Quincy Jones, the legendary producer and musical visionary, has passed away on November 3rd at the age of ninety-one. The Chicago-born artist began his career as a jazz arranger and conductor in the 1950's before moving into producing pop music with his first major hit, "It's My Party" for a then-sixteen year old singer, Lesley Gore which went to number one in 1963.
Throughout his extraordinary career, Jones had worked with many of the greatest musical performers of all time with the most notable being, Michael Jackson who he went on to produce his albums, "Off The Wall", "Thriller" and "Bad" which together sold well over one hundred and twenty-five million albums worldwide. Jones also composed numerous musical scores for film and television ("In Cold Blood", "Roots", "The Wiz", "The Color Purple") and was involved in organizing the artists and co-producing the 1985 US charity single, "We Are The World" to help the victims of famine in Ethiopia, raising more than eighty million dollars for the cause.
Jones helped create so much music during his time that it would be extremely difficult to try and cover even a fraction of the recordings he went on to produce. To pay tribute to this musical genius, I will focus here on the studio albums that Jones would release under his own name over the years. Here is just a tiny playlist of my favorites:
