Product Details

• Actors: Oprah Winfrey, Mervyn Warren, Alex Haley, Jesse Jackson, El DeBarge
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: October 28, 1992
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302066905
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #293,044 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

If casual music fans know the name of the man who is the subject of Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones, more than likely it's as the producer of Off the Wall and Thriller, the two albums that launched Michael Jackson into the pop stratosphere, or perhaps as the musical mastermind behind "We Are the World." Yet while those may be Jones's biggest successes, they certainly aren't the only ones; indeed, some might argue that they are not even the most representative entries on the resumé of the composer-arranger-producer who has made a career of defying all attempts to categorize and define him. A partial list of the folks who appear in director Ellen Weissbrod's 1990 documentary provides some idea of Jones's stature: Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Barbra Streisand, to name just the biggest of the big. Some of them were involved in the making of Back on the Block, the album Jones was working on at the time and a kind of career summation that included elements of jazz, pop, hip-hop, R&B, and other styles. That recording provides the overall context here, but there's a great deal more, as Jones leads us through his hardscrabble Chicago childhood (his mother had gone to a mental hospital when he was 6 or 7; as a result, "the word 'mother' doesn't have much meaning for me"), the family's move to Seattle, his days as a trumpeter with Lionel Hampton and later as leader of his own big band, his move into production (among his earliest successes, amazingly, was Lesley Gore's "It's My Party") and film composing (In the Heat of the Night, The Color Purple, Roots, and many more), his three failed marriages, the effects of race on his life and work, and serious health issues such as the near-fatal cerebral aneurysm he suffered in 1974. Weissbrod takes a creative approach to all of this, eschewing voice-over narration in favor of a more freeform collection of spoken words and images, often commingling and overlapping older footage with moodily lit current interview segments and scenes of "Q" at work in the studio. Bonus material includes various featurettes, one of them with Jones and Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil. --Sam Graham

Product Description

Audio-visual collage of the life and times of musician-composer-arranger-producer Quincy Jones.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance on Brilliance, November 26, 2002

By 

"criticalone" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Listen Up: Lives of Quincy Jones [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is an incredible documentary about an amazing man. The film takes you on a ride through the histroy of jazz while telling the story of the phenomonal genius and versatility of Quincy Jones. The movie, and the life it reflects, are structured like a fine jazz number, layered and intricate with a rythem and flow gracefully linked by a unifying theme. Quincy Jones is high on music and life. Do yourself a favor and... Listen Up!!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance on Brilliance, November 26, 2002

By 

"criticalone" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Listen Up: Lives of Quincy Jones [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is an incredible documentary about an amazing man. The film takes you on a ride through the histroy of jazz while telling the story of the phenomonal genius and versatility of Quincy Jones. The movie, and the life it reflects, are structured like a fine jazz number, layered and intricate with a rythem and flow gracefully linked by a unifying theme. Quincy Jones is high on music and life. Do yourself a favor and... Listen Up!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars quincy is always out of crown, November 2, 2010

By 

freed sultan (riyadh, central Saudi Arabia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Listen Up!: The Lives of Quincy Jones (DVD)

QUINCY JONES IS ALWAYS OUT OF CROWN HE IS VERY GREAT TOUCHING PERFECT PRODUCING SHOW YOU EVERY SINGLE LITTLE DETAIL IN THE RECORED I SLAUT HIM AND RESPECT HIS MAGICAL WORK