on an album without a single bad song. Imagine Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Kool Moe Dee on a song, then press play.

Back on the block begins with a rap song featuring Ice-T, Kool Moe Dee, Mellie Mel, Big Daddy Kane and Jones (“Finally, he’s doing something on a record!” I could hear my clueless younger self exclaiming) and segues into ends with one of the sexiest R&B Collaborations ever recorded, “The Secret Garden”. Tell me you didn’t hear Barry White urging you to “tell me a secret” when I mentioned this song.

Of course, Jones has done so much more, from working on the TV miniseries “Roots” to spilling the tea in several incredibly profane interviews where he laid everyone’s business on the street. Speaking of the streets, I’ve saved for last what is perhaps Jones’ best-known and most beloved composition, “The Streetbeater.”

You know it as the theme from “Sanford and Son.” In a interview with the Television AcademyJones expressed shock that NBC was going to put his comedian friend, Redd Foxx, on television. Foxx’s routines were so dirty that even his name was two four-letter words! And yet, producer Bud Yorkin commissioned Jones to watch the pilot and compose the theme.

“I definitely didn’t need to see a pilot,” Jones told the interviewer. “I wrote it in about 20 minutes.” He’d known Foxx for decades: They worked the chitlin circuit in the 1950s. “I just wrote down what he looked like,” he explained. “It’s disgusting, just like Foxx.”

That’s the mark of a true genius composer: someone who can capture the essence of an individual so well that you don’t need a visual to evoke it. Quincy Jones was definitely a musical genius – and so much more. Rest in peace, man.