In 1974, Quincy Jones was given just a 1% chance of living after suffering a brain aneurysm. “It was scary,” Jones told GQ in 2018. “Like somebody blew my brains out. The main artery to your brain explodes, you know.”
Following a seven-and-a-half-hour brain surgery, doctors discovered a second aneurysm in Jones. With a grim prognosis, his showbiz peers started planning a memorial service for the jazz trumpeter who had become a renowned producer and arranger for legends like Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, as reported by the New York Post.
The planned memorial service for Jones was held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. The 28-time Grammy winner attended the event before undergoing his second brain surgery.
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“The doctor said, ‘The good news is you lived through the first one, but you have another, and we have to go back in two months,’” he told THR. “He said I could go to the concert, but I couldn’t get excited. How do I not get excited looking at Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye and Billy Eckstine and Cannonball Adderley?”
Despite surviving his first aneurysm, Jones attended the memorial service under supervision. The event featured actor-comedian Richard Pryor and jazz legend Sarah Vaughan.
“The neurologist sat with me to make sure I didn’t get into trouble,” he told THR. “I still have a great picture of Sidney Poitier and me hugging each other from that night.”
Reflecting on the experience in 2018, Jones wrote on social media, “I basically attended my own funeral … It was special to see so many people there to celebrate what would’ve been my 41 years of life.”
Jones went on to achieve historic heights, including producing Michael Jackson’s blockbuster albums “Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Bad,” winning Grammys for his LPs “The Dude” and “Back on the Block,” and contributing to “The Color Purple” and the charity single “We Are the World”. However, he could never play the trumpet again.
“I couldn’t get away with it, man,” he told GQ about feeling pain after continuing to try to play with a surgically implanted clip on a blood vessel in his brain despite doctor’s orders. “I missed the trumpet … I finger all the time. But I can’t touch it.”
Jones also narrowly escaped death by skipping a party at Sharon Tate’s home the night she and four others were murdered by the Manson family in 1969. He viewed these experiences as blessings that contributed to his creative evolution.
