Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux
BIOGRAPHY
THE BLUE ROOM
“The only thing that matters is the song,” says singersongwriter Madeleine Peyroux. That conviction along with a
‘one of a kind’ voice, has carried the Jazz artist from busking on
the streets of Paris, all the way to mainstream recognition.
Through intensely distinctive renditions of old classics and
modern tunes by the likes of Leonard Cohen and The Beatles,
Peyroux has proved to be an uncannily insightful ‘interpreter’
with her consistently impeccable choice of material.
Peyroux’s new album, The Blue Room, sees the genre-blending
singer reworking some landmark musical gems, in a repeat
collaboration with longtime Peyroux producer Larry Klein
(Joni Mitchell, Walter Becker, Tracy Chapman, Herbie
Hancock)
The result is a sophisticated album that rather than just
‘crossing over’, seamlessly fuses musical styles together to
create an entirely new sound.
The Blue Room started life as Klein’s re-examination of Ray
Charles’s classic, Modern Sounds In Country And Western
Music, but soon moved away from being strictly an homage to
that album.
“Madeleine and I decided to branch out to other songs we love,”
explains Klein, so alongside tunes from the original ABC
Paramount project such as “Bye Bye Love,” “Born To Lose,” “You
Don’t Know Me” and the anthemic “I Can’t Stop Loving You” are
Randy Newman’s “Guilty,” Warren Zevon’s “Desperadoes Under
The Eaves” and John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind.”
“Ray’s ‘cultural landmark’ album has always been a part of me,”
says Larry Klein, “…the project naturally came to mind with
Madeleine as a part of it.”
“Much like Charles who in 1962 jelled R & B, Gospel, Country
and Jazz, Madeleine is at a nexus of styles, blending Jazz, Blues,
Country and Pop’. The ‘cheerful on the surface’ songs have a
‘dark undercurrent’ which Klein ‘knew that Madeleine could
naturally relate to.”
For The Blue Room Larry Klein has again called upon the talents
of award- winning engineer/mixer Helik Hadar as well as stellar
musicians Dean Parks, Larry Goldings, Jay Bellerose and David
Piltch. To this ensemble however, the celebrated producer has
added an inspired orchestral element in the shape of Vince
Mendoza’s engaging string arrangements (Joni Mitchell, Robbie
Williams, Björk and Elvis Costello).
Mendoza’s masterful string orchestrations perfectly complement
Madeleine’s quest for open musical exploration. The sometimes
eerie, often sparse arrangements prove the perfect canvas for
Peyroux’s musical palette and seem to effortlessly blend with her
voice.
With the sixth track on the new album, Leonard Cohen’s “Bird
On The Wire,” Peyroux returns to the iconic poet’s work. She
revisits the tempting power of Careless Love’s “Dance Me To The
End of Love”, as Mendoza’s strings thoroughly intensify the
experience.
With the sensitive accompaniment of Dean Parks’ guitars, Jay
Bellerose’s atmospheric drumming, David Piltch’s bass and as in
“Dance Me To the End of Love,” Larry Goldings deft piano,
Peyroux sheds an enticing new light on the familiar classic.
The Blue Room feels like a landmark in the artist’s free-spirited
musical journey which started in Paris, when ‘drawn to the
music of the streets’, 15- year-old Peyroux left school to join a
touring blues and jazz band.
“Someone gave me early Columbia recordings with Billie
Holiday and instructed me to learn the songs.” Peyroux grasped
not just the melody changes, choice of tone and phrasing but
the power of the iconic artist’s presence. “It was by learning
Billie’s mannerisms that I was learning to listen to my own,”
she explains.
Years later, her talent was spotted at a New York club by
Atlantic Records’ Yves Beauvais who signed her to the label and
co-produced her 1996 debut album Dreamland. Peyroux’s
husky voice enchanted punters and critics alike but it was the
2004 Careless Love that proved to be a milestone release for the
artist, bringing mainstream recognition and marking the start
of a four-album-long collaboration with producer Larry Klein.
It’s a long way from the streets of Paris to collaborating with
some of the world’s finest musicians. Still, where others may be
content basking in the glow of praising reviews, this charmingly
humble musician bravely explores new grounds showing that
like jazz itself she is willing to take new chances.
Madeleine Peyroux The Blue Room – Liner Notes
When Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds In Country And Western
Music was released in the summer of 1962, it caused quite a stir.
For those of us who already worshipped Ray Charles and were
initially exposed to the album through its first single “I Can’t Stop
Loving You,” the massive, very white choir that sang the first lines
of the song made us cringe. It convinced us that our idol had sold
out to the major label mentality.
To purists with a tendency toward musical genre profiling, Ray
Charles had no business giving credibility to redneck hillbilly
music. This wasn’t the first time Ray Charles had crossed the line
in his pursuit of a natural fusion of the music he heard growing up.
He dipped into boogie woogie for “The Mess Around.” But when
he blended country blues and urbane rhythm & blues with Gospel
music in mid-fifties hits like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” and “I Got
A Woman,” he added blasphemy to his list of crimes against
humanity. Now he wanted to cross the color line with the music of
the deep South. Clearly, he didn’t know his place.
Oh yeah, then there was the general public who came out in
droves to make Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music
Ray Charles’s most successful album to date rather than his most
controversial. After all, genius is half talent and half impeccable
instincts and Ray Charles was a genius. By September, he was in
the studio cutting Volume 2. And everyone came around.
The second single from the album was “You Don’t Know Me,” an
eight-year-old song by Canadian country singer Eddy Arnold, who
delivered the original version in his unemotive, plaintive style. Ray
Charles, on the other hand, elevated it to its status of instant
standard with a raw, poignant, heart-breaking reading. What we
all eventually realized in hindsight was that this album, like no
other Ray Charles recording before it, represented an artistic
freedom that most recording artists over the past fifty years have
routinely enjoyed. Nobody wanted Ray Charles to sing country &
western songs… except Ray Charles.
When he reluctantly left Atlantic Records where his musical
artistry and style emerged and took shape, he signed a
revolutionary recording contract with ABC-Paramount in 1960
where he retained artistic control of his sessions and ownership of
his masters. It was unprecedented and a major blow to the label
system that foisted bad songs and mediocre arrangers on singers
in search of the almighty hit.
In the process, he used his artistry and genius to break down
musical categories and barriers and legitimize cross-pollinating,
genre-bending music.
A year later, the ‘60s (the era, not the decade) began in earnest
with the assassination of Medgar Evers and Governor George
Wallace’s attempt to block the entrance of two black students at
the University of Alabama in June, the Civil Rights March On
Washington in August, the church bombing in Birmingham which
killed four children in September and the assassination of
President Kennedy in November.
A succession of assassinations, protests, abuses of authority and
riots defined the next seven years as race, war and class divided a
country. Bob Dylan articulated our outrage and Ray Charles
healed our wounds and fed our souls.
Oh yeah, 1963 was also the year that Billboard combined its mono
album and stereo album charts. Heavy stuff. By the time Larry
Klein discovered Modern Sounds, he was 12 and it was 6. Modern
Sounds was already a classic and its hits were golden oldies. By
that time, the massive white choir didn’t sound so alien; it had just
become an ingredient in the final work. Larry found himself
revisiting the album frequently over the next four decades.
In an inspired moment, he thought a re-examination of this album
would be an ideal project for Madeleine Peyroux because “she
comes from the same places – jazz, country and blues.”
His concept was in no way intended to replicate the
instrumentation or arrangements or style or sequence of the
original album. Trying to beat Ray Charles at his own game is the
true definition of “Born To Lose.” Georgia-born and Brooklyn and
Paris-bred with a New Orleans pedigree, Madeleine Peyroux grew
up in a household rich in Southern culture and yet vehemently
against the ignorance and racism associated with that region.
Born in 1974, her childhood home was filled with the sounds of
Fats Domino, Fats Waller, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and
Buddy Holly to name a few.
“Ray Charles was a part of that mix and an important one,” she
explains, “but I never knew that album per se. I knew many of the
songs as part of anthologies alongside tunes like “Georgia On My
Mind” and “Hit The Road, Jack.”
But Ray Charles had a huge impact on me and even more so when
I moved to Paris at age 11 because those American artists were so
much more revered there than they were in the United States in
the ‘80s.”
Madeleine is an artist whose sensibility and eclectic musical mix
make for magnificent story-telling. And the songs that Ray Charles
chose for Modern Sounds are, above all, stories.
Wisely, Madeleine felt that the infusion of newer but like-minded
material was essential to this project and gems like Warren
Zevon’s “Desparadoes Under The Eaves” and Randy Newman’s
“Guilty” attest to her impeccable instincts, as does the resurrection
of a wonderful and obscure Buddy Holly song “Changing All Those
Changes.” Larry Goldings, Dean Parks, David Piltch and Jay
Bellerose form the group that provides the spare, tasteful backing
arranged by Larry Klein for each song. Vince Mendoza’s string
arrangements on six tracks are beautiful, unpredictable and
perfectly appropriate to the tone and mood of each song.
If there is a direct musical link to Ray Charles, it’s Goldings’s
soulful, in-the-pocket keyboard work with the same kind of
perfectly placed notes and use of space that were part of Charles’s
signature.
Larry Klein is a producer who knows his artists well and creates
hand-tailored environments that suit them perfectly. When
Madeleine takes “Bye Bye Love” slower than usual or “Take These
Chains” faster than most, these are not decisions of style, but
fundamental choices in her approach to the material. This is an
album of music that is letter-perfect but coursing with blood, and
it is as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. And like the Ray
Charles album to which it pays homage, it reinvents everything it
touches.
--Michael Cuscuna November 2012