Rashida Jones paid tribute to her late dad, Quincy Jones, after his death at age 91 on Sunday, November 3.
“My dad was nocturnal his whole adult life. He kept ‘jazz hours’ starting in high school and never looked back. When I was little, I would wake up in the middle of the night to search for him,” Rashida, 48, wrote in a Thursday, November 7, Instagram tribute. “Undoubtedly, he would be somewhere in the house, composing (old school, with a pen and sheet music). He would never send me back to bed. He would smile and bring me into his arms while he continued to work…there was no safer place in the world for me.”
She continued, “He was a giant. An icon. A culture shifter. A genius. All accurate descriptions of my father but his music (and ALL of his work) was a channel for his love. He WAS love. He made everyone he ever met feel loved and seen. That’s his legacy. I was fortunate enough to experience this love in close proximity.”
Rashida closed her note with a message to her late father. “I’ll miss his hugs and kisses and unconditional devotion and advice,” she wrote. “Daddy, it is an honor to be your daughter. Your love lives forever.”
The Parks and Recreation alum is one of the late producer’s seven children. He shared Rashida and Kidada Jones, 50, with his third wife, Peggy Lipton. He was also dad to daughter Jolie Jones Levine, 69, Rachel Jones, 60, Martina Jones, 58, Quincy Delight Jones III, 55, and Kenya Kinski-Jones, 31, from other relationships.
Quincy produced Lesley Gore‘s ’60s hits “You Don’t Own Me” and “It’s My Party” and Michael Jackson‘s biggest songs in the ’80s, including “Thriller” and “Billie Jean.” Snoop Dogg, Frank Sinatra, LL Cool J and Duke Ellington are just a few of the other names the 28-time Grammy Award winner worked with over the years. However, Rashida has been open about opting not to follow in her father’s musical footsteps.
“My dad’s a musical genius. That’s, like, the last thing I want to do, is try my hand at that,” she revealed on an August episode of the “Smartless” podcast. “But I love it. Like, I have a deep ache for music and I just don’t ever feel like I’m good enough to do it. Like, I’ll never be good enough to do it, so I just don’t.”
She added, “I love it so much and I kind of sing for fun and I’ve written for fun, and I’ve sung backup on some albums. I sang backup on the first two Maroon 5’s. I sang for them live.”
Instead, she dove into acting and directing, even codirecting the 2018 documentary Quincy, which chronicled her father’s life and career, with Alan Hicks.
The doc included a vulnerable side of Quincy that hadn’t been documented before, which included showing scenes from a hospitalization amid his struggle with drinking. (He quit alcohol in 2016.)
“I am so protective of my dad, and obviously, that’s a very intimate story to tell,” Rashida told Entertainment Weekly in 2018. “My brother shot some of that stuff in the hospital, and then I shot some. Really, we did it for him, because we wanted him to be able to see where he was so that he wouldn’t forget and he would take care of himself. That was the original intention. I think I could tell that story, because I know he’s a responder and a survivor. And I know that he thrives from being able to look at death and the possibility of death, and then reorganize from there.”
She continued, “That’s what I think made me comfortable doing it. It was certainly not an easy decision. And the first couple of times that I watched the scene where it was in the movie, it for sure made me uncomfortable. But I also felt like if we’re gonna tell this story, we have to really tell the story. I don’t want to pull punches.”
During the documentary, Quincy emphasized his hope to live life to the fullest, saying, “You only live 26,000 days. I’m going to wear them all out.”
