Jamie Cullum Once Again Im Dying

April 04, 2022 Post a Comment

Nine Songs: Jamie Cullum

Absolutely, back in December 2022 when Christmas with loved ones was suddenly and panically called off, the last thing on most people's minds would have been, just what about the Christmas songs?

But it's fair to fence that opinion on the sweet and sickly melodies that decorate the period became even more polarised, as people fell into two camps: those who winced them away like a cheap mulled vino and those who, in their desperation to manifest some sense of familiar festivity and condolement, guzzled them down and hoped for solace.

Such a backdrop must have fabricated it a foreign time for an artist to release an anthology of original Christmas songs, as Jamie Cullum well knows, sharing his ninth studio album The Pianoman At Christmas concluding Nov and re-releasing a deluxe edition this year with classic covers featuring the likes of Lady Blackbird and Kansas Smitty'due south.

"Everything felt strange," he recalls from his home studio. "I really noticed how differently you could promote the record, in the same way that people have noticed how differently we can all piece of work, for meliorate or for worse, from our phones and bedrooms and studios and whatsoever. It was amazing what a huge corporeality of infinite there was from non travelling, and the narrowness of what a Christmas album could be. Jack White talks about limitations when you're starting a projection, I wrote that album in one large menstruation, and it felt like a miracle when it came out last year because manifestly touring got cancelled. Somehow we managed to write and tape it and somehow it came out and connected with people, despite all the odds."

Connect with people it did, flirting with the Top 10 regardless (or because) of the grim and grey period information technology was. It's fiddling surprise, though, that the nostalgic cadences that gently punctuate Cullum'southward favourite manner of playing, somewhere betwixt dejection and the Great American Songbook, should adapt the concept of a Christmas song, and is why he was fatigued to information technology in the first place.

"Christmas is a time to close in and go cosy and create your own little globe within your house, and somehow this Cracking American Songbook way music, with its gorgeous melodies, rich orchestration and familiarity and kind of solidness, information technology'south a very rounded affair and it kind of invites y'all in like a Christmas scene. As a songwriter I got really excited to try and add to that, and I've recorded a lot of that mode of music, and so I thought it would be a different and original way to do information technology."

Covers from "Wintertime Wonderland" to "Have Yourself A Very Merry Christmas" bated, Cullum'south own take on the yuletide tradition, polished with the product of Greg Wells, taps into these tropes so sharply at times that in moments such equally "The Jolly Fat Man" and, fittingly, "It'southward Christmas", it'due south hard not to sway with a little artless joy.

His own two children are understandably a tad more excited for waking up on the 25th than their dad'southward songs near the day though, he admits. "I disappoint every interviewer when I get asked nigh the Christmas album, considering it's so not a function of our family life. Practising and writing is part of it, but entertaining people with information technology is something I leave out." So what is a typical Christmas in the Cullum household? "Well I'm hoping it will be typical, like everyone else. But it's very much the same as most peoples: besides many people in a room that tin't quite hold everyone, round a table that'due south not quite large enough, that'southward got likewise much nutrient on information technology. And pure chaos, as soon as you throw kids into the mix the chaos adds up even more. So ideally, our house volition be full of people, children, food and commotion."

Bluntly, it'due south hard non to feel comfortable talking to Cullum, and equally non just a musician, but a radio presenter and axiomatic music fan, he'due south an platonic discipline for a Nine Songs feature. It helps that he's a fan of the characteristic, listen. "Practice y'all know what? I'thousand really past doing things similar this where I'm using information technology as an opportunity to evidence off how broad my music tastes are, haha! I love this column because I think it'due south a chance to limited some real honesty about music tastes."

In offering up with enthusiasm and a poetic clarity, in his pivotal 9 Songs, many of which he has performed or recorded himself, Cullum uncovers a myriad of stories, from the turning points in his evolution as a jazz musician, his complicated religious upbringing, his friendship with Amy Winehouse, and how he showtime met his married woman.

"Ground forces" past Ben Folds Five

"Back in the days of terrestrial TV, there was something on in the afternoons on a Dominicus that was a kind of popular civilisation show, and I used to lookout information technology considering it was ane of the few things on TV where yous could see things nearly computer games, I can't remember what it was, merely they'd have a 'Game of the Week'. Games were never on the TV when I was immature and I beloved estimator games, but there was also always a bit nearly music; Ben Folds Five were on it and I'd never heard of them before.

"I played a bit of piano then, but I was more interested in the guitar. I was really into Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and drum & bass and hip hop, a lot of the stuff that my peers were into. I loved the piano, just I saw Ben Folds Five playing and heard them playing a song called "Battle of Who Could Care Less", which is off their start large anthology. I loved information technology instantly, I was like, 'What is this?' Amazing harmonies, and at that place was no guitar, but the fuzz bass did everything. I saw Ben Folds hurling a pulsate stool at the pianoforte and standing on the piano existence a total rock star merely looking a bit like a nerd. I kind of recognised part of myself in Ben Folds; he was a chip bookish and nerdy, only a bit punky at the same time. Yous couldn't quite put him into an obvious box, and I loved it straight abroad.

"Me and a friend got tickets to run across them play at Shepherd's Bush Empire, and I knew I loved the ring, but when they played they had this new song called "Ground forces", which was going to be off their side by side album - "Well I thought about the army / Dad said, son you're fucking high" - information technology was a real moment.

"I wasn't thinking I'd be a musician for a living at that phase, simply seeing Ben Folds Five, hearing the piano played in that way and seeing information technology treated in that way gave me a real sense that maybe I could practice something onstage and mayhap I would too. It was purely inspiring. The lyrics were funny, they were insightful and had corking rhymes, the music was ambitious, it had unlike movements to it, but yous could still trip the light fantastic to information technology and people were still moshing to information technology. It brought a lot of things together that I hadn't seen before.

"Their use of pianoforte with bass with the overdrive pedal on is a signature Ben Folds V sound, and that classical flourish he does over the lyric "I've been thinking a lot today", and that build upwards into the outro horn section, with the fuzz bass playing those depression notes, and almost classical-style melody ascension upwardly and down while he sings a surreal, wistful, sweet lyric. Information technology's a moment when the song becomes quite serious and melancholy.

"I've interviewed him likewise, and he talked near that trio tape from Elton John, the live one 17-11-lxx, that made him come across the potential for what a pianoforte tin can exist on stage. This album and this band did a similar matter for me."

"I Recall It's Going to Pelting Today" by Nina Simone

"What does Nina's rendition add to the original? Everything. Randy Newman is my gold standard songwriter, and he has a very particular style of delivering his songs, his conversational and beautiful voice, and his voicings at the piano are then elegant. He has the elegance of Bill Evans at the piano, I recall. He doesn't play similar him, but there are no unused notes in his voicings, and as a piano thespian that'south something you really look out for, someone who really knows their shit and is not just playing the same notes either side of their piano chords.

"He's conspicuously a truly gifted songwriter and as important as a melodist equally much every bit a lyricist, but I remember Nina Simone is my favourite artist of all time. For me, she brings together the dazzler of jazz and blues, the giftedness and technicality of any of the peachy jazz musicians and singers, simply importantly, and above anything else, she has the dust and soul of anyone from Bessie Smith through to Iggy Pop, do you know what I mean? Information technology's all in there, the yearning and sadness of early blues, the power of bebop and jazz, and the snarl of punk and rock and scroll. Then when she sings these lyrics, the true desolation of this song, even so the romanticism of it at the same fourth dimension, is all the more than apparent and brings it out in a way that Randy Newman doesn't, I think.

"My sense is that she brings so much of her classical musicianship into annihilation she plays, and she has a great sense of those contrapuntal melodies, where y'all tin have one thing in one hand and one thing in another. I think that speaks a lot to her character besides. She was really in touch with her shadow; her angel came out in her music, but her shadow came out in life and at times in her music as well. I think that'south the compelling thing virtually her, she's a shining calorie-free and a night, interesting soul who lived out loud and in the shadows also.

"I think she's the about compelling artist of all time really. She'due south one of those artists, I recollect particularly when you're a fleck of a muso kid similar I was, you lot learn to dear artists like Nina Simone a bit later. I always idea she was peachy, only I recollect her true power was equally someone who can translate human aspects into music that are beyond technique and anything flashy, who can do it with a human being weep.

"I think that's something y'all relate to a bit more with maturity, only I tin only speak for myself. In the aforementioned way that yous learn to beloved Bob Dylan'southward voice a flake more, you don't see his imperfections as imperfections, but more just a part of why it'southward perfect. Every bit I've gotten older and realised how wonderful and tragic life is at the same time, and how grey life is - and I don't mean grey every bit in ho-hum, but in that heroes and villains are a bit of myth - the nuanced ability of Nina is something that greatly impacted me from my thirty'southward onwards.

"And this song is how I commencement met my wife! We've been together for fifteen years, but nosotros sang this together. We met at a clemency event, she was singing information technology and asked me to play this song. If someone asks you to play this song, and Nina Simone'southward version, you know that they're the person yous desire to get to know."

"Blue Bucket of Gold" by Sufjan Stevens

"I think Sufjan gave me a wakeup call in my songwriting life. I was always a songwriter, but jazz and being a jazz musician, was a little detour. It'south non that I don't accept that seriously, in fact I'thou taking that more seriously than ever right now, I'one thousand having lessons again and trying to really evolve my playing. Just I think sometimes when you're a jazz musician, you go and then defenseless up in improvisation and the ability to play and limited yourself in an improvisational way through your instrument, that when you go to write songs you accept to bring yourself dorsum to the lyric.

"What I think Sufjan does, is that he'due south able to bring lyrics with such huge ability to the table that you really reply to. They're completely suffused with his own story, then at that place'south lots of things you might non quite sympathize, but you don't need to. And then he kind of brought me back to the lyric, merely at the same time his music has never been any less adventurous; he has the adventurousness of whatsoever bully composer or jazz musician, whether information technology's Philip Drinking glass or Miles Davis.

"Sonically it'southward adventurous equally well; this vocal, "Blue Bucket of Aureate" brings to mind a thing I beloved that happens in songs, it happens on the song that opens Child A, "Everything In Its Right Place", where you have quite an intimate sounding vocal that ends up in a beautiful wash of synths or strings, the sonic layer of the song opens up towards the finish, and "Bluish Bucket of Gold" does this too.

"Besides, Sufjan reminds me of my religious background, which I kind of denied for ages. I wouldn't say I'chiliad an atheist, I would have said that, but would no longer. My religious groundwork is quite complicated. My dad was born in Jerusalem, his mum was Jewish but had to put all that aside when she escaped the Nazis and lost all her family in the holocaust, and really didn't rediscover her Judaism until I was a immature child really. But at the same time, I was brought upward Roman Catholic because of my mum'southward side of the family unit who are all Indian-Burmese. My grandad was an orphan from India who was brought up past Franciscan monks, then he and my grandmother had Catholicism.

"And then I had all of that in my background when I was very young, and then a lot of music I heard growing upwardly in church was very heavy on the ritual and psalms. I remember Sufjan's writing, particularly on Carrie & Lowell, has a lot of hymn-like quality to it, and I think it brought me dorsum to that and how powerful a lot of that imagery was equally a immature boy."

"I'm Still Here" by Tom Waits

"Tom Waits is this combination of a maximalist songwriter and sometimes the most economical. I recollect this is an case of such economy in songwriting, that merely hits you in the gut. It really is i of those pieces of music that can generate tears and then quickly, the idea of how long you can be around someone, but how much you can lose sight of them, even if you're in the same firm as them every day.

"I'grand not talking necessarily nigh marriage, but any relationship with anyone. You lot know, I'm withal hither. From the opening piano line to the manner he goes up the melody at the very end of the song with the lyric "But I'm still here". And the way the middle office of the song subtly changes within the key.

"I love it when Tom Waits isn't afraid to become a lilliputian bit Sondheim and a bit musical theatre with his vocalisation that oft recalls early on dejection singers like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and fifty-fifty Frank Sinatra. It'due south a combination of how emotional it makes me feel as a man but also as a songwriter, it's like reading a haiku or iv lines past William Blake that seem to encapsulate more about humanity than the thousands and thousands of words of other people.

"I went to see him play in Paris with my married woman, and it was quite an amazing situation. Nosotros left our hotel room to go to the gig, I was and so excited and realised I had forgotten my phone. She said, "Oh don't worry nearly information technology, yous don't need your phone", and then we went to the gig and actually enjoyed it and were out really belatedly. It was literally the best gig I had ever seen, and and so I got dorsum to the hotel and looked at my phone, and as I had been leaving the hotel my mum had called to tell me that my grandmother had died.

"He sang this vocal that night too. I thought information technology was a very synchronistic kind of thing, because I wouldn't have gone to that concert had I had my phone on me. To me, Tom Waits is someone who channels divine stuff, and is so open to the elements around him. I don't know, it merely seemed fitting that I was going to a concert by one of the greatest artists of all time, and I could take missed it if I had my phone on me."

"Difficult Times (No Ane Knows Better Than I)" by Ray Charles

"I sang this with Amy Winehouse a couple of times. We toured together in the early part of her career, she was my support act, which I laugh about, and many people like to joke on my Twitter well-nigh how hilarious that was. She was always the most talented person in whatsoever room she was in.

"We were adept friends around that fourth dimension, we spent a lot of fourth dimension together. She was a magic person: unpredictable, peppery and simply achingly, achingly talented. She was always playing Ray Charles in her dressing room, and we really continued over Tony Bennett and Ray Charles. I think we also ended up singing "Nighttime Time Is The Right Fourth dimension" on Jools Holland together a year later on or something.

"They're bittersweet memories for me, because nosotros were close for about five or six years, so for many reasons we were not and so close after that. I call back our lives went in quite different directions. Simply those memories of our fourth dimension talking near Ray Charles and how this vocal on "Difficult Times" is probably one of the best vocals ever committed to three-and-a-one-half minutes of music. And then I hear this and I always think of her and our friendship."

"Chameleon" by Herbie Hancock

"Effectually my jazz enkindling, around fifteen or sixteen, there was a lot of A Tribe Called Quest, hip hop-lite bands like Us3, but likewise Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and The Beatnuts. A lot of hip hop that had jazz and soul with a lot of breaks. Jamiroquai was a audio I was actually getting into, and I then found my mum and dad'south Stevie Wonder records. So sounds that had a lot of jazz in it, and a detail type of jazz. I became enthralled to the sound of the electrical piano, the Fender Rhodes electric piano.

"Then Roni Size came out with "Brown Paper Bag" and the New Forms album that had a lot of electrical piano on information technology. My blood brother was at uni studying music, and he came back with this record, Caput Hunters, and said 'Y'all've got to hear this, it's got drum & bass, funk and all the best things nearly the acid jazz we love.'

"I'll remember until my dying day my green Akai Walkman on the bus on the style to school, walking to the bus stop in the pouring pelting listening to "Chameleon". The second one-half to it particularly, not the beginning section with the synth bass opening, I always fast-forwarded to the middle, where the drums pick upwardly and the string pad comes back in, going back to Sufjan Stevens and Kid A to open up upward the sonic mural, and that Fender Rhodes solo. I can sing it for you note for note, and I learnt how to play that piano solo, and dreamed nigh owning my ain Fender Rhodes electric piano.

"When you outset to learn jazz solos note for note, you naturally start to go much more serious about jazz. That's the next stride, when you're learning an improvised solo and learning exactly what they're doing. For me this was the birth of that, this '70s funk sonic gamble period of Herbie Hancock that was so hip and nevertheless sounds amazing.

"These days I'll play it when I'chiliad testing a gear up of speakers or headphones, similar to albums like In Rainbows or Kind of Blue, it's almost like a palette cleanser, because for me it's the pinnacle of what something can be in a certain type of genre. It volition definitely come out on a regular occasion."

"Frontin'" by Pharrell ft. Jay-Z

"Twentysomething was a large success, and I'd kind of infiltrated the Top 10. I was successful, but the music press were quite dismissive of me. Radio One didn't know what to do with me, so when I got a BRIT nomination, they invited me on and said do the single at the time, which was "These Are The Days", only so asked if I could exercise a funny hip hop cover. I said certain, simply they had no thought how much I was into my hip hop.

"I didn't feel the need to evidence anything, I loved anything The Neptunes did and the vocal "Frontin'", and of course the middle department where Jay-Z does the rap is total Herbie Hancock. It was for Jo Whiley's Alive Lounge, and my band members were both real jazz guys and weren't necessarily into Pharrell, just we worked it out in the soundcheck most half an 60 minutes before we went on air and recorded it fully live. That's the version that everyone ended upwardly hearing, and I think it took everyone by surprise; we weren't doing it ironically, and I know a lot of people don't call back this now but at the time it was quite a stupor to people.

"Jo loved information technology so much that she played it to Pharrell a couple of days subsequently when he was on her show and he loved it. Then at the BRIT Awards near four days later, he was on the blood-red carpet, and the interviewer was saying 'So Pharrell, who are yous looking forward to meeting tonight?' and he said 'Jamie Cullum!' Everyone was similar, 'What? What the fuck are you talking about?!' So I met him and we got talking about Herbie Hancock, Gary Bartz, Roy Ayers.

"He knew his music and I knew my music, yous know? I went and worked with him in Miami for a few weeks on his solo album, In My Mind, and we worked on some stuff for me, which sadly never got the chance to develop in the way I would have liked, merely it was a thrill to exist in his orbit and exist effectually him in a fourth dimension when in the Summit 10 there would be 5 tracks that The Neptunes produced - Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani, Kelis, all that stuff. To have that as role of what my career was becoming at that time really changed everything; it gave me a huge opportunity in America, and it's still a song I play nightly. And I run into people of your age and that was your entry bespeak into this type of music, you know? It was done totally off the cuff and done with dearest and enthusiasm and a lilliputian flake of musicality.

"Having watched the way Pharrell works, he doesn't have music theory noesis, but he knows music and so well that he'll sit and sculpt out chords on a keyboard and put them together, and information technology's so exciting, considering yous can hear him discovering the chords every bit he plays them. He sits there at a keyboard and is simply exploring, not overthinking, just pulling stuff out of the divine universe."

"The Earth We Knew (Over and Over)" past Frank Sinatra

"This is a much, much lesser-known Frank Sinatra tune. I don't know what your average Line of Best Fit reader is like, merely this is one that has a affect of Scott Walker about it, it'due south dark and interesting.

"With Frank, it's very easy to lionise the 1950s Capitol era, but in this '60s era where he was definitely out of public favour, he had these dark, interesting albums. It's a flagship vocal for me with regards to loving the great crooners. My mum has a great love for Sinatra, Bennett, Tony Williams, that kind of crooner and that kind of sound. The big voice, with great control and cracking melodrama to some degree and an astonishing feel of swing. Real poise and elegance.

"In that location are so many different readings y'all can give Frank Sinatra and his career, just I tin can guarantee most people won't have heard this song, but if they put this one on headphones and turn the lights off, they'll be like, 'That'southward a freaking jam.'"

"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" by Harry Connick Jr and Dr John

"Harry Connick, Jr is an artist I didn't speak about as much as I should have done in the early part of my career, because I think you try and cast off your early on influences - I was chatting to Nadine Shah about this the other twenty-four hours. The truth is that seeing Harry Connick, Jr on TVAM when I was ten was a huge influence on me.

"He's an artist who brings New Orleans into the globe of jazz; plain he is from New Orleans, but the tradition of modern jazz pianoforte or bebop jazz piano and the New Orleans style are quite different. They evidently meet, just at that place'due south different rhythms, there's the Creole aspect, there's the traditional jazz aspect and in that location'south the dance floor attribute. Information technology'south kind where New York, Chicago and New Orleans run into, and Harry brings all those things together.

"Hither he'due south performing with one of the New Orleans greats, Dr John, who's a direct link to Professor Longhair and James Booker and all these great people. Then by falling in dearest with Harry Connick, Jr and particularly this song, he opened my earth up to this lineage of New Orleans musicians. It's a archetype kind of gateway drug. You know, he was talking to Lorraine Kelly nearly Thelonius Monk, nigh Herbie Hancock, about Jon Hendricks and about Professor Longhair. Heroin-taking piano geniuses, and this is as I'm getting ready for school, eating my Frosties.

"People similar that do a major, major service. They're cultural smugglers, and if yous've got a fertile heed that's prepare to exist filled and someone like that comes on and plays... I dreamed about being from New Orleans. I was born in Essex but felt similar I was living in New Orleans, or that I should have been born there.

"This was the first tune that I learnt note for notation. I sat at the piano for days and days after school and I figured it out, and when I got my first piano gig at xv, I used to play this twelve times a night. Imagine this fifteen-twelvemonth-old who looks about ten in Castle Combe, singing "Do You Know What It Means To Miss Orleans". Looking back on it it's very funny, but information technology'south a part of my journey I feel really beholden of.

"I've played in New Orleans a few times, and evidently it's changed, but y'all can still grab hold of parts of the original. I think I might take really chosen to play this, which is possibly a fool'south errand, but I have been dorsum there to play quite a few times since, so hopefully it didn't go downwards like a lead balloon.

"Out of these Nine Songs, I probably relish playing this the most, considering it reminds me of the beginning of my musical journey. Sitting downward and learning these kind of chords and all the extensions and that musical move, it's a different kind of harmonic interest that is ten lifetimes worth of study. And so to have begun that with Harry Connick, Jr and Dr John feels like I was very lucky."