Quincy Jones: Nine facts about the American music legend

Few people in the music world can match the accomplishments of Quincy Jones, who died on Sunday at the age of 91. Here are nine facts about Jones.

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1. Quincy 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.
2. 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’.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Quincy 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% 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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 $9.42 million.
9. Rapper Tupac Shakur once upbraided Quincy 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.

U.S. music titan Quincy Jones dies at 91