orig. Quincy Delight Jones, Jr.
born March 14, 1933, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
U.S. composer, bandleader, and producer.
Jones joined a combo with his friend Ray Charles in his early teens, and he later studied music in Seattle and Boston. In the early 1950s he played trumpet with Lionel Hampton . He became an arranger for Dizzy Gillespie and others and ultimately formed his own big band and worked with figures such as Count Basie , Sarah Vaughan , and Dinah Washington . Starting in the early 1960s he wrote scores for dozens of films, including Walk Don't Run (1966), In Cold Blood (1967), and The Color Purple (1985). Beginning in the mid-1970s he principally worked as a producer; as founder of Qwest Productions he produced enormously successful albums for Mahalia Jackson , Frank Sinatra , and others. He founded the music magazine Vibe .