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This young singer and pianist has so much talent that she can't becontained by one genre of music. The American-born, Texas-bred daughter ofIndian music legend Ravi Shankar has after-hours jazz, soul, country,blues and folk music at her command, and combines each with natural,dreamy ease. It's almost as if Rickie Lee Jones or Diana Krall wererecording for the absinthe-soaked 4AD label. Some of our greatest artists-- from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles, from Elvis to the Beatles -- weregenres onto themselves, and it's refreshing to see a performer as young asJones craft her own sound and style. Blue Note Records signed her in hopesof slowly building her into the kind of crossover jazz success that theVerve label has enjoyed with Diana Krall and Cassandra Wilson. But itdidn't turn out quite that way: the buzz around Jones's debut, 2002'sCome Away With Me, was so enthusiastic that the album eventuallybecame one of the biggest sellers of the new millennium. Blue Note wiselychose not to try to make her even more successful and left Jonesand her band to their own devices for 2004's Feels Like Home, aslightly darker return to the sophisticated but comforting acoustic soundof her debut. Jones and her band avoided the sophomore slump with thealbum, which hit... Read More ... the gates as a massive hit and further secured her careerin music. She performs regularly with other bands and musicians, includingPeter Malick (she appears on every track of his New York Cityalbum), jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, electronica band Wax Poetic, and anumber of her heroes, among them Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, and the DirtyDozen Brass Band.
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