Stevie Wonder, Cynthia Erivo and Will Smith have starred in a tribute performance to producer Quincy Jones at the 67th Grammy Awards ceremony.
The tribute to the 28-time Grammy winner came after he died last year aged 91, with Will Smith introducing it as jazz legend Herbie Hancock played Killer Joe behind him.
Smith said he “touched countless lives” but “changed mine forever”, saying he made legends “sound even greater”.
He then introduced Wicked star Erivo to sing Jones’s collaborator Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me To The Moon with Hancock.
The stage then opened up to reveal a larger band who finished the song with Erivo, before she introduced Lainey Wilson and Jacob Collier singing Jones’s song Let The Good Times Roll.
After that Hancock returned to the piano, joined by Wonder, who accompanied him on harmonica as they performed the jazz standard Bluesette.
Wonder then led the crowd on a singalong of We Are The World, the charity single Jones produced for USA For Africa.
Former Fresh Prince Of Bel Air star Smith then returned to tell an anecdote about Jones, before introducing singer Janelle Monae, dressed as Michael Jackson and singing Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, she ripped her suit off to reveal an “I (Heart) QJ” t-shirt while dancing on tables.
While telling his monologue, Smith said: “Quincy Jones was a mentor, friend, father figure.
“I want to share a little story about Quincy.
“Quincy was the executive producer of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and we’re on set one day, and you know, I’m 22 years old, Quincy gave me a shot with this show, and I’m on set, and I’m having a really hard time because y’all saw the early episode, so y’all know I couldn’t really act.
“So I’m having a hard time on set and working through a scene, and somebody says, ‘Will, Quincy wants to see you’.
“I’m like in the middle of this scene, they said, ‘no, he said, come right now’, so I go, and Quincy’s standing there, he got his hands on his hips, and he’s at the snack table, and he’s looking at the snacks.
“And I was like, what’s up, Q? He says, so this is the food that you think the people on your set should eat.
“I was like, ‘Quincy, I don’t do the snacks on the show’, he said, ‘whose name was on this script? It says Mr Fresh Prince’, Quincy, it’s me.
“He said, ‘so, let me get this straight, you want these people to work 16 or 18 hours a day so you can realise your dreams, and this is the food you think they should eat’.
“He said, ‘I don’t care if it’s not in the budget, you pay for it out of your own pocket’.
“And he said something to me that became the absolute centre of how I wanted to have my career, how I wanted to live my life.
“He looked right in my face, and he said, ‘it is your job to take care of these people’, and I’ve done everything I can through my career to try to live up to Quincy’s demand.”
Jones is one of the few people to have earned non-competitive EGOT status, a winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, where one of the awards was honorary or non-competitive.
He is best known for his work with Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Tony Bennett, and Michael Jackson, on his albums Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad.
