Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer. His career spanned 70 years, with 28 Grammy Awards won out of 80 nominations, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between genres, producing pop hit records for Lesley Gore in the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of the most successful albums by pop star Michael Jackson: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.
Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards in 1971. He was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each. Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category in 2013. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.