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Smoky-voiced temptress seduces pop culture
By Johanna E. Dean
Staff Writer
FILE PHOTO
The beautiful Norah Jones tickles the ivory.
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Why are people so varied as Seventeen magazine subscribers and their grandparents buying over three million copies of a piano-playing jazz singer’s debut album? The unlikely kin of integrity and universal appeal Norah Jones has managed to maintain since her debut release last year is captivating not only music listeners, but the revolutionizing music industry. Jones released “Come Away With Me” in 2002 on a small artistically- driven jazz label, Blue Note Records, placing herself in the company of Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. Her disc has held its own in mainstream music, maintaining the number-one slot on Billboard charts for four weeks, and forty-nine weeks after its release dropping to number two.
There are two platinum album plaques in the Blue Note offices. One certifies the sale of one million copies of the album in the United States. The other certifies the sale of three million. What about a two million plaque? “The album moved from one million to three million so fast that we didn’t have time to order it,” Blue Note executive Bruce Lundvall said.
Just who is this twenty-first century siren and how did she develop her unique presence? It is true, Jones is the daughter of Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. She saw Shankar sparingly during her early years and originally didn’t mention him in her press biography to avoid the appearance of using the relationship for publicity reasons. News came of the connection and some interpreted her silence as a rejection of her father, who was not married to her mother. Jones does occasionally speak about him now. “I love my dad,” she says, to make sure there is no misunderstanding. “We are very close.”
Jones grew up in Grapevine, Tex., just outside of Dallas, where she sang in her local church since she was five years old. At seven years old, Jones began taking piano lessons. At the age of fifteen, she and her mother Sue Jones moved to central Dallas where young Jones enrolled in Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. (Singer Erykah Badu, as well as many other musicians are Washington alumni.) On her sixteenth birthday, Jones had her first gig, an open-mic night at a local coffeehouse. In the summer of 1999, Jones moved to Greenwich Village where she began playing a club called the Living Room. It was through this connection that Lundvall first became aware of Jones. After listening to just three songs on a demo tape, Lundvall signed Jones to Blue Note.
Shankar said of his daughter, “I always knew Norah was very musical from when she was very young. After a gap of eight years when she came back to me, I was amazed with her musical growth.” He also told The New York Times he is “thrilled” by Jones’s success.
The album “Come Away With Me” earned an astounding eight Grammy nominations in early January. Jones herself is nominated to receive Album of the Year, Record of the Year (for the single “Don’t Know Why”), Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (“Don’t Know Why”), and Best Pop Vocal Album. Her album is also nominated for Song of the Year (awarded to the “Don’t Know Why” songwriter Jesse Harris), Best Producer non-classical (her producer Arif Mardin) and Best Engineered album non-classical (awarded to engineers Husky Huskolds, Arif Mardin and Jay Newland).
“One of my colleagues told me that Norah was so far from what his bosses were looking for last year that he would have been fired if he had signed her,” said Arif Mardin, who was nominated for the Producer of the Year Grammy for his work with Jones on her album. “Now, his bosses are saying, ‘Go out and find me a Norah Jones.’"
Watch Norah Jones clean up at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards airing Feb. 23 at 8p.m. on CBS.
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