Quincy Jones was more than a unique talent, he changed and shaped the culture he was a part of.

He was born on March 14, 1933 on the south side of Chicago and had a difficult childhood. He lost his mother in a mental institution and lived with his younger brother Lloyd with an aunt who had been enslaved in Louisville until their father moved the siblings to live with him in Seattle.

Because his stepmother did not accept him and his brother, they were often hungry. While looking for food at a rec center, he picked up the piano and decided that music would be his life. He threw himself into the band and learned various instruments, including the trumpet. At 13, he convinced the great trumpeter Clark Terry, who was touring with the great Count Basie, to give him lessons. At 14, he met 16-year-old RC Robinson, later known as Ray Charles.

The list of jazz greats with whom Jones played as a musician and with whom he later accompanied as an arranger and producer is an encyclopedia of the biggest stars of the genre: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Betty Carter are among many other.

Jones received a total of 80 Grammy nominations throughout his life and achieved the third most awards with 28. He arranged Frank Sinatra's classic “Fly Me to the Moon” with the Count Basie Orchestra, masterminded and performed Michael Jackson's legendary “Thriller” album. Arguably the greatest humanitarian single of all time with “We Are the World” raises money for the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s.

The eighth best-selling single of all time was conceived by Harry Belafonte and Jones helped translate and capture the voices of nearly 50 singers from various genres. Among them were giants like Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, good friend Ray Charles, Al Jarreau and Billy Joel as well as Lionel Richie and Jackson, who wrote it together.

The Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop” chronicles the recording in a colorful way and makes it clear that Jones is to thank for gathering so many icons in the same room.

Jones' musical contributions easily fill book volumes. Even though his influence in film and television is not as great, he is no less influential. He was a pioneer. Even today, black film and television composers are rare, and in 1968 Jones broke barriers when he and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first black Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song: “The Eyes of Love” from the film “ Ban.” He was also nominated for Best Original Score for “In Cold Blood.”,He became the first black American to be nominated twice in the same year.

He directed nearly 40 projects in film and television, including “The Color Purple,” the breakout film for Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, which he also produced and whose musical version earned him a Tony.

Jones' film credits include the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” the 1969 film “The Italian Job,” the theme song to the 1970s sitcom “Sanford and Son” starring Redd Foxx, and the soundtrack to “The Wiz, “The popular black cast version of the legendary “The Wizard of Oz”.

His influence was timeless – he wrote “Soul Bossa Nova” for 1964's The Pawnbroker, and the song later became the theme for Mike Myers' Austin Powers comedy franchise in the late 1990s.

A cultural innovator who nearly died of an aneurysm in the early 1970s, Jones never rested on his laurels. Always finding a way to connect the past with the present, he became involved in hip-hop music from an early age and was instrumental in securing his place in the 1990s as co-founder of VIBE magazine and executive producer of “The.” mainstream pop culture include “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with Will Smith and “In the House” with LL Cool J alongside Debbie Allen.

For Jones, it was extremely important to give black American culture its rightful place in the broader American cultural landscape. It is a common thread through the two films about his life: “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones”, which was released in 1990 and of which he was the initiator, and the Netflix film “Quincy” from 2018 , which he co-wrote and directed. estranged daughter, Rashida Jones.

The EGOT winner's influence and role in educating the next generation is enormous, Will Smith said on social media Monday as news of Jones' death spread. “Quincy Jones is the true definition of a mentor, a father and a friend. He showed me the biggest parts of myself. He defended me. He encouraged me. He gave me courage. He inspired me. He checked on me when necessary. He let me use his wings until mine were strong enough to fly.”

Before his death at the age of 91, Jones was still actively working on his life's work. In 2017, he co-founded the SVOD streamer Qwest TV, which often features live performances of jazz and other music genres, including hip-hop and soul, in Europe.

Most recently, he served as executive producer, along with Debbie Allen, of the documentary “King of Kings,” which was intended to give a larger spotlight to the extraordinary life and legacy of legendary Chicago numbers runner Edward Jones, for whom his father once worked.

“I just hope that one day America will realize what the rest of the world already knew, that our native music – gospel, blues, jazz and R&B – is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to allow this heritage to be forgotten,” he once said.

Jones spent his life carrying on that legacy and left a tremendous legacy of his own.

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