Rickie Lee Jones was born in Chicago in 1954, raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and moved to Olympia, Washington as a teenager. She left high school early and went to college in California. She did not graduate, but worked at odd jobs until she began playing in clubs in Los Angeles around 1977. The legendary Lowell George brought her music to the attention of Warner Brothers, and Lenny Waronker signed her in 1978 after seeing her perform at the Troubadour. Her first self-titled album, a kind of Raymond Chandler tour of a single girl in Hollywood, won a Best New Artist Grammy, and was heralded as the arrival of a great new talent.
Her second record Pirates was a critical favorite, but surprised critics with its literate tone and dark musical landscapes. The third was even more unusual, an eight-inch, mostly jazz, kind of live record.
These three recordings established the pattern of her career. Unexpected turns, rich colors and colossal images, literate, intelligent, idiosyncratic, under the guise of an exceptional pop singer. Her singing style, completely unique, (sweet child-like high tones and dramatic painful cries, spoken lines, no vibrato) has been emulated so many times that the emulators probably don't even know who they are copying. While she has become more and more obscure her imitators have become very famous indeed. She has not been abandoned by the critics, though. Her music is always written about, and she is pictured in more than one book on the icons of rock n roll. She has also kept a devoted fan base around the world, in spite of little or no radio play, and is one of those rare artists whose status is unquestioned.
She has released 11 albums, including Rickie Lee Jones, Pirates, Girl At Her Volcano, The Magazine, Flying Cowboys, Pop Pop, Traffic From Paradise, Naked Songs, Ghostyhead, It's Like This, and the newly released Live at Red Rocks. Naked Songs is Rickie in concert by herself, but Live at Red Rocks features a six-piece band, including bass, drums, guitar, mandolin, accordion, keyboards, and guitars.
She has won two Grammys and been nominated for eight. Her last album, It's Like This, received a Grammy nod for Best Traditional Pop Vocal. She has been the subject of music classes at colleges such as the Berklee College of Music, and mentioned in more than one pop song. She has never made a movie, but is currently working on a book for Hyperion press and Rhino is releasing a three-cd set of her work this spring. Hippo is expecting to release a DVD of her last album of self -penned songs, Ghostyhead, one which she described in 1996 as an "album of prayers" an unapologetic merging of poetry, appealing to god and monsters. It is an understated and precise merging of songwriter sensibility and trip-hop noise.
Her latest release is Live at Red Rocks . It is an amazing, and by far her best, live record to date. The band is awesome, the singing by is great, the songs are fun, and the audience is so joyful. It's a feel good record. Rickie is hard to capture on tape, she is truly radiant live, and it rarely translates. You can really feel her on this recording.
She is currently living in Los Angeles on Sunset Blvd somewhere, studying boxing. She always was a pepper. Watch that left hook.
Source: http://www.artemisrecords.com/rljones_bio.aspx?abbr=rljones
