Jamie Cullum |
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Fri. May 21.2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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Jamie Cullum: Anything GoesBritish phenom is both jazz and pop. He explains five of the key covers on his new Twentysomething. by Brian Ives & C. Bottomley |
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(Verve) |
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Jamie Cullum is being heralded as one of jazz's key youngsters. But the British pianist, who tackles Radiohead and Jeff Buckley with as much ease as he does Cole Porter and Lerner/Loewe, isn't exactly steeped in the music's history.
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As a teen, Cullum attended raves and emulated Nirvana. Listening to hip-hop clued him in on jazz, and his love of Ben Folds drew him to the piano. When he left university, his pizza restaurant gigs started attracting a big buzz. Suddenly, his album Twentysomething had sold over a million copies, and his version of Pharrell Williams' "Frontin'" was getting mad props from the Neptunes star himself. "I think our generation is used to hearing a lot of things brought to the table," Cullum says of his wide-ranging tastes. "Like a DJ Shadow record, where he's sampling everything from Gustav Mahler to Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground. It's all being [presented] by someone I respect, so it must all be cool!" Twentysomething is indeed a glorious mishmash. "I Could Have Danced All Night" is funked up. "Singin' in the Rain" becomes a quiet storm jam, and Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" gets sent to New Orleans. His swinging originals, with their lively word play, hold up well, too. Cullum's mulling over tackling PJ Harvey and Bjork for his next record, but in the meantime, he took VH1 on a tour of five cover tunes that make Twentysomething tick. Jimi Hendrix - "The Wind Cries Mary" It's a situation where the song chooses you. It was the first tune my brother showed me the guitar chords for, so it had a nostalgic feeling to me. Also I had a dream about Jimi Hendrix and Dr. John hanging out in New Orleans. I woke up and I was like, "Ah! Put a New Orleans beat to it! It will sound great!" There are always people talking about whether Jimi Hendrix would have started playing more jazz and what would happen if he collaborated with so-and-so. It's also a comment on the fact that I want to treat the piano a bit more like playing the guitar. People associate the piano with sitting around, but that's not how I like to play! [Watch Clip] Jeff Buckley - "Lover You Should've Come Over" It's a song I've always really loved, but that's only the starting part for covering someone else's song. I have to have a concept to make it my own. This is an unruly, dramatic, sweeping song; but I had always heard a pop song kicking and screaming to get out. I'd been listening to a lot of Donnie Hathaway, and I wanted to see how it would sound if I gave it that Donnie Hathaway treatment. I learned it in about an hour. Jeff's mum asked me to do a tribute concert for Jeff with some other London musicians. I cut out lyrics and I change things around, so I asked her, "What would Jeff make of someone doing his songs? She said, "Oh, he would have loved it. Listen to his Sin-e recordings. Jeff used to f**k with people's songs all the time!" [Watch Clip] Cole Porter - "I Get a Kick Out of You" We're playing to about two or three thousand people in England these days. Half of them are under 20 and the other half are somewhere between 20 and 70. So you've got a part of the audience that hears Cole Porter and say, "Oh, Cole Porter! I love the way he does this! What a nice young man doing Cole Porter!" Then you got this 16-year-old kid who comes up to me after the show and says, "What was the song about the cocaine? That was great! Who wrote that?" It's something I get really excited about. I had a letter from an 11-year-old kid who said Twentysomething was the first album that he bought. His granddad bought it, too, and they both brought it round to each other to show to each other, like "You might like this." He said how cool it was that he and his granddad both liked the same record. I like that a lot. [Watch Clip] Radiohead - "High and Dry" I spoke to Thom [Yorke] at a gig in London. I mentioned that I did his song. He said, "Oh, I get money for that, don't I?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Nice one!" He was happy. He's cool. Watching Radiohead at Glastonbury in'97 was one of the gigs that made me think about being a musician. I saw a band making complex, intellectual music, but everyone was enjoying and singing along and loving it. I thought, "Marrying those two worlds is something I would love to be able to do." I put "High and Dry" on my last album that came out in England called Pointless Nostalgia. The album title was a comment on people who think, "Oh, he's doing Sinatra and Cole Porter, he's a nostalgia kid." Nostalgia for me is "High and Dry," which is one of the songs I learned on the guitar to impress girls in the playground. When I hear that song, it makes me think of the summer when I was 13 or 14 years old, getting my first snog, and going to my first parties. That's a nostalgic song for me. Plus it deserves to be played by anyone who likes good songs. [Watch Clip] Pharrell Williams - "Frontin'" What gave me the idea? When I heard the bridge. The chord progression is so like [John] Coltrane. I think all the Neptunes' stuff is great. We played it live on this radio show just before the Brit Awards were held in England. Sure enough, two days later, Pharrell and Chad and Shay are on the same radio show promoting the new N.E.R.D. record. Pharrell's clearly had a late night out, as usual, and he's not being particularly receptive to the interviewer. She goes, "Listen to this, someone's done one of your songs." He was like "Turn it up!" I was listening at the time because I love them and I wanted to hear their interview. I'm sitting there and I'm just going crazy! He's going, "Whoa! He's a white kid? We got to meet him. I'm not leaving the studio until I've got a copy of this." Then when I'm on the red carpet at the Brit Awards, Pharrell, Chad and Shay come up to me and give me a hug and say, "I love your version, man. We have to work together." That's the point where I'm ready to die! [Watch Clip] |
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