UNT's Norah Jones Gets Full DMN Treatment Sunday

[PlummMeanGreen]

Dr. Dan Haerle is a UNT jazz icon in his own right. He has had a jazz trio for years.

All this I read tonight at dinner in the early edition of the Sunday Dallas Morning News PLUS a half page photo of Norah in ensueing pages of the article about her and her 5 Grammy nominations. Other UNT and Denton musical influences will be in New York City at Madsion Square Gardens for this awards show.

The Grammys Awards Show can be seen tomorrow evening (Sunday) at 7 PM CST on CBS DFW affiliate Channel 11...

GO NORAH! Do it!

[PlummMeanGreen]

MSN.com gives Norah a nice story on Grammy's Day with a generous mention of her alma mater, the University of North Texas.

PLUS, just a few minutes ago on the NBC's TODAY show, Rolling Stones magazine's music critic forecasts a huge night for our Ms. Jones. They showed some music videos of her singing a couple of her hits and....WOW!

[Harry]

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At last, Norah Jones finds harmony in fame

She didn't want stardom, but Grammy begs to differ

02/23/2003

By THOR CHRISTENSEN / The Dallas Morning News

Norah Jones' phone rang nonstop as the news broke about her five Grammy nominations, but instead of answering it, she rolled over in bed and drifted back to sleep.

When life becomes as surreal as hers has, sometimes it's easier to hide in the unconscious.

"The whole year has been insane. ... I almost cracked," says the 23-year-old Dallas-raised singer. "It's like a dream I don't understand."

And it keeps getting stranger. On Sunday, the odyssey takes her to the 45th annual Grammy Awards, where she's in the running for five awards, including best new artist, record of the year and album of the year for her debut CD, Come Away With Me..

AP

Dallas-raised Norah Jones has five nominations for the 2003 Grammy Awards.

A year after it came out, the disc continues to sell more than 100,000 copies a week and has passed the 7 million mark – a head-spinning milestone for a classy, jazz-based album that fits none of the trends on MTV. Even more bizarre is how fast it happened. Fourteen months ago, she was a virtual unknown who balked at the far-flung idea of selling a million CDs. "That would be the worst thing that could happen to me. I'm not ready for that much pressure," she said at the time. "I actually don't want to be a star." Phrases like that have become common in an era of cheesy American Idol-style fame, but for Ms. Jones – a self-conscious, self-described "dork" – it's more than just a ploy for credibility. While she says she's finally learning to enjoy stardom, it's been an arduous lesson. "There are just so many things that I've had to stay up at night and worry about, you know?" she now says.Also Online

Vote for Album of the Year

Vote for Song of the Year

Vote for Best New Artist

Top category nominations

Complete nomination list

(From the official Grammy Web site)

Musical beginnings

Born in 1979 in New York, Ms. Jones moved to Grapevine at age 4 with her mother, a nurse named Sue Jones. Raised on her mom's eclectic record collection – everything from George Jones to Luciano Pavarotti to Aretha Franklin – she began piano lessons in grade school.

"When you're a little girl, you dream of [being famous]," she says. "But I stopped dreaming about it when I was 13 because I got into jazz, and I certainly knew that wasn't going to make me a superstar."

Accepted into Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts – the same launchpad for Erykah Badu, among others – Ms. Jones immersed herself in piano theory and technique. Quietly, as few teachers were listening, she was also perfecting a more important asset: her velvety, world-wise voice.

"The first time I heard her, I thought, 'Wow!' " says Kent Ellingson, her piano teacher at the Dallas Independent School District's arts magnet school. "She never had any vocal lessons, but she sounded so mature beyond her years. It seemed so effortless."

Piano instructor Dan Haerle was in for a similar shock a few years later when Ms. Jones – then a student at the University of North Texas – launched into the smoldering '50s R&B song "Fever" at a recital.

"There was this spark, this innate musicianship in her voice," he says. "She had something that was exceptional."

Her professional career began on the bottom rung – playing piano over the clatter of diners at Popolo's restaurant at Preston Road and Royal Lane. After her sophomore year at UNT, she gathered the courage to move to the Big Apple for the summer. But school quickly became a fading memory as she began to land gigs in the cafes and jazz clubs of Manhattan.

How it all began

Before long, she'd caught the ear of Blue Note Records president Bruce Lundvall, the veteran jazz honcho who's worked with everyone from Miles Davis to Bobby McFerrin. After a few false starts in the studio, the singer teamed up with Aretha Franklin's famed producer, Arif Mardin, and finished Come Away With Me in late 2001.

Then the buzz really began. Although the album wasn't due in stores until February 2002, music writers across the country began singing early praises for the dusky-voiced singer and her enchanting blend of jazz, country and soul. By March, when she played the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, music-biz types from around the globe were turned away in droves outside her show.

Fueled by the media attention, Come Away With Me began to climb the sales charts – slowly at first. But sales snowballed when radio stations began airing "Don't Know Why," a chiming lullaby that seemed tailor-made for a nation jarred by Sept. 11.

"The public was waiting for something like this," says Mr. Lundvall. "It's understated and underproduced and unpretentious. Less is more – and people found that completely refreshing."

In a business dominated by rigid radio formats, it didn't hurt that "Don't Know Why" – written by the singer's friend, guitarist Jesse Harris – was broad enough to cross over from smooth jazz to adult contemporary to Top 40 stations.

"Getting so many different windows of exposure was essential," says Billboard chart director Geoff Mayfield. "And the album had a longer shelf life because it appealed to a lot of gray-hairs who don't react as quickly as people who buy rock or rap. It's grown organically, by word of mouth. People kept on discovering it and telling their friends."

'Too much hoopla'

Yet the petite young woman at the bottom of the pyramid was starting to get crushed. During one of her many promotional trips to Europe, she gave 15 interviews in a single day – a Herculean task for someone who describes herself as "awkward" and "nerdy."

"I almost had a nervous breakdown," she says. "There was too much pressure, too much hoopla, too much stuff, you know? If I never did another interview in my life, I'd be happy. ... Talking about yourself for 12 hours, it gets old."

The harder part came when reporters asked about her father, Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar master whom former Beatle George Harrison called "one of the greatest figures of the 20th century – the godfather of world music."

It's a delicate topic for Ms. Jones. Her parents broke up when she was a child, and while she and her dad are close now, there was a long period when they weren't.

Leery of the media focusing on her famous father, she kept his name out of all her promotional materials, though she knew they'd ask about him anyway.

"I understand [the fascination]. It's an interesting fact, and this is America, you know, Gossip Nation. But if they want me to talk about him, then they're going to be disappointed," she said before the CD came out.

"I'm not going to say negative things about him. I'm not going to say positive things about him. I have my own baggage to deal with, and I'm not going to make that public."

But the bigger the album got, the more people wanted a piece of her. By summer, she found herself at the center of a full-blown feeding frenzy during a European tour.

"We had our international people screaming, 'She has to do this interview!' or 'She has to visit this radio station!' " says Blue Note's Mr. Lundvall.

"I tried to lighten things up and be supportive, but it was very stressful for her," says Lee Alexander, her 33-year-old bass player and boyfriend. "This was her first time dealing with this sort of thing, and she was intimidated. This was before she learned she can say, 'No.' "

"I was about to lose it," Ms. Jones says. "But then I said, 'Enough is enough – no more press. I'm tired, and I just want to enjoy this.' "

The emancipation proclamation worked. She stepped off the promotional treadmill and slowed the interviews to a trickle. She vetoed the record label's request to film a slick, MTV-style video for "Don't Know Why" to replace the grainy, low-budget one she'd made before the CD took off.

And when Blue Note commissioned a remixed, up-tempo version of "Don't Know Why," she didn't mince words. "As soon as she gave it a listen, she said 'Absolutely not,' " says Mr. Lundvall. "For someone so young, she's very smart. She's stubborn in the best sense of the word."

Yet there was one time she didn't get her way. This summer, with sales of Come Away With Me charging toward 2 million, she told Mr. Lundvall she didn't want to be a flash in the pan and asked him to stop selling her CD.

"I said to her, 'Unfortunately, in a way, you're a commodity now. You can't stop people from buying your record.' I told her, 'This is a magical time, so enjoy the ride.' "

Learning to adapt

She's trying, but it isn't easy. She's facing a heavy load of live performances, including a spot Tuesday on the Late Show With David Letterman and a 42-city summer tour that brings her to NextStage at Grand Prairie on July 23. She's also busy writing songs for her second album, which she'll start recording in April.

Before that, there's a little event called the Grammy Awards, where she'll perform "Don't Know Why" to a billion or so TV viewers worldwide.

Ms. Jones is heavily favored to take home the best new artist trophy, and if she wins multiple Grammys, the heat of the spotlight is bound to grow even more intense.

Last week, during a stressful concert tour of New Zealand, she told her boyfriend they should rent a cabin in the middle of nowhere "and just disappear."

"She still goes through that a lot," Mr. Alexander says.

But Ms. Jones says she's finally learning how to enjoy the ride – or at least more than she did when her short, strange trip began.

"For the first sixth months, it was so crazy I really didn't enjoy myself. But I'm past that now, and we're really starting to have fun," she says.

"This could all be over tomorrow, and I don't want to remember it that way."

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com

The 45th Grammy Awards air at 7 p.m. Sunday on Channel 11.

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