A paragraph's worth of titles have preceded the name of Quincy Jones over the course his 50-year music career, one of the most successful and celebrated in the history of contemporary music.
Jones has encompassed the roles of composer, producer (music, film, TV), artist, arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, executive, magazine founder and multimedia entrepreneur, shuffling and fusing musical genres as diverse as jazz, classical, pop and hip-hop.
But if his career has been marked by the extraordinary diversity of the roles he has played, it has been equally notable for the success he has found in each of them.
There's no adequate way to tell of his body of work succinctly, but PBS's American Masters, which has profiled the lives and achievements of important figures in American arts and culture for 15 years, has endeavored to do so in Quincy Jones, a 90-minute portrait, airing locally on WEDU-Ch. 3 at 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18.
American Masters explores Jones' contributions to the American landscape beyond the scope of traditional biographies, and in doing so provides far greater insight than a simple naming of achievements.
That said, here are a few: Q has won 26 Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Living Legend Award, produced the historic best-selling single We Are The World and the best- selling album ever, Michael Jackson's Thriller. He's earned seven Oscar nominations, having broken into filmmaking as co-producer of the 1985 film, The Color Purple.
The broadcast of Quincy Jones on American Masters coincides with the publication of Jones' autobiography and the release of a retrospective box set of his music — really the only tools that can sufficiently detail his life and what he's accomplished.
-Cooper Cruz
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2001.