Jones was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, the oldest son of Sarah Frances (née Wells), an apartment complex manager and bank executive who suffered from schizophrenia, and Quincy Delightt Jones, Sr., a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter.

Jones discovered music in grade school at Raymond Elementary School on Chicago's South Side and took up the trumpet. When he was 10, his family moved to Bremerton, Washington and he attended Seattle's Garfield High School. It was in Seattle that Jones, 14, first met a 17-year-old Ray Charles.

Quincy Jones' Family Tree