Just in time for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, Matthew Garrahan, west coast correspondent for the Financial Times, has put together a rousing profile of a man who is the very embodiment of the dream King once famously spoke of.

Garrahan chatted for three hours with Quincy Jones at the mogul’s expansive Bel Air home, which he makes good use of to frame the article. In the piece, he touches on Jones’ humble Chicago beginnings, brief dalliance with heroin, stories of working with Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, and much more. There are also details about Jones’ increasing ties to China and the rest of Asia, cemented by his role as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics:

The main Asian push begins in March: in addition to being its [new] chairman, Jones is now executive producer of the [Singapore based] Asia Academy of Music Arts & Sciences’ inaugural awards show, envisaged as a kind of Asian Grammys.

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Although it is not quite yet a done deal, The Guardian today strongly hints that Simon Cowell is planning to have his UK The X Factor colleague Cheryl Cole (pictured) join him on this side of the Altantic as well. Cowell’s eye for talent has of course generally been impeccable, but even for him, choosing an unknown-to-U.S.-audiences 27-year-old over other rumored TV judge candidates such as Lionel Richie and Jermaine Jackson is a bold move.

If Cole comes on board the Americanized X Factor edition, she will be following in the frequent private jet flier footsteps of not just Cowell but also Dancing with the Stars judges Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli, who travel back and forth each week to appear in UK-U.S. sister programs. Separately, as a testament to the power of Google’s cache, word is that Cole will not be switching back to her maiden name in the wake of a divorce finalized last month.

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Matthew Garrahan, the Financial Times’ guy in LA, finally got a sit-down with Simon Cowell. He tells FBLA:

I hadn’t met him before. I spent months trying to arrange the interview and kept getting put off by his PRs because he didn’t have time. Then suddenly he was ready to do it so I went up to his place. There was no PR there–just me and him–(his girlfriend was floating around too).
He’s very media savvy but didn’t dodge any questions and smoked a load of cigarettes. I suppose I was expecting him to live in a highly secure gated develepment/celeb hideout but it was just a regular house (albeit a very nice one). We talked a lot about his business–I think usually when he does interviews it’s with the UK tabloids who ask him about his girlfriend /private life etc. The surprising thing was that he was actually very likeable,which I didn’t really expect.

Best line he got from Cowell:

When I’ve had a hard time with the press I’ve normally deserved it.