Hollywood’s music king is dead

The inimitable Quincy Jones died yesterday, aged 91.

A kid off Chicago’s rough South Side, sharing drug fixes with Ray Charles, he won a scholarship to Berklee and wound up studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (pictured) and seducing Juliette Greco. Quincy soon revealed a gift for original orchestration and career mobility. He worked with Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington before being made VP of the Mercury label and a fame-maker to a new generation. In 1964 he broke into Hollywood with a score for The Pawnbroker, followed by the haunting theme song for In the Heat of the Night.

He revived the dying embers of Miles Davis’s career, produced the Thriller mega-album for Michael Jackson, created Roberta Flack’s greatest hit and for half a century held more influence in the music-movie nexus than any other artist. Wielding considerable power and never moderating his opinions, Quincy made few enemies and never forgot an old friend. His philanthropy was world-embracing.