Jamie Cullum is telling me that he never dreamt of success on this scale. He is outlining the upcoming tours of the UK, France, the US, Japan, Australia and, oh, pretty much most of the known world, that will accompany the anticipated multimillion sales of his new album. “I honestly, honestly never thought it would pan out like this," says the 30-year-old singer who, looking tanned and fit, radiates a mix of easy charm and brittle energy. “When I started by financing my own recordings and looking round for gigs my aim was to be as big as, maybe, Ian Shaw," he says. Shaw, for non-jazz buffs, is a well-regarded British jazz vocalist who has a small but dedicated coterie of fans for his minorlabel releases but is not exactly a threat to U2's market share.
Instead, Cullum has quantum-jumped out of Britain's diminutive jazz scene to a world where selling a mere million or so copies of your last album (Catching Tales) is regarded in some quarters as a bit of a flop; a world where you can hang out at Clint Eastwood's Bel Air home; where you can sell out the Carnegie Hall, no problem, and where you can become engaged to a voluptuous former model.
It is also a world where, less desirably, the press may make stories up about you; where the 6in height difference between you and said ex-model (Sophie Dahl) is catnip to the cattier gossip columnists; and where nosy journalists are wont to ask “When's the big day?" rather than how the tunes on the new album came about. Shaw does not have to put up with any of this.
Still, Cullum is eager to muscle back into the limelight. In Britain at least, his star has dimmed a little and Catching Tales was four years ago. What's he been up to? He chuckles. “In England there was this sort of Twentysomething [his 2003 breakthrough album] apocalypse where I splashed on to the scene, making a kind of big mess. It's been different in other countries, where I have been touring and gradually becoming a success. I had six years on the road, which was fantastic. I enjoyed every second of it."
