(13) Rickie Lee Jones - Rickie Lee Jones (1979)

"Rickie Lee Jones" is the eponymous debut album of singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones. After arriving in California in the mid-70s, Jones started taking songwriting more seriously, and by 1977 had met singer-songwriters Chuck E. Weiss and Tom Waits.

With her expressive soprano voice employing sudden alterations of volume and force, and her lyrical focus on

Los Angeles street

life, Rickie Lee Jones comes on like the love child of Laura Nyro and Tom Waits on her self-titled debut album. Given the population of colorful characters who may or may not be real people that populate her songs Chuck E., Bragger, Kid Sinister, and others. she also might have had Bruce Springsteen in her bloodline (that is, the Springsteen of his first two albums), and her jazzbo sensibility suggests Mose Allison as a grandfather. Producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, who know all about assisting quirky singer/songwriters with their visions, have brought in a studio full of master session musicians, many of them with jazz credentials, and apparently instructed them to follow Jones' stop-and-start, loud-and-soft vocalizing, then overdubbed string parts here and there. The music thus has a sprung rhythmic feel that follows the contours of Jones' impressionistic stories about scuffling people on the streets and in the bars. There is an undertow of melancholy that becomes more overt toward the end, as the narrator's friends and lovers clear out, leaving her "Standing on the corner/All alone," as she sings in the final song, "After Hours (Twelve Bars Past Goodnight)." It's a long way, if only 40 minutes or so, from the frolicsome opener, "Chuck E.'s in Love," which had concluded that he was smitten by "the little girl who's singin' this song." But then, the romance of the street is easily replaced by its loneliness. "Rickie Lee Jones" is an astounding debut album that simultaneously sounds like a synthesis of many familiar styles and like nothing that anybody's ever done before.

Track listing

01.  Chuck E.'s In Love  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 3:28

02.  On Saturday Afternoons in 1963  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 2:31

03.  Night Train  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 3:14

04.  Young Blood  (Rickie Lee Jones, Alfred Johnson)  - 4:04

05.  Easy Money  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 3:16

06.  The Last Chance Texaco  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 4:05

07.  Danny's All-Star Joint  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 4:01

08.  Coolsville  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 3:49

09.  Weasel and the White Boys Cool  (Rickie Lee Jones, Alfred Johnson)  - 6:00

10.  Company  (Rickie Lee Jones, Alfred Johnson)  - 4:40

11.  After Hours (Twelve Bars Past Midnight)  (Rickie Lee Jones)  - 2:13

Released:  february 28, 1979

Recorded at:  Warner Bros. Recording Studios and The Burbank Studios

Genre:  Country Rock

Length:  42:11

Label:  Warner Bros.

Producer:  Lenny Waronker, Russ Titelman

Personnel

Rickie Lee Jones - vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion, horn arrangements

Dr. John - keyboards

Michael McDonald - vocals

Randy Newman - synthesizer

Victor Feldman - percussion, drums, keyboards

Tom Scott - horns

Ralph Grierson - keyboards

Michael Boddicker - synthesizer

Red Callender - bass

Nick DeCaro - accordion, orchestral arrangements

Buzz Feiten - guitar

Chuck Findley - horns

Steve Gadd - drums

Randy Kerber - keyboards

Neil Larsen - keyboards

Arno Lucas - background vocals

Johnny Mandel - orchestral arrangements

Andy Newmark - drums

Jeff Porcaro - drums

Leslie Smith - background vocals

Mark Stevens - drums, percussion

Fred Tackett - guitar, mandolin

Joe Torano - background vocals

Ernie Watts - horns

Willie Weeks - bass

Matthew Weiner - background vocals