CNN
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Quincy Jones was known to generations of fans due to a career that spanned from the radio to the big screen and the small.
The acclaimed composer, musician and producer died Sunday night at his home in Bel Air, California. He was 91.
Jones was not shy about talking about his extraordinary life experiences in numerous interviews or the 2018 Netflix documentary, “Quincy,” co-written and co-directed by his daughter, Rashida Jones.
But here are a few facts that you may not know about him:
Jones is well known to have worked with so many legendary performers, including Frank Sinatra.
The pair first connected in 1958, when Jones was hired to direct Sinatra’s band. Their collaboration would become so strong that it would change the course of history for one of Sinatra’s most famous tunes.
The crooner’s version of “Fly Me to the Moon” came out in 1964 and while composed as more of a waltz, Jones changed the arrangement to many it more in the style of swing.
Not only did the tune become beloved, but it made history when astronaut Buzz Aldrin played it before he stepped on the moon.
“The first music played on the moon,” Jones told the New York Times in 1990. “I freaked.”
A 2018 interview with GQ magazine included Jones reflecting on the tragic Charles Manson family murders at actress Sharon Tate’s Los Angeles home in 1969.
Jones had become friendly with hairdresser Jay Sebring through actor Steve McQueen.
The actor has asked Jones to come see a rough cut of the film “Bullitt” and McQueen brought Sebring along.
Jones said he was losing his hair at the time and Sebring offered to help.
“He said, ‘I’ll meet you at Sharon’s, because I’ve got some stuff for your hair,’” Jones recalled.
But Jones forgot and didn’t go to Tate’s house after all.
The next day his friend Bill Cosby called him, Jones said.
“He said, ‘Man, did you hear about Jay?’ Because we all used to hang out together,” Jones said. “He said, ‘Did you see that he’s dead?’ I said, ‘Impossible, man, I was with him last night.’”
Sebring, who was a former boyfriend and good friend of Tate’s, was brutally murdered by Manson’s followers that night at her home along with Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent.
Jones was only 41 years old in 1974 when he felt a pain in his head and collapsed.
It turned out that Jones had experienced a brain aneurysm.
“It was scary,” he recalled.
Surgery revealed a second aneurysm and when he was strong enough he underwent a second surgery that he later learned he had “a one-in-a-hundred chance of surviving.”
He was also told that due to the clip on a blood vessel in his brain he could no longer play his beloved trumpet because blowing the way he would have to play it might cause the clip to come free which would kill him.
Jones admitted that he tried to play later anyway while on tour in Japan and stopped permanently because playing that once caused a pain in his head because the clip had come loose.
“I couldn’t get away with it, man,” he said.
