‘He Is Once in History’: Remembering Quincy Jones, the Music Executive

To the average music fan, Quincy Jones, who died Monday at age 91, leaves behind a legacy as one of contemporary music’s greatest record producers, a titanic figure behind some of the most important records of all time. But to many in the music industry, his legacy towers even bigger than that. 

Appraising Jones’ myriad roles in the music business is a humbling act, if for no other reason that he seemed to do everything. Jones was a man so prolific that even if one were to ignore every album he ever produced, every film he ever scored or every soundtrack he ever arranged, he’d still likely have one of the more storied careers as a music industry executive. For Jones, accomplishments that ostensibly seem like career footnotes would make for career-defining moments for anyone else.

“People may call him once in a generation, but no,” says Naima Cochrane, board member of the Black Music Action Coalition and a professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. “Quincy isn’t even once in a lifetime. He is once in history. Had Quincy not had his hand in so many other projects like his producing and film scores, he would’ve been akin to [revered music executive] Clarence [Avant].”

Over the course of 40 years, Jones became one of the first Black executives at a major record label, executive produced hit musicals and television shows, mentored and signed major artists and moguls, and co-founded one of the most influential music magazines in history. 

Jones’ stint at Mercury Records in the early 1960s was one of his lesser-discussed but enormously consequential feats. After beginning his career in jazz, he worked as a musical director at the label, and by 1961, he was named vice president, one of the first times a Black person had taken on an executive role at a white-owned label. 

“I’m surprised people don’t talk about it a little more often,” Cochrane says. “We’re still talking about a period of segregation, this was massive. I do think because of his career up to that point — with his affiliation with [Frank] Sinatra and his work in France — I think Quincy was othered a little bit. He wasn’t there to work Black music. There were things that made people think less that he was a Black executive, it was just Quincy.” 

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., one of many in the industry who have called Jones a mentor, called that appointment a turning point in the modern history of the music industry. “Quincy was really one of the first Black musicians [and] Black business leaders that some of the white-owned businesses trusted with budgets, with their artists, with running staff,” he says. “To see somebody like Quincy have some level of power was a unique thing.”

His Mercury Records appointment lasted less than a year, per the New York Times, though it wouldn’t be his last time helming a record label. In 1980, he co-founded Qwest Records, where he oversaw a roster that included Sinatra, Tevin Cambell and George Benson. The label’s first release was Benson’s Give Me The Night, which went platinum that year and earned the jazz guitarist three Grammy awards.

“I’d started to cross over from jazz and Quincy asked: “Do you want to make the world’s greatest jazz record – or go for the throat?” Benson told the Guardian in 2019. “I laughed and said: ‘Go for the throat!’ I’d seen what he’d done with Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. He said, ‘George, put yourself in my hands. I know more about you than you do yourself.’ I was insulted at first, but calmed down, and things started happening.”

Qwest’s biggest success, though, was signing New Order, with Jones and Qwest largely responsible for popularizing the band in the United States after their departure from Factory Records. “When he signed us to his label, he made us feel so welcome,” New Order founding bassist Peter Hook wrote on X, formerly Twitter, this week. “He made us big in America. He was so humble & sweet that you immediately fell in love with him.”

Then there were his production roles on The Color Purple in 1985 and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1990. By 1993, he co-founded Vibe magazine as an answer to Rolling Stone to focus more on Black artists. “It’s easy for people to forget Vibe was Quincy because it got big enough to become its own brand, it wasn’t just an extension of him anymore,” Cochrane says. 

As Mason Jr. adds on those later ventures: “For Quincy, it became like, ‘I can use my brand, use my taste, use my ability to discern between what’s excellent, what’s going to resonate with consumers.’ In order to do that, you have to be very in touch, and you have to be a very savvy businessman.”

Cochrane and Mason Jr. both say Jones’ qualities as producer heightened his ability as a businessman, particularly for scouting talent and quality control. They also note his generosity of his time as a key aspect of his legacy to other artists and executives. 

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve seen a lot of people pass away, unfortunately,” Mason Jr. says. “I’ve never seen the amount of people that spent time with Quincy. He invested so much time in sitting with people, helping people. It wasn’t just emails or returning calls. Instagram after instagram of people sitting with him on his couch. There are thousands of people in this business who’ve shared stories and specifically said he’s their mentor.”

However successful his business acumen was, classifying him as an executive would’ve always been too reductive. “Quincy’s undying love was first and foremost the music. He loved the business only because it was just the way he made money off of music culture,” Cochrane says. “But, I truly believe him when he would say that his decisions weren’t motivated by money. He was a musician first, I don’t think there’s a world in which Quincy would ever have been able to just be executive.”

Still, in typical Quincy Jones fashion, his influence shone for decades. “What I think was most important about Quincy as an executive is the exposure that we all got to a Black person in the position of power in the industry,” Mason Jr. says. “He opened so many doors and provided such a road map for so many people. Nothing I know would I have learned were it not for Quincy. I wouldn’t have made music. I wouldn’t have been a producer. I wouldn’t have thought I could do film and TV or run a company. I’m not doing anything that I didn’t learn from Quincy.”