BREAKING: Music legend Quincy Jones dead at 91

He was raised, in part, by his grandmother who had lived part of her life enslaved in the south, but grew up mostly in Seattle with his father and step-mother after his own mother had been committed to psychiatric care.

With Michael Jackson, he produced Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and for Hollywood, he composed the scores of The Color Purple, The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, Sanford and Son, and so many others. He began his music education after, at 11-years-old, breaking into a rec center with his brother looking for food after being mistreated by their step-mother. He found a piano and, back at school, he joined the band and choir, per The New York Times.

He began his career after enlisting Count Basie's trumpeter Clark Terry to give him lessons, then a year later, at 14, he met Ray Charles, at 15 and toured with Lionel Hampton. Jones went on to study at Boston's Schillinger House, which later became the famed Berklee College of Music. He earned honorary degrees during his career from Harvard, Princeton, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory and the Berklee School of Music and won numerous awards. Jones' mother had attended Boston University and studied music herself.

Jones' began his career in pop in the 1960s, helping to make Lesley Gore's It's My Party. He became vice-president of Mercury in 1964 before moving on to Hollywood and film composition. His work has been sampled across the hip-hop world. Jones had seven children, and leaves behind a brother and two sisters.