Music for Grown-Ups - 19/12/2003 : Rickie Lee Jones

Like the web site?
Buy the book!
Music For Grown-Ups
Celebrating great musicians
by Gerry Smith

Music for Grown-Ups Newsletter
Subscribe to our FREE newsletter now!

19/12/2003

Rickie Lee Jones - an American original

One of the pleasures of writing a blog like Music for Grown-Ups is that you receive unsolicited material about unfamiliar musicians - expert, passionate reviews which simply demand that you investigate further.

When I let slip that I'd signed up to see Rickie Lee Jones in Warwick next April, Jones aficionado Donna Croce, in Connecticut, sent this:

I saw Rickie Lee Jones in November and she will be touring the US in February, so I'll be seeing this tour again. You should check out the new album, as she will likely perform it in its entirety. She'll also do old 'classics' for her fans like me (she's only had one hit ever - in 1979); hope that she performs "Satellites", "Flying Cowboys", and "Stewart's Coat" for you. The show will be very political, so be prepared for some USA/Bush bashing. The band is astounding, each musician playing five or six instruments.

The US concert prices were very low - she's trying to spread the word about what she sees is happening in the USA. Even if she makes no money - even if it costs her money. She still performs in clubs for $10.00! She just did a benefit in NYC for $25 a head and donated all to charity. Can you imagine - $25 in Manhattan!

Jones's work is quintessential music for grown-ups: she is the 'anti-Britney/Madonna', a true American original. I'm not sure whether her LA subculture references will make sense outside the USA. She came of age as part of a bohemian netherworld in the middle of the evil disco era. She represented all that disco was not and her first album sounds as fine today as it did on release; it's as compelling as Astral Weeks. In the '70s she lived with Tom Waits and, although her music is nothing like his, you can understand them being together.

Rickie Lee Jones is my favourite singer, bar none. Reminiscent of Billie Holiday, she has a fragile vulnerability, yet she is a woman of experience. Like Billie, she has had problems with drugs and alcohol. All that is behind her now and she is vocally at the top of her game, at the age of 46.

Recommended listening? Where to begin? She's not prolific. The '79 album, her first, is still a classic. Her cover albums, "Pop Pop" and "It's Like This", are so good that you forget the songs were ever recorded by anyone else. My personal favorite is "Flying Cowboys", all originals, but whatever she covers, she owns. Her last (2002) release of covers, "It's Like This", ranges from the Beatles and Steely Dan to Leonard Bernstein and Gershwin.

If you go for the originals, try and get the lyrics, too, as her phrasing and singing can be hard to understand: the press often refer to her as "Marble Mouth Jones"! But, it's like riding a bike - once you get it, it's very easy.

[Previous entry: "Christmas Carols from King's College, Cambridge"]

[Next entry: "Woke Up This Morning: the first time I met the blues"]

[Latest Update]

Search entries: