From Elvis to Donna to Stevie: how hit-making legend Quincy Jones created superstars and changed pop history

Over the course of 91 years, Quincy Jones was involved in almost every aspect of the entertainment industry. He was a musician, arranger, composer, and performer, as well as a record label executive, entrepreneur, and film and television producer. As noted in Chris Heath's 2018 profile, "Quincy Jones Has a Story About That," he had numerous high-profile connections. "The ghetto Gump," a nickname he gave himself, had connections with a wide range of artists, from the legendary jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis to modern artists like Dr Dre and the Weeknd. He had worked with a diverse group of musicians, including Elvis Presley and Amy Winehouse, Count Basie and Bono, Nat King Cole and Young Thug. His credits include work on iconic projects like "Sinatra At the Sands" and Harry Styles' album "Harry's House."

This fellow's CV is certainly one of a kind. What inspired him to achieve this? It's clear he had the drive, possibly as a result of a difficult upbringing. Born on Chicago's rough South Side during the Great Depression, at the age of seven, he found himself 'stumbling into the wrong area', where he got stabbed in the hand with a switchblade and attacked with an ice pick. His mother's mental health suffered a severe breakdown and she was institutionalised. Jones spent time living with his grandmother in Kentucky, where they struggled so much that they had to survive on rats. He later moved to Washington with his father, who remarried a woman Jones described as physically abusive.

Jones was incredibly talented, still at college when he was asked to leave to work with vibraphonist and former Benny Goodman band member Lionel Hampton. Hampton had formed his own orchestra, a big band adaptable enough to navigate the shift from swing to bebop and rhythm and blues: a lesson in being open to change and evolution that one imagines stayed with Jones.

Undoubtedly, when he relocated to New York and started working as a freelance arranger, Jones's approach was commendably broad: his client list spanned notable big-band musicians such as Count Basie and Gene Krupa, alongside influential jazz performers including Clifford Brown and Cannonball Adderley, right through to rhythm and blues artist Big Maybelle, whose original version of Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On Jones arranged and produced.

His propensity for shifting between styles could have been down to a measure of pragmatism. He had established himself as his own solo musician by the late 1950s, leading bands staffed by top-notch musicians – one session for his second album involved Charles Mingus, Milt Jackson, Art Farmer and Herbie Mann – but when he formed his own 18-piece big band in Europe in 1959, they both gained positive reviews and struggled financially. Determining to "learn the distinction between music and the music industry", he took a job at Mercury Records, where his breakthrough success was Lesley Gore's 1963 teenage-pop anthem It's My Party, promptly released to beat a version by the Crystals recorded with Phil Spector.

On one hand, you might see that album's teenage-style soap opera storylines as conflicting with the mature and intricate music that Jones had put out on his own recent albums. These included The Quintessence – which contained a remarkable, lightning-fast reinterpretation of Mingus's Straight, No Chaser – and Big Band Bossa Nova, which began with Jones's enduring composition Soul Bossa Nova, famously now the title tune for the Austin Powers films.

Anyone, just listen carefully and you might suspect that they were all part of the same person's work: despite the showy melodramatics in the lyrics, there's a clear Latin-American influence to the beat of It's My Party, as well as a refined quality in its assertive horn arrangement. Not many other musicians could seamlessly move between making number one pop songs for teens, working with Frank Sinatra on a record with the Count Basie Orchestra (1964's It Might As Well Be Swing), releasing advanced jazz albums and, at the same time, writing music for film.

The latter part of Jones's career began with the soundtrack for Sidney Lumet's 1964 film The Pawnbroker, reaching a highlight with his work on 1967's neo-noir crime film In Cold Blood. He overcame resistance from Columbia Pictures, which preferred Leonard Bernstein, and the racism of author Truman Capote, who wanted an artist other than an African-American, to produce a set of mournful, harrowing and regularly unsettling music that earned an Oscar nomination - he was the first black composer to make the shortlist.

As the 1960s transitioned into the 1970s, his album output increasingly diverged from traditional jazz, incorporating a potent mix of soul and funk with jazz-inspired harmonies and improvisation. This new sound was complemented by atmospheric, subtly psychedelic orchestral arrangements, which often featured extended blues guitar instrumentals, TV theme tunes, and innovative reinterpretations of popular hits. For example, his 1971 album included a 10-minute version of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?, while the 1973 album You've Got It Bad Girl featured a majestic reworking of the Lovin' Spoonful's song Summer In the City.

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The band's roster gradually became more impressive, with jazz musicians teaming up with top vocalists and seasoned session players. The 1974 album Body Heat included Herbie Hancock and Bob James alongside The Funk Brothers, the Madman Across The Water-era collaborators of Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston, Minnie Riperton, and Al Jarreau. This line-up reached its peak with the 1978 release Sounds … And Stuff Like That! which featured the delightfully funky Stuff Like That, a collaboration between Chaka Khan and Ashford and Simpson, and the 1981 platinum-selling, triple-Grammy-winning album The Dude, which spawned a string of hit singles, of which the captivating, post-disco fusion funk of Razzamatazz might be the standout track.

By the time The Dude was released, Jones had started to work with Michael Jackson, having met him while collaborating on The Wiz, a reworking of The Wizard of Oz with an African American theme. The three albums they recorded together were to be significant in shaping the course of pop music, with Jackson's remarkable ability undoubtedly being the primary driving force, while Jones played a crucial part in their creation.

It was Jones who brought in Rod Temperton, a former keyboardist with the Heatwave, to write songs - he contributed six tracks to Off The Wall and Thriller, including Rock With You and the title tracks for both albums - and it was Jones who managed to convince Vincent Price to record a suitably eerie monologue. On Off The Wall, you can hear the influence of his jazz background in I Can't Help It and She's Out Of My Life, a song that was originally intended for Frank Sinatra; and his dislike of being tied to a specific genre was evident in his decision to include Girlfriend, a cover of a Paul McCartney-written soft rock track from the poorly received album London Town by Wings, in the middle of what was otherwise a disco album.

Thriller carried a distinct stamp of Jones’s pragmatism at the same time, though. If Jackson wanted to be the world's biggest star, as he had proclaimed, then his album would have to be attractive to as many people as possible, hence the collaboration with Paul McCartney and the appearance of Eddie Van Halen on Beat It.

Following his falling out with Michael Jackson after the release of Bad in 1987 (a dispute over royalties ultimately lead to a court case, with Jones publicly accusing Jackson of stealing the bassline of Billie Jean from one of his earlier productions, Donna Summer's State of Independence), Jones went on to continue delivering impressive results: not quite on the same scale as breaking the record for the best-selling album in music history, but doing things that only he was capable of achieving.

Jones somehow managed to persuade the ailing Miles Davis to revisit his classic music from his time with Gil Evans, just a few weeks before his passing in 1991 at the Montreux jazz festival. It was a remarkable feat, particularly as Davis had always previously refused to revisit that work. Jones was part of a distinguished cast recording an album, including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Barry White, and Ice-T, that is likely unique. Jones enjoyed great success in television and film production. At the time Chris Heath met him, Jones was 84, and he claimed to be busier than ever: concurrently working on ten movies, six albums, four Broadway productions, a television biography, and a documentary.

He accomplished so much that any attempt to evaluate his work after his death only skims the surface. Perhaps it's simpler to acknowledge that Quincy Jones could - and did - achieve everything. It's challenging to imagine a more telling epitaph for any artist.