Geetali Norah Jones Shankar, daughter of legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones, spent her early years living in Grapevine, Texas before ultimately moving to New York City where she found her calling as a musician.
Come Away With Me won her eight Grammy awards. She joined World Cafe to talk about its production and share songs from it.
1. Come Away With Me
Norah Jones’ 2002 debut album title track was an impassive love song with both pop and jazz influences that helped her win five Grammy Awards that year.
She spent her early years in Texas learning piano and singing from listening to records owned by both her mother and sitar player sister Anoushka Shankar. Later she moved to New York City in 1999 where she joined Wax Poetic for performances with them.
Jones is joined on this rendition of Come Away With Me by bassist Lee Alexander, drummer Dan Rieser and guitarists Jesse Harris and Adam Levy arranged by producer Arif Mardin who has worked on iconic recordings by Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Laura Nyro among many others.
2. Feels Like Home
Feels Like Home is Jones’ follow up album to her 2002 breakthrough release Come Away With Me. Following their summer tour, she and her band came back together to complete this record.
While Feels Like Home features more pop-oriented songs than its predecessor, it never panders to lowest common denominator tastes and it doesn’t achieve greatness like her debut did; nevertheless it remains an important step forward for her career.
Her performance of Townes Van Zandt’s Be Here To Love Me stands out, recalling Billie Holiday and featuring Kevin Breit’s brilliant acoustic guitar picking. Creepin’ In is another memorable track; Jones teams up with Dolly Parton for this duet performance.
3. The Fall
Though Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden is mentioned only briefly in scripture, its story was often depicted by noncanonical works written for Jews, Protestants and Catholics (pseudepigrapha and apocrypha). Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Durer’s exquisite engraving examining human proportion and Masaccio’s fresco Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden by Light (c 1427) vividly conveyed this biblical tale through light and shadow effects.
Autumn is known for its breathtaking landscapes. As temperatures transition from summertime heat to the cooler winter weather, deciduous trees begin to shed their leaves, turning from green hues into vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow hues. Many cultures celebrate this time with harvest festivals or holidays such as Thanksgiving or Halloween to commemorate this transitional phase.
4. Pick Me Up Off the Floor
Norah Jones released her seventh studio album, Pick Me Up Off the Floor, following a series of collaborative sessions with guest artists like Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples and Thomas Bartlett. Jones took an unplanned approach that resulted in an engaging collection of songs that could easily have been left off of her final cut.
Jones stands apart from many of her contemporaries by not settling into one sound or mode; rather she embraces the notion that her music may appeal to people with diverse tastes. With her go-to collaborators she dabbles in various styles with soulful funk grooves on “Flame Twin” to brassy tempo on “Heaven Above.” As such her album offers great depth and beauty connected by piano trio sly grooves as well as lyrics which acknowledge loss while offering hope.
5. Visions
Visions provides a balancing act between Pick Me Up Off the Floor and Pick Me Up Again; Jones sings of feeling free, dancing her heart out and making things right. It provides guidance and comfort after experiencing pandemic lockdown’s dark emotions as well as providing newfound sense of acceptance and peace.
Visions was constructed around the idea that she’ll take some lyrical ideas and melodies, then sit at piano or guitar with Leon Michels (The Dap-Kings, Lee Fields & The Expressions, Menahan Street Band and El Michels Affair drummer) behind his kit to jam out garage band style – as evidenced by “All This Time”, which features three short groove patterns lingering through three short cycles before moving onto its next motif. This approach keeps things fresh without overindulging in familiarities such as “All This Time’s” approach keeps things fresh without overindulging in what could become familiarities – as evidenced by “All This Time’s” long hold onto three short groove patterns before moving onto its final motif before cycling back around three short cycles!