As arranger, composer, and producer, Quincy Jones has helped shape American popular music in a unique way--growing and changing with it, interacting with and recombining its elements--from his beginnings in jazz in the 1950s to his extraordinary successes in r&b in recent decades. Much of that achievement is touched on in the love songs of this 2-CD set, beginning with his early jazz work with Sarah Vaughan and the great Frank Sinatra-Count Basie collaboration on "The Shadow of Your Smile." Perhaps more than anyone else, Jones has been responsible for the contemporary shape of r&b, smoothing out its rough edges and focusing a song with complex, innovative production that has a pulsing undercurrent all its own. As this collection so ably demonstrates, Jones is as at home with jazz singer Rachelle Farrell in a recasting of "Moody's Mood for Love" as he is lending his special skills to soulful singers like Patti Austin and James Ingram. --Adam Rains