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Rickie Lee Jones
RICKIE LEE JONES has spent a life time dancing with her muse. She is the most iconic American female singer-songwriter of her time, a woman who outlasted all her adversaries–including youth and self-destruction. A seasoned humility brings her performances an authenticity that only long-enduring musicians achieve.
By the time she nineteen, JONES was living in Los Angeles, waiting tables and occasionally playing music in out of the way coffee houses and bars. All the while, she was developing her unique aesthetic: music that was sometimes spoken, often beautifully sung, and while emotionally accessible, she was writing lyrics as taut and complex as any by the great American poet, Elizabeth Bishop. In JONES’ voice and songs, we saw smoky stocking seams, love being everything but requited. And it was during these years that RICKIE LEE’s song, “Easy Money,” caught the attention of one musician and then the music industry. The song was recorded by Lowell George, the founder of the band, Little Feat. He used it on his solo album, Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here. Shortly thereafter, Warner Brothers auditioned JONES and quickly signed her to the label.
Her 1979 debut RICKIE LEE JONES (Warner Bros) won the Grammy for “Best New Artist.” She was hailed by one critic as a “highly touted new pop-jazz-singer-songwriter” and another critic as “one of the best–if not the best–artist of her generation.” In addition to the album’s brilliant songs–including the exceptional “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963,” the haunting “Last Chance Texaco,” and the popular “Chuck E’s in Love”–JONES was becoming a figure whose life was bearing a great deal of emulation by young women and men who found, in her deep and personal and idiosyncratic life and work, a model for the new generation of hipster.
The American culture was instantly intrigued. RICKIE LEE seemed as much of a hit as her song. She was the alternative to punk/new wave, representing the revitalization of the dying art of the pop song. She liked pop and said so. JONES’ work was the amalgamation of jazz and rock and pop, a percolating zygote that made itself into a brave new world called RICKIE LEE JONES. American culture was changed.
Her second release, PIRATES, was instantly hailed as one of the great albums of all time, garnering the elusive 5-star review and a second cover in Rolling Stone, RICKIE LEE JONES seemed to be able to do anything the boys could do, and on her own terms. Her impact would be felt long after, even when she herself became one of the long unrecognized American treasures.
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Rickie Lee Jones: Pieces of Treasure
by Angelo Leonardi
È stata una relazione lunga e tormentata quella tra Rickie Lee Jones e il songbook jazzistico. Una relazione iniziata con le sue prime esibizioni pubbliche, oltre quarant'anni fa, che va avanti alimentata dall'amore, nonostante tutto. Diciamo questo perché la risposta di pubblico e critica è stata fredda e talvolta feroce. Jazz standards costellano molti suoi album e ne troviamo in particolare in Girl at Her Volcano del 1983 e in Pop Pop del 1991 ma solo oggi ...
read moreRickie Lee Jones: Peg Leg’s Granddaughter Rises Above
by R.J. DeLuke
Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour, the memoir of the eminent Rickie Lee Jones, is not a collection of stories about the famous singer who sprouted from the hippie era under the radar before blazing like a shooting star across the American sky with her self-titled debut album that contained the megahit Chuck E's in Love." Of course, Jones is that person and that story of a meteoric rise, quickly surpassing friends like Tom Waits in ...
read moreRickie Lee Jones: Balm in Gilead
by Gina Vodegel
If a musical career spans a period of thirty years, there's bound to be ups and downs along the way. Rickie Lee Jones has always insisted on making her own choices, sometimes baffling her critics with yet another puzzle to work out. Here the Duchess of Coolsville combines her multiple talents as an artist, songwriter and producer with a little help from musical friends like Jon Brion, Bill Frisell, Brian Swartz, Pete Thomas and Reggie McBride.
The album ...
read moreRickie Lee Jones: Alive in Albany, NY
by R.J. DeLuke
Rickie Lee Jones is a pure artist. She’s not a dyed-in-the-wool jazzer, though improvisation is an important part of what she does (more than many jazz singers I’ve heard). She’s part poet, part beatnik. She’s part coquette and part of her just tells what she observes in life.
(Art... n’est pas?)
What she really is, is just Rickie Lee Jones. Period. She has a sound and an approach that is all her own, whether it’s a jazz standard — of ...
read moreRickie Lee Jones: Live At Red Rocks
by Ashley King
Live records are perhaps the most precarious of balancing acts. For too many artists, ventures into unplugged territory prove to be nothing more than overproduced exercises in self-indulgence. On the contrary, Live At Red Rocks, the most recent release from Rickie Lee Jones, is a refreshingly satisfying jaunt into this well-traveled arena.
In contrast to her 1995 live release Naked Song s, Red Rocks is not about showcasing Jones as a stripped down, acoustic singer-songwriter. But rather it is about ...
read moreRickie Lee Jones on Bix, Billie and the art of song
Source:
Michael Ricci
Rickie Lee Jones, the acclaimed singer and songwriter, is on a short tour that includes a Saturday stop at the Temple Performing Arts Center, formerly the Baptist Temple.
Jones' smashing debut album of 1979, Rickie Lee Jones, brought a jazz-infused, bohemian-poet ethos to both pop music and fashion, and her idiosyncratic approach to composition and singing has influenced artists from Tori Amos to Norah Jones.
Her most recent album, last year's Balm in Gilead, reflected on family, friends, maturity, and ...
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Rickie Lee Jones Adds Dates
Source:
JamBase
RICKIE LEE JONES ADDS FEBRUARY TOUR DATES IN SUPPORT OF BALM IN GILEAD
Rickie Lee Jones Rickie Lee Jones has added additional tour dates in February in support of her recently released album Balm in Gilead. The tour includes stops in Chicago, Seattle and Portland, and the set will feature songs from the new album as well as fan favorites from Jones' memorable past albums. The New Yorker called Balm in Gilead Jones' strongest record of the second ...
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