“If there's music in the night,
And it's really, really right,
It's the only thing I need.
It intoxicates your mind
All your troubles left behind
So come on and take my lead…”
~ ‘Mind Trick’, by Jamie Cullum & Ben Cullum
from Jamie Cullum’s album “Catching Tales”, 2005
I discovered the music of Harry Connick Jnr. when I was a teen. I soon started enjoying big band jazz (goodness knows why; it's not very ‘rock 'n' roll’ and certainly not what my contemporaries seemed to enjoy) and jazz standards. He quickly became one of my favourite artists and, during my formative years, was in his prime. His output wasn't just big band, and during the same period he released some trio work and some stripped down, largely piano-base songs, that all played around with various aspects of jazz. I loved it all, his best releases were from around 1987 until the inevitable Christmas album in 1993 and a flawed-but-interesting pair of albums that dabbled in New Orleans funk.
I've since listened to more jazz and I love the genre, with its sublime richness, complexity and creativity. I am always on the lookout for more of the same (and more of the different at that). Alas, too many options and too little time and money tended to thwart my interest. In 2004, the second of four CDs of songs performed on the Working Dog produced variety show, The Panel, was released. One such performance was by a twenty-five year-old jazz upstart named Jamie Cullum. The song (or rather, songs) he performed caught my attention - a medley of one song from his own pen along with the Cole Porter penned classic I Get a Kick Out of You. It was good stuff, and I sought out more of his work.
Both songs were found on his second major release, ‘Twentysomething’ (2003), which he was touring and promoting at the time he appeared on The Panel. His first album is a hard-to-find self-produced CD named Heard It All Before (1999). He followed that up with his breakout hit Pointless Nostalgic (2002), which, like HIAB, was comprised mostly of jazz standards. It caught the attention of UK talk show host Michael Parkinson as well as the public at large and was a huge success. It led to a three-album contract with a major label, of which Twentysomething was the first. By the end of 2003, Cullum had become the biggest selling jazz musician of all time in the UK. Even then, Cullum, like many jazz pioneers before him, sought to subvert traditional ideas of jazz, how it could be performed and interpreted. No doubt some of the more stuffy Jazz traditionalists were less than heartened at the sight of Cullum in T-Shirts and trainers leaping around his piano like a madman while performing, as is his want.
Pointless Nostalgic is a playful title that speaks volumes. Like many jazz musicians, Cullum pulls much of his material from his musical forebears (more so in PN than subsequent albums), but negotiates the tightrope between due respect and his own personal interpretations of the songs with delicacy and huge talent. I would go so far as to say that there are few current interpreters of others’ songs better than Cullum. Not content to merely interpret classics and standards, Cullum has covered modern artists as diverse as Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Elton John and Bob Marley, and has done so with panache.
Cullum croons far more in Pointless Nostalgic than in later releases, where he further develops a much more expressive vocal style, at times smooth, growling, youthful and delicate, or forceful, depending on the song. PN's closing track, I Want To Be A Pop Star suggests a road Cullum was soon to be traveling, not only in terms of style (more on that shortly), but lyrically. While he fully embraces his jazz roots and the classics of a simpler time (such as Singing In The Rain) the theme running through much of his music is that of a young man in his twenties, growing and maturing. Not too quickly, though, with tracks like IWTBAPS, Twentysomething and 21st Century Kid all capturing the zeitgeist of irresponsibility, misbehaviour and heady confusion that comes with misspent youth. One of the singles released from the Catching Tales album, the gorgeous Photograph, finds Cullum's piano dancing through a collection of recalled memories.
As Cullum's career has progressed, so has his exploration of more diverse musical tools beyond those traditionally found in Jazz standards such as synths and loops, turntable scratches and even a stomp box (an acoustic box used to amplify a musician's tapping foot, reportedly found by Cullum right here in Melbourne, Australia while he was on tour). The experience, maturity and development of his craft found its apex in Cullum's 2009 album The Pursuit (2009). It's a sumptuous album, the larger proportion of original tracks than previous releases suggesting an increased self-confidence from Cullum. Although he opens the album with another Cole Porter standard in Just One of Those Things, he follows up with the bouncy and modern I'm All Over It. Track six finds Cullum cover a disposable tune originally by dance-pop singer Rihanna with a style and gravitas that the top-40 darling can't muster in her own version. Mixtape has Cullum riffing about the popular experience of music of his younger days, name-checking Morrissey, Louis Armstrong, and Nine-Inch Nails in the process. The catchy and driving We Run Things is symbolic of Cullum's increasing confidence in himself and his music. Unlike his contemporary Michael Bublé, Cullum's originals often sound like standards, such is the skillful, classic and timeless writing and composition, such as in Grace Is Gone. The masterpiece of the album, though, would have to be the collaboration between Cullum and filmmaker Clint Eastwood, who share song writing credits on Gran Torino with Eastwood's son Kyle and Michael Stevens, from the soundtrack of the film of the same name. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe award in the Best Original Song category. It screams instant classic, its lonely piano the perfect accompaniment to the world-weary lyrics, an astonishing feat given that Cullum wrote and recorded the lyrics at a relatively tender age. It's a stunning performance, simple yet not simplistic, a song where the method of telling the story of the song says as much as the story itself.
There is word of a new album on the horizon in early 2012. You can be sure that I'll be purchasing it on sight. I very much look forward to seeing what Cullum has up his sleeves next.
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