Rickie Lee Jones s/d

[koganbot]

OK, I know way less about Rickie Lee Jones than about most any other of the influential singer-songwriters, but lonepilgrim embedded this live track and, as the YouTube guy says, "This shit rocks!"

Rickie Lee Jones and a bunch of half-naked guys:

"Rickie Lee Jones, WHITE GIRL" (Watch on YouTube)

So, tell me more. What do you know about Rickie Lee Jones, what do you like, what do you dislike? In my comment I told Peter "I'd only heard a smattering of Rickie Lee Jones over the years, have no idea of the arc of her career, but this track actually fits right into my expectations, sort of a cross between Patti and Joni..." And then I went into my usual shtick about Joni et al. leading to Stevie and Sheryl and Alanis which in turn leads into the '00s teen-confessional.

Comments

[koganbot]

Oh yes, definitely Nyro (who's got some of soul-jazz leanings, iirc, though I've never owned a Nyro album) and Janis Ian (who's still performing around; just read a promo email where whoever was being promo'd was on the same bill as Ian). Peter links Rickie Lee to jazz, and I don't think of her vocals as being particularly jazz, the musicians on that track I embedded are definitely willing to go electric jazz at moments, while basically being rock.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, that's clearly her post-grunge phase (she mentions Nirvana as an influence), not to mention maybe her jam-band phase (being at the Horde Festival and all), neither of which phases I ever realized she had. But her early music had saxophones in it. Which counts as jazz in a way (though back then, Gerry Rafferty and Quarterflash and Supertramp and Men At Work and Springsteen assured saxes were in rock a lot. I wonder why that ended.)