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Norah
Jones
Date of birth: March 30, 1979
Profession: Singer; pianist
Biography from Current
Biography (2003)
Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights
reserved.
With her penchant for blending elements of jazz, blues, folk, and country
music in her songs, the 24-year-old singer and pianist Norah Jones might seem unlikely
to be a pop sensation. Yet she proved herself
to be just that at the 45th annual Grammy
Awards ceremony, held on February 23,
2003, when her debut album-Come Away
with Me-dominated the events, capturing
eight Grammys and winning in every category for which it was nominated. Jones, a
virtual unknown before her album's release, in
February 2002, found herself one of the most talked-about artists in the nation
afterward; Come Away with Me, released on the jazz-oriented label Blue Note, generated
buzz among music critics and fans alike, with
reviewers comparing Jones's smooth, sultry
voice and laid-back style to the vocals of performers as varied as Billie Holiday, Nina
Simone, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, Cas
sandra Wilson, and even Willie Nelson. Despite-or perhaps because of-its genre- Jones, Norah
defying songs, the album has so far gone quadruple platinum, which
indicates that more than four million copies have been sold. In 2002 Mar. 30, 1979-Jones was named a top entertainer of the year by both Rolling Stone Singer; pianist
and Entertainment Weekly magazines.
The daughter of Sue Jones, a concert producer turned nurse, and Note Records 304
the famed Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, Norah Jones was born on March 30,1979 in New York City. Shortly after her birth, her
parents nine-year relationship came to an end. Shankar had little to do with his
daughter's upbringing; one period of nearly a decade passed without
contact between the two. When Jones was four years old, she moved
with her mother to the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas. She demonstrated a love for music from an early age and was largely influenced
by her mother's extensive record collection, which heavily featured the
work of jazz and blues artists as well as a number of strong singers,
among them Ray Charles, George Jones, and the opera performer Maria Callas. "My mom had this eight-album Billie Holiday set," Jones
recalled for a biographical profile on Blue Note's Web site. "I picked out
the one disc that I liked and played that over and over again. You Go to My Head, that was my favorite." At the age of six, Jones began taking
classical piano lessons, but hardly proved to be a child prodigy. Bored after a few years, she stopped playing and did not resume lessons until she was in the seventh grade, when she began studying jazz piano with the instructor and performer Julie Bonk. While she had never taken formal voice lessons, she enjoyed singing as she played the piano. (Her previous singing experience had been limited to performance with the
church choir.) "A lot of kids study singing in school or a choir and they come out singing so straight it drives me
nuts," Bonk told Robert Hilburn for the Los Angeles Times (January 26,2003), as quoted on Jones's
official Web site. "Norah sang right away with feeling. We used to talk
about how Ella Fitzgerald and other great singers make each word sound special and how they think about the meaning of the song." Of her natural vocal abilities, Jones explained to
Hilburn, "Singing was like a hobby because it was so easy. I think singing is in your body, some- thing you can either do or you can't."
When Jones was 15 she and her mother moved to central Dallas, where she began attending Booker T. Washington High School for the
Performing and Visual Arts. (The renowned high school is the alma mater of musical stars including the soul singer Erykah Badu and the trumpet player Roy Hargrove.) It was there that she began developing her singing talents. She made her vocal debut the following year at a local coffeehouse,
performing a version of "I'll Be Seeing You,"
inspired by Etta James's treatment of that Billie Holiday classic. While in high school Jones received the 1996 Down Beat Student Music Award for best jazz vocalist and best original composition; she repeated her win for best jazz vocalist in 1997. As Kent
Ellingson, her piano
teacher at Booker T. Washington, recalled to Hilburn, "Jones] had a sense of phrasing and style and quality that just seemed to be well be- yond her years. She was ready for a professional career from the
moment I met her."
Jones attended the University of North Texas in Denton, which is known for its exceptional music program, and majored in jazz piano.
In late 1999 she began appearing with Wax Poetic, a funk-fusion band that
performed regularly throughout New York City. At the Living Room-where, in the summer. of 2000, she gave some of her first solo
performances-she often sang while playing the piano, combining jazz, blues, country, and pop. In addition, she
performed occasionally with Harris's band, the Ferdinandos, and formed another band with Harris, the bassist Lee Alexander, and the drummer Dan
Rieser.
Jones's big break came in early 2000, when she sang in New York for a crowd that included a music-industry accountant, Shell White. Though White had had no experience in managing artists, she
approached Jones and asked if she could begin lobbying music executives to get the young singer signed. That October, Jones, along with Harris, Alexander, and
Rieser, recorded a six-song EP, titled Norah Jones: First Sessions, for Blue Note Records. Completed in two days, the recording featured four songs that would later be included on Come Away with Me. (The earlier record, released in 2001, is now out of print and is
considered a collectors item.) The final song on the EP was a cover of
Horace Silver's "Peace," featuring Jones on the piano, which she had never played in a studio before that day; the EP also included Jones's original composition "Come Away with Me." When Blue Note's president, Bruce
Lundvall, heard the tape, he was so impressed that he signed Jones immediately. "Norah doesn't have one of those over-the-top
instruments," he later told the reporter for Time. "It's just a signature voice, right from the heart to you. When you're lucky enough to hear that, you don't hesitate. You sign it." During that period Jones also recorded two songs-covers of Roxy Music's "More Than This" and Nick Drake's "Day Is Done"-for the guitarist Charlie Hunters Blue Note album Songs from the Analog Playground (2001). Rita Houston, music director of New York City's progressive pop station
WFUV, named Jones's demo EP the best new music she had heard in 2001. "What I was immediately struck by was her gift of blurring the lines between jazz, country, blues and pop," Houston told Rob Hoerburger for the New York Times (March 3, 2002). "She's a great person to carry on the old songs, but it would be a mistake to limit her to that."
In early 2001 Jones began work on her debut album, which she
initially intended to reflect her jazz-pop sensibilities. As she recalled for
Time, "[Lundvall] asked me if I wanted to be a jazz singer or a pop
singer, and I said, 'Oh, a jazz singer!'" As she began seeking out material for the album, though, her interests began to shift. "I started meeting songwriters and getting into songwriting myself. And now my CD comes out, and I kind of went a different way." The producer Craig Street initially worked on the album in Woodstock, New York, but both Jones and Lundvall were disappointed with the embellishments in many of Street's arrangements. Looking for a simpler sound, they turned to the legendary music producer Arif
Mardin-whose credits include work with the Bee Gees, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin,
Patti LaBelle, Bette Midler, Willie Nelson, Dusty Springfield, Carly Simon,
and Barbra Streisand-to produce the album with a greater focus on
Jones's voice. The result was the pure sound Jones and Lundvall had
sought: though Jones was accompanied by a three-piece band and her own piano, most of the tracks emphasized her rich vocals. Overall, the album reflected her eclectic musical influences, featuring songs that combined aspects of country, folk, blues, jazz, and pop. In addition to covers of Hank Williams's country classic "Cold Cold Heart," John D. Loudermilk's blues ballad "Turn Me On," and Hoagy Carmichael's jazz standard "The Nearness of You," the album included many original songs, with five compositions by Harris. Jones wrote two songs herself, including the title track.
When Lundvall heard the final version of the album, he was
surprised by how much it deviated from Blue Note's usual jazz fare. The
album's pop-oriented sound led him to suggest that it be released on Manhattan Records, a pop label he managed, or that Jones re-record some of the material to bring out more of a jazz flavor. When the singer resisted his suggestions, however, he agreed to let the album stand on its own. "The rules were broken a long time ago," he told Time, "and I'm certainly not going to let her go anywhere else." For Jones, the
decision to stay with Blue Note was simple; though she was happy to blend pop into her music, she had little interest in being labeled a pop star. "I didn't want to be on a pop label, because I know what comes with that," she explained to Mark Binelli for Rolling Stone (October 31, 2002). "I didn't want to make videos. I didn't want to be expected to sell millions of records. I didn't ever want to be a celebrity." Free of such commercial pressures, she hoped to focus instead on making the music she wanted. As she told one reporter for BBC News (February 24,2003, on-line), "You don't ever have to sell a million records to be successful in [Blue Note's] books. Sell 50,000 and you can make
another record."
Come Away with Me was released on February 26, 2002, to much critical acclaim. Many reviewers praised the album's understated
production, as well as Jones's refreshing vocal sound. Her husky soprano style was often compared to that of many of her
idols including Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. (Blue Note deliberately left any mention of Jones's relationship to Shankar out of the singer's press kit. "It's not a secret," Jones explained to Jeff Gordinier for Entertainment Weekly [March 22,2002]. "But I didn't grow up with my dad, and I've only had a relationship with him the past four years. I love my dad and we're close as can be, but it's not something that contributed to my musical up-bringing.") As positive word-of-mouth continued to spread
throughout the year, sales of the album increased, reaching platinum status in August 2002. In addition, Jones's single "Don't Know Why" began receiving heightened airplay on both radio and cable video
channels. At one point Jones-worried that the public would become weary of it-asked Lundvall
if he could stop selling the album. "I know it was naive, but I was starting to panic," she told
Hilburn. Jones also objected to plans to make her recordings supposedly more radio-friendly. "That was around the time Virgin Records took over radio promotion and they brought me a remix of 'Don't Know Why,' which they said radio would like better than the album version. I have no problem with tech-no music and remixes, but this one was horrible. They had drum
machines on it and it was going, 'Don't know why. . . why. . . why.' It was the most absurd thing I've ever heard." Jones refused to allow the
release of the new version of the song, and Lundvall supported her
decision.
By early 2003 Come Away with Me had climbed to the top of Bill- board's Top 200 chart and sold more than three million copies. "Don't Know Why" had peaked on Billboard's Hot 100 chart at number 41.
Still, the announcement of the Grammy nominations in January brought Jones a new level of fame. She avoided much of the publicity
surrounding the nominations, telling Hilburn, "The record industry has
gotten so into image that image becomes more important than the
singer."
While many music-industry observers considered Jones the likely winner of the Grammy Award for best new artist, few expected the
sweep that occurred on February 23, 2003, when Come Away with Me
brought home eight awards, winning in each category for which it was nominated. Jones personally received five statuettes, for album of the
year, best new artist, record of the year (for "Don't Know Why"), best Entertainment Weekly pop vocal album, and best female pop vocal album. Her album also
collected awards for best song (which went to songwriter Jesse Harris for New York Times VI "Don't Know Why"), best engineered album in the nonclassical
category, and producer of the year, nonclassical. No one was more surprised with photo, by those events than Jones herself. "This is insane," she told Angela
Pacienza for the Canadian Press (February 24,2003, on-line), in an
interview backstage. "I was happy with two." She told a reporter for the
on-line news site Launch (February 24,2003), "It's amazing.
Career-wise, this is probably the biggest thing I'll ever do. I don't expect
to ever have another record like this. . . . It's exciting that it
happened, but I know this doesn't happen every day." Jones's success at
the Grammy Awards program soon translated into even greater sales. Within one week of the awards show, purchases of her album had 2002, with photo
... jumped more than 300 percent, signaling the biggest post-Grammy sales spike on record. As of March 15, 2003 Come Away with Me held the top spot on Billboard's Top 200 chart, with 4.2 million copies sold, and "Don't Know Why" had climbed to number 30 on the Top 100
singles chart.
Despite her newfound level of fame, Jones has continued to concentrate on what she feels is important-her music itself. She and her band recently completed tours of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and they scheduled an extensive U.S.
tour for 2003. For her next album, she told Chris Willman for Entertainment Weekly (December 20-27, 2002), she may shift her musical focus altogether. "Sometimes I want to sing jazz again. [Other times] I want to play guitar in a rock band!" she said, adding, "You know, my version of 'rock out' is very low key." Norah Jones resides in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, Lee Alexander.
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