Quincy Jones lived another 50 years after attending his own memorial service.

When the musician suffered a brain aneurysm in 1974, his chances of survival were considered so slim and his stature so large that his famous friends began planning a tribute concert.

The then 41-year-old Jones had already had a lasting impact on American music as an interpreter, arranger, songwriter, producer, soundtrack composer and record manager.

He started in the jumping jazz clubs of the 1950s; masters soul, swing and pop on recordings by Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra and Lesley Gore; and reached the top 10 himself.

Some of America's greatest entertainers agreed to perform at his memorial.

When he got through, the show still went on.

Jones went along, accompanied by his neurologist, who gave strict instructions not to get too excited.

“That was hard to do with Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan and Sidney Poitier singing your praises.” he told Newsweek in 2008.

Even more exciting things were to come.

Jones then formed an era-defining partnership with Michael Jackson; overseeing 1985's “We Are the World,” one of the best-selling songs of all time; craft hits for acts like Chaka Khan and Donna Summer; and work with the biggest names in hip-hop.

Few branches of American popular music were immune to his influence.

Jones had always been a survivor.

He grew up on the south side of Chicago in the shadow of the Great Depression in the 1930s. When he was seven years old, his mother was sent to a mental institution and his father worked as a carpenter for the notorious gangsters “Jones Boys”.

Young Quincy also wanted to become a gangster. “You want to be what you see, and that’s all we’ve ever seen,” he said.

He and his brother were “street rats,” and when he strayed into the wrong neighborhood at age seven, “a rival gang member nailed my hand to a fence.” Another injury occurred from an ice pick to the face.

His father took the family to Washington state, where Quincy and some friends broke into a community center one night in search of food. There was a piano inside.

“I touched it and every cell in my body said: This is what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.” he told BBC Radio 4's Front Row in 2016.

The encounter “changed my life,” he said in conversation with rapper Kendrick Lamar for a 2018 Netflix documentary, adding, “I would have been dead or in prison a long time ago” if it wasn't for the music would have discovered for himself.

Quincy began experimenting with instruments immediately at school, settling on the trumpet and beginning to play in nightclubs.

At the age of 14, he befriended another then-unknown musician named Ray Charles, with whom he would collaborate for life.

At the age of 14 he also played with Billie Holiday and was taken under the wing of bandleader Count Basie and trumpeter Clark Terry. He then accompanied Dizzy Gillespie and appeared in the band on Elvis Presley's first television appearance.

After demonstrating his talent for arranging songs on a world tour with Lionel Hampton's big band, he was soon in demand in this role as well.

But after racking up $145,000 in debt during a European tour, he took a part-time job at Mercury Records in 1961 and became the first African-American vice president of a major record label.

There he discovered and produced the million-selling single “It's My Party” by Lesley Gore. He also released the compilation album Big Band Bossa Nova, which included his own infectious track Soul Bossa Nova, which has since become a staple of parties and film soundtracks, including Austin Powers.

Meanwhile, Sinatra was impressed by Jones' work and commissioned him to arrange and conduct two of his albums in the 1960s. The pair formed a fruitful partnership, and Sinatra called him “a giant” and “one of the finest musicians I have ever known.”

The two also became firm friends outside of the studio. “Seven double Jack Daniels in an hour… (Sinatra) invented partying,” Jones recalls.

Jones also worked with many other big names of the time, including Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis Jr., while his solo album Body Heat reached the US Top 10.

Meanwhile, he built a career writing soundtracks for TV shows and films, including “In Cold Blood,” “The Italian Job” and “Roots.”

In Cold Blood writer Truman Capote reportedly tried to have Jones removed from the film because he was black. But he stayed, and the score earned Jones the first of seven Oscar nominations.

Another soundtrack was “The Wiz,” the 1978 film musical version of The Wizard of Oz, which starred Diana Ross and 19-year-old Michael Jackson, who was looking to forge a new path after his childhood fame in “The Jackson 5.”

Jones saw superstar qualities in Jackson and became his producer and mentor, first on 1979's Off the Wall, which was a huge hit, and then on 1982's Thriller, which reached new heights of commercial and critical success and made Jackson undisputed King of Pop made .

The album was not only the fulfillment of Jackson's talent, but also the pinnacle of Jones' career, as he used his unparalleled musical expertise to define the 1980s with an elegant and sophisticated fusion of R&B and pop.

Jones listened to hundreds of songs to decide which nine would make it onto the album, employing a dream team of musicians and songwriters he had assembled over the years.

His choice of collaborators was an example of his instinct for turning a good song into something great. For “Beat It”, he felt the single needed a more rocking edge, so he hired Eddie Van Halen to contribute a guitar solo. Legend has it that the solo was so explosive that a speaker in the studio caught fire.

And when it came to the theme song, Jones didn't like the original name Starlight, so he asked writer Rod Temperton to come up with something else. Temperton renamed it “Thriller” and recast it with a spooky theme. Jones topped things off by asking his wife's friend, horror actor Vincent Price, to record a spoken-word outro.

The album earned Jones and Jackson the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, while Thriller was named Album of the Year and Beat It was named Record of the Year.

Using his winning formula in the 1980s with George Benson, Donna Summer and Patti Austin, Jones produced the best-selling single of the decade when Jackson and Lionel Richie brought together 35 of America's biggest names for the 1985 charity song “We Are the World.”

Jones famously posted a message to the stars at the studio entrance, telling the stars, “Check your ego at the door.”

He enjoyed further success under his own name with his albums The Dude and Back on the Block. The latter was released in 1989 and featured an all-star cast, including many friends from his early career such as Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles.

But he didn't just embrace his past, he was also firmly anchored in the present, enlisting rappers like Ice-T and Grandmaster Melle Mel for the title track.

It earned Jones another award for Album of the Year at the Grammys.

Although he was in his 50s, he became passionate about rap music because he saw similarities with the energy of bebop jazz and because many of its stars had risen from the streets out of necessity.

“I feel a kinship there because we went through a lot of the same things,” he said.

And rap stars returned his affection, viewing Jones as an inspirational elder statesman of black American music. Even Kendrick and Dr. Dre were impressed when they met him for the Netflix documentary called Quincy, directed by his daughter, actress Rashida Jones.

Jones used his status to curb violence in the hip hop world, convening the Quincy Jones Hip Hop Symposium in 1995, where he spoke to a room full of the country's rap stars.

“I want to see you live at least to my age,” he told them.

For Jones, social engagement went hand in hand with his music.

He met Martin Luther King in 1955 and “from then on my life was never the same,” he said.

“Civil rights work and political engagement were no longer a sideline, but an essential part of life and humanity.”

He founded the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation and, among other things, launched the “We Are the Future” project.

Elsewhere, his undeniable work ethic saw him launch a record label and hip-hop magazine Vibe, and produce films such as The Color Purple and television shows such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Both his family life and his health suffered as a result of this workload and an associated long-term alcohol problem.

He married and divorced three times. After separating from his third wife, Peggy Lipton, he suffered a nervous breakdown. To recover, he went to the Pacific island owned by actor Marlon Brando, whom he first met in a jazz club at the age of 18.

Jones was also in a relationship with actress and model Nastassja Kinski in the 1990s and had a total of seven children.

He fell into a diabetic coma for four days in 2015 and was hospitalized the following year with a blood clot.

His death on Sunday at the age of 91 left the music world in mourning.

If there is to be a second Quincy Jones memorial concert, stars will be lining up to celebrate the full achievements of a unique talent.