It is hard to rank Quincy Jones’s work because it stretched over such a wide range. Comparing the pop innocence of, say, his production of Lesley Gore’s It’s My Party with the dirty funk of Jones’s own Cool Joe, Mean Joe (Killer Joe) is a fool’s errand. What really shines through, though, is his way of masking any complexities under a carapace of the things that make music flow by yet stick in the mind: tunefulness, grooviness, something unique to make it stand out. With that in mind, here are ten of the best, spanning the length and breadth of his varied career. Jones threw himself into disco funk abandon with a surprise cover of a song by the British singer Chaz Jankel, former member
