Quincy Jones, the US music titan who worked with Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra and countless other artists, has died at the age of 91.
Jones' publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.
"Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones' passing," the family said in a statement.
"And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him."
Who was Quincy Jones?
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. was born in 1933 in Chicago. As a boy, he aspired to be a gangster like those he saw in his rough neighbourhood.
When he was seven, his family moved to Bremerton in Washington state, where he pursued a life of petty crime.
Jones said his interest in music bloomed in Bremerton, when he and some friends found a piano after sneaking into the community centre in the segregated wartime housing project where they lived.
"Music was the one thing I could control," Jones wrote in his autobiography.
"It was the one world that offered me freedom ... I didn't have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, penciled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool."
Quincy Jones with his daughter Rashida Jones and her mother Peggy Lipton. Source: AAP / Danny Moloshok/AP
In the late 1950s he went on US government-sponsored tours around the world, and later led his own band through Europe. In the early 1960s he took a job at Mercury Records in New York, becoming one of the first Black executives at a white-owned record company.
Throughout his music career, which spanned more than 65 years, there was very little Jones did not do. He was a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, composer, producer and winner of 27 Grammy Awards.
The people Jones worked with would populate a jazz or R&B hall of fame — Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Aretha Franklin. But he also produced in other genres artists including Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer.
He is perhaps best-known for his productions with Michael Jackson: Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad were albums near-universal in their style and appeal.
Jones was married three times. His first wife was his high school sweetheart Jeri Caldwell with whom he had one daughter; his second wife was Swedish model Ulla Andersson with whom he had two children, including Quincy III, who became a hip-hop producer.
His third wife was "Mod Squad" actress Peggy Lipton, with whom he had two daughters, including actress Rashida Jones. He had two other children outside his marriages, including one with actress Nastassja Kinski.
