But like one of those clown cars in the circus, The Complete Quincy Jones squeezes an impossible amount of material in between its covers… There’s something comforting about this glimpse over a genius’s shoulder, a welcome reminder that even living legends must do the little things that make big things possible.
Coming seven years after his bestselling autobiography Q (Doubleday), The Complete Quincy Jones is a stunning visual feast seasoned with just enough text to serve up the next sumptuous spread.
At first glance 142 pages might not seem near enough space to do justice to the dude who rose up from the streets of Seattle and Chicago, joined Lionel Hampton’s band as a teenager, collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington, and Ray Charles, conducted and arranged for Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, scored 36 films including 1967’s In Cold Blood and 1985’s The Color Purple, wrote the theme to Sanford & Son, produced the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller (Epic, 1982—act like ya know!), as well as a little single called “We Are The World” (Columbia, 1985), launched Will Smith’s acting career, collected more Grammy nominations (79) and awards (27) than any other human being, battled brain cancer (twice), raised seven children, devoted himself to humanitarian causes, and, incidentally, founded VIBE.
Nope, less than two pages per year wouldn’t be near enough space to trace the 75-year-and-counting journey of a man who, as Oprah Winfrey once remarked, “on a bad day does more than most people do in a lifetime.”
But like one of those clown cars in the circus, The Complete Quincy Jones squeezes an impossible amount of material in between its covers. This phenomenal volume—produced by California-based Insight Editions—is jam-packed with fold-out facsimiles of memorabilia, allowing readers to hold in their own hands Quincy’s family photo album, or his 1951 music school report card, or his annotated vocal arrangement for “We Are The World,” or his autographed roster from the Presidential Delegation to the Inauguration of Nelson Mandela.
But this reader’s favorite has to be the scotch-taped-together address book he used to keep track of his accounts in the mid 1950s, his immaculate handwriting carefully recording the names of all the session musicians, counting each and every dollar and franc he had coming to him for all that work with Louis Jordan and James Cleveland and Brook Benton and on and on.
There’s something comforting about this glimpse over a genius’s shoulder, a welcome reminder that even living legends must do the little things that make big things possible. “I believed in my dreams because they were my only option,” Quincy once said. Dream on.
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