more praise for ‘complete’ q, s.f. book signing
Accolades for The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions continue to roll in with NBC’s Today Show, USA Today and the San Francisco Chronicle all weighing in with positive notices.
The Complete Quincy Jones was one of the titles spotlighted in The Today Show’s holiday book picks in a segment aired on Friday (December 12). In the piece, Marva Allen, from the Hue-Man Bookstore in New York, highlighted her coffee table book choices, naming Q’s latest alongside titles featuring Prince, President-elect Barack Obama, and hip-hop art and design. You can see Allen’s picks here and view the segment below. Allen and host Matt Lauer discuss Quincy’s book beginning at the 2:28 mark.
In a piece published in USA Today on Friday (December 12), Pop Music Critic Edna Gundersen chose The Complete Quincy to lead her holiday gift guide, headlined, “Photo books are music to your eyes.”
Writing about Q’s latest, Gundersen notes: “To celebrate his 75th birthday, the maestro behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller and countless productions with music’s A-list relates his amazing rise from struggling musician to creative supernova in spellbinding stories and an abundant repository of letters, photographs, notes and artifacts. It’s part musical diary, part celebrity yearbook.”
You can read the whole piece here.
Finally, the SFGate, the online home of the San Francisco Chronicle, has a feature on Quincy penned by David Rubien, focusing on The Complete Quincy Jones. In the piece, Rubien captures several great Quincy quotes and says of the book: “Unsurprising for a Jones project, the book is unique. It has to be one of the most lavishly produced volumes of photos and memorabilia ever published, containing high-quality reproductions of items like Jones’ report card from Schillinger House of Music (which became the Berklee School of Music); pages from Jones’ appointment calendar from 1955, when he was leading a big band (with handwritten notes like ‘call Hamp’ and ‘call Bags’ and ‘Dentist’); ledger pages indicating what he, as a producer, was paying musicians ($240 to Ray Charles in 1959 for recording ‘Deed I Do’; and ‘Let the Good Times Roll’); and the original scribbled-on sheet music for the Jones-produced ‘We Are the World.’ You can actually remove these items from their special pockets in the book.”
You can read the entire piece here.
As noted in the SFGate, Quincy is in Sacramento today (December 15), where he’ll be inducted to the California Hall of Fame.
On Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Q will sign copies of The Complete Quincy Jones after his conversation with noted journalist Ben Fong-Torres. You can find more information here.