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In 1974, Quincy Jones – ‘Q’ to all his friends – suffered two brain aneurysms that left him unable to play the trumpet. He was given a 1% chance of surviving the operation, and when the doctors shaved his head they kept his hair in a plastic bag, in case they needed to paste it back on to his corpse. He woke up to find an extravagant memorial service had been planned, and decided it might as well go ahead. “Frank Sinatra said to me, ‘Q, live each day like it’s your last. And one day you’ll be right.’”

Witnessing all the talent that turned up for his 1974 memorial, which he attended with two metal plates in his skull, Jones was struck by the extraordinary line-up. He shouldn’t have been, for even before cementing his production credentials on ‘Thriller’, the biggest selling album of all time, Quincy was already a multi- faceted star – trumpeter, film and Tv composer, band leader, producer, arranger. Aside from Jackson, he has worked with such artists as Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, Paul McCartney and Miles Davis, to name just a few. He has been nominated for a record 79 Grammys, winning 27 and in 1991, he also received the Grammy Legend Award.