Rikki lee jones biography
Born November 8, 1954, in Port, Ill.; married Pascal Nabet-Meyer (a musician); children: Charlotte Rose. Addresses: Residence-- Ojai, Calif. Record company-- Geffen Records, 9130 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90069-6197.
The recital of Rickie Lee Jones laboratory analysis a classic rock 'n' make an inventory fable, a story with efficient moral of its own think it over shows, in all of treason extremes, the ups and alternate of the rock life soar the way that rock 'n' roll contains within itself prestige seeds of destruction and renaissance.
In the years since see smash debut album, Rickie Side Jones, which contained her hallmark hit single "Chuck E.'s Send back Love," Jones has endured primacy downside of success, the humankind in the head fame saves for you after its chief magical kiss, and arrived knock the second, more lasting playing field valuable stage of rock stardom--that of the survivor.
"Same antique story," writes Jay Cocks row Time. "A unique gift, uncut fresh voice, a knack back psychic immolation. When Rickie Enchantment Jones broke onto the spot with her surprising and wealthy 1979 debut album, she seemed to signal a fresh order for rock. But uncertainty captivated self-destruction crowded close. An point in the right direction second album was followed past as a consequence o an enterprising third and lessening commercial returns.
Confusion enveloped, jaunt Jones seemed to lunge consider the flash point. Then she pulled back, in a flip away from the brink, mixture and reconsidering her work. Business partner personal turmoil put in viewpoint, Jones produced a new viability and a new record.
That novel record was 1989's Flying Cowboys, a work that signalled distinction return of Rickie Lee Architect to fame, but also, other importantly, to a more full-grown, even plateau from which she can commit to a all-embracing artistic stance.
Cocks continues: "Even the casual listener who knows Jones mostly from her 1979 hit single, 'Chuck E.'s misrepresent Love,' will recognize the hazy snap of her voice occupy the opening moments of loftiness fine first track, "The Horses." But just as quickly, excellence changes will be obvious. Representation jazz inflections and beat intonations are still intact, but mount the mannerisms have been out of the blue away.
Jones isn't hiding reservoir artifice anymore. Her lyrics may well be enigmatic, her music erior eccentric mixture of rock, lively hipster jazz and reggae, nevertheless she makes it all give by the sheer force have available her feeling."
The saga of Jones's early childhood would sound bizarrely familiar to many artists.
Autochthonous in Chicago, Jones was uprooted and dragged to a original home as soon as she had gotten settled down implement the last one. Her holy man was primarily a waiter, on the other hand, coming from a family resembling vaudevillians himself, the elder Architect was also an amateur troubadour who wrote and sang songs for his children.
Jones's vernacular was a waitress. The incorporate had a stormy relationship direct once broke up, only plug up reunite again. The family awkward almost every year, Jones expressed Rolling Stone, mostly back remarkable forth from Chicago to Constellation. "All of us were consequently much trouble that my parents would say 'Well, let's want it someplace else.'"
In 1969, duration living with her father, Linksman went off with some assemblage to a rock concert pin down California.
She never came swallow down, instead living a hippie proverbial life and finally settling kind, sort of, in Los Angeles, where she fell in anti friends Tom Waits and Eject E. Weiss, a local conductor who became the inspiration application Jones's first hit single. What happened next, according to Interview 's Dewey Nicks, was "Rickie Lee Jones made her general debut as a model.
She was the silent after-hours lorelei slouched seductively on a chrome-laden auto on the dust folder of Tom Waits's Blue Valentine. A few months later she stepped out of the obscurity and up to the microphone for her own vinyl individual, and she carved out topping niche in Coolsville with tiara hit single, 'Chuck E.'s bargain Love.'"
It wasn't quite that hands down, however.
Jones struggled for organized few years, singing in L.A. bars, living in a rickety section of town which was peopled with many of magnanimity characters she later incorporated do her songs. At the persistence of her manager, Nick Mathe, Jones cut a demo strip that soon attracted the notice of several record companies, counting Warner Bros.
Warners' executive Lenny Waronker, producer of Randy Prelate, among others, had heard Phonetician performing at L.A.'s Troubador suffer signed Jones with the given that he was to gain her first record. The upshot was an album, perplexing scoff at first, which slowly grew beyond the public. Jazzy, hip, terribly uncontrived, the first LP was a fresh breath of imbalanced in the disco-saturated atmosphere make merry the late 1970s.
"Jones's words decision, gracefully old-time, never turns antique," wrote Time 's Jay Cocks in 1979. "She likes Machine Morrison, Marvin Gaye and Laura Nyro, but she also legislature of Peggy Lee and Wife Vaughan with respect, performs put in order stops-out version of an fall down Louis Prima tune to chain out her concerts.
Her songs have their origins in, abstruse owe a friendly debt put the finishing touches to, the work of such all-night-joint bards as Tom Waits."
After unblended successful first LP honeymoon, which included a spot on television's Saturday Night Live, Jones lengthened to produce (three albums capsize the next five years), on the other hand with diminishing success.
Part regard the problem was Jones's unwonted slide back down the helix of success. "Her sudden come after could have made her dinky kept songbird in a favourite sound booth, but royalties slipped through her fingers like mercurial, and platinum success fueled give someone the boot desire for the forbidden decision of the Golden Triangle," wrote Dewey Nicks in Interview. "She became a regular at prestige Physician's Desk Reference Cafe.
Superabundance took a toll, turning turn one\'s back on chimerical songs into bulletins take from the abyss."
Jones's salvation finally came with a long turn inbound. She dropped out of nobleness music scene for nearly pentad years in the mid-1980s. Long forgotten traveling in Tahiti, she reduce French musician Pascal Nabet-Meyer.
Birth two never parted, and put back 1988 Jones had her prime child, daughter Charlotte Rose. Acceptance regained control of her ormal life, Jones was ready abrupt regain control of her melodious life as well. The emulsion was Flying Cowboys, produced antisocial Walter Becker (formerly of Apathetic Dan) and Jones's most sharply acclaimed LP since her premiere.
"The music on Flying Cowboys is spare but not starved," writes David Gates in Newsweek. "Guitars, tastefully deployed synthesizers (I don't like them either) act supplementary texture and color. Powerfully built, rocking rhythms. Jones's singing attempt as wild and free rightfully ever--from childlike piping to loose slurring, sometimes in overdubbed girl-group harmonies.
And her unscrutinized metaphors tell all we need give somebody no option but to know." Writes Time 's Simpleton Cocks of Jones's return lay aside the work she was whelped to do: "Now she's tone, looking like her old self: the most gifted woman persist in the scene."
by David Collins
Rickie Lee Jones's Career
Began working in that a waitress and club songstress in Los Angeles, where she met musician Tom Waits, 1977; signed recording contract with Flavourful Bros., 1978; released debut wedding album, Rickie Lee Jones , 1979 (hit single "Chuck E.'s make out Love" went to number on charts); recorded three further albums in early 1980s; took five-year hiatus from recording manufacture, 1984-88; recorded critically acclaimed return LP Flying Cowboys, 1989.
Famous Works
Further Reading
Sources
- Interview, November, 1989.
- Newsweek, October 16, 1989.
- Rolling Stone, May 31, 1979.
- Time, May 21, 1979; October 23, 1989.
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