Jazz Articles about Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee Jones: Peg Leg’s Granddaughter Rises Above

by R.J. DeLuke
June 5, 2021

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 ...

Rickie Lee Jones: Balm in Gilead

by Gina Vodegel
January 10, 2010

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 ...

Rickie Lee Jones & Tom Waits: Salute Ella & Louis

by Ken Dryden
April 1, 2008

Rickie Lee Jones and Tom Waits have been prominent figures in the world of pop since their emergence in the mid-1970s. While the folksy Jones has had an eclectic career, her shrill vocals have likely turned off as many listeners as those who enjoy her work, though her early 1990s CD Pop Pop (Geffen, 1991) showed that she was adventurous enough to tackle standards. Waits emerged looking like a denizen of Skid Row and sounded like one as well, particularly ...

Rickie Lee Jones: Alive in Albany, NY

by R.J. DeLuke
June 25, 2004

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 ...

Rickie Lee Jones: Live At Red Rocks

by Ashley King
January 1, 2002

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 ...