[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio or live streaming or on demand, I'm really grateful you're here today. Today's show is all about audio, recorded, live, manipulated and authentic. We'll speak with the director and sound mixer for the new documentary 32 Sounds, maybe you heard John Schaefer's story about it on Morning Edition today. We are going to dig into that. We will have a listening party for Doc Watson at 100, a tribute album to the legendary American guitarist, and the UK band The Heavy are on tour in the US.

The Heavy Heavy are on tour in the US, and they are over in studio five setting up right now for a live in-studio performance. That is our plan. Let's get this started with Rickie Lee Jones.

[MUSIC - Rickie Lee Jones: They Can't Take That Away From Me]

The way you wear your hat.

The way you sip your tea.

The memory of all that -

No, no - they can't take that away from me.

The way your smile just beams.

The way you sing off-key.

The way you haunt my dreams.

They can't take that away from me.

Alison Stewart: That's Rickie Lee Jones's rendition of George Gershwin's They Can't Take That Away From Me off the new album titled Pieces of Treasure. It is out today. It is the artist's 15 studio album, but not her first time as a jazz interpreter. She scored a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal in 1990, a little more than a decade after her 1979 breakthrough album. At that time, a Time magazine critic said of Rickie Lee Jones that she was "too good to be just a fluke." Her latest album draws inspiration from the Great American Songbook featuring classics like On the Sunny Side of the Street and One for My Baby.

The last time Rickie was on our show we had a great conversation about her memoir, Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles Of An American Troubadour. Rickie Lee Jones joins us today for a release day listening party. Hey, Rickie, welcome back.

Rickie Lee Jones: How are you? Good to be here.

Alison Stewart: I'm good. Thank you. Thanks for making time. For those of you who know your discography, the title of this album may feel like it's got a call back to Pirates. How did you arrive at Pieces of Treasure for the title?

Rickie Lee Jones: [unintelligible 00:02:39] just in case you're hearing moaning and groaning and sobbing, that's my dog chewing on a bone.

Alison Stewart: What's the dog's name?

Rickie Lee Jones: Jazzy is her name.

Alison Stewart: Hey, Jazzy.

Rickie Lee Jones: A little French bulldog. She's got this bone and she's going to be making a lot of noise. I just want to tell you.

Alison Stewart: Okay, we're pro-Jazzy.

Rickie Lee Jones: Sometimes it's hard to give a collection of songs a title, even something as cohesive as Pirates. How people experience it is going to be affected by what they think you thought the concept was where it's far more ethereal than a word or a cover. In a way that becomes the hardest part of making a record, is creating the door into which you'll enter. Pieces of Treasure, because when we finished it, I had no doubt that it had dropped me off where I left off with Russ, dropped us off at the end of that great success that I had just abandoned and gone on my own way.

It felt like quality work. Not to say that I haven't made quality work, but it was a quality of that experience of working with those guys. I thought of Pirates and where can we go. Pieces of Treasure is what it is. It's little old pieces of treasure. What is it? Are the songs the treasure? Is she the treasure? You can go wherever you want to go with that title I think.

Alison Stewart: It's a nice invitation to use your imagination, whatever the treasure is to you that day.

Rickie Lee Jones: That's it.

Alison Stewart: These are standards, we've heard a lot of these songs before. Do you remember how you were first introduced to the idea of the American Songbook of classics?

Rickie Lee Jones: Yes. These are the songs that my father sang and my mother too. It's what they grew up hearing. My grandfather was a vaudevillian. He sang. My uncle Bob was a fantastic jazz pianist and bass player. He played on the Queen Mary I think in the band in the lounge that's why I never got to see him. That's what I heard. I know that it has that name, but it was just the songs we sang, Laura or Honeysuckle Rose are in the same bed are in the same home anyway as September Song and Sunny Side of the Street and Bye Bye Blackbird and some of the newer clever things like Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most.

Those are all wonderful songs but I came to them much later. The things that I grew up with were September Song, Kurt Vile, Nature Boy, Sunny Side of the Street, taught to me by my dad. That year that he came back, he was always gone, and then he came back around '64 I think and discovered that I could sing and understood harmony and so he began teaching me pretty sophisticated stuff.

Alison Stewart: We actually have September Song ready to listen to. How did your dad explain the lyrics of the song to you?

Rickie Lee Jones: He said this is a song about a spring-winter romance. What that means is that spring is a young woman or young girl and winter means an old man, and that the old man knows his life is coming to a close but he loves this young girl. That was how he explained it that the writer used the months of the year to explain. When I was a little kid, it didn't matter to me how old or young anybody was. I didn't have any more or less interest in it because of their age. I didn't totally approve of [unintelligible 00:07:07] young girl even at nine, but I understood the despair. I understood love. I understood the park bench.

I could see him sitting on right away with the autumn leaves around him. Those are the words in the song. I saw it quite literally and I understood it. I enjoyed it more though as I got older. I only liked but it's a long long time for me [sings]. Those are fun things to sing. Minor to major back again. Then when I learned the verses, I knew when I was a young man courting the girls, I played the waiting game. I was thinking about should I change the gender or not? I just wasn't sure. Once I did, then the second verse, which I'd never learned before when you meet with the young boys in early spring, I thought I know this story very well.

They give me a poem and a [unintelligible 00:08:18] I quite enjoy the verses now.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear September Song from Rickie Lee Jones.

[MUSIC Rickie Lee Jones: September Song]

When you meet with the young boys in early spring

They court you in song and rhyme

And they give you a poem and a clover ring.

But if you could examine the goods that they bring,

they have little to offer but the song they sing

And a plentiful waste of time of day

A plentiful waste of time

Oh it's a long long while from May to December

All the days grow short when you reach September

And when the autumn chill sets the leaves to flame

Then you haven't got time

Alison Stewart: That's September Song from Rickie Lee Jones's new album, Pieces of Treasure. It is out today. Rickie? I don't know. I think Rickie might have gone to help out her dog. Oh, Rickie's back. Hey, Rickie. How you doing? Did you warm up the tea? Go help out Jazzy?

Rickie Lee Jones: No. Where I'm sitting, what I'm hearing has no piano in it. I was just texting. Is that just some weirdness of my Internet, or is the piano coming through where you are? Sorry.

Alison Stewart: No, it's okay. This is so funny. I was so into the song, my eyes were closed and I was just weaving, and then I opened up and you weren't there on the Zoom, but she'll come back eventually.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: It'll work out, it's live radio. As I was thinking as we were talking about the lyrics before. A couple of weeks ago, Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles was here and she has a new album out. She's done a cover of Under My Thumb because one day she was just listening to the lyrics. She was like, "Oh, I don't know if I like this about Under My Thumb," but when she changed the gender to a straight woman, she found a sass in the song.

Rickie Lee Jones: That's tough because that's a really bitching rhythm, but there's nothing okay about putting anybody under your thumb. I just went, "You guys, you should put out a public--" I'm not for that. I'm not for pressuring people to apologize for who they've been or what, but that is a bad song. That is a bad point of view.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I wonder, did any of the lyrics hit you? Not necessarily in a bad way, just in a different way. Something that you wanted to really--

Rickie Lee Jones: I get it. I just thought-- and that's an adjustment, which I did as well on this record. It's an adjustment to find a way into a song that you feel dubious about because for whatever reason, you do want to do it, but Under My Thumb, I just kept to himself. Actually, I guess it is kind of better if you change the gender, I can still look at someone else. Yes, all right. Yes, it is better if you change it.

Alison Stewart: It's a good version. When you think about these classics and these jazz standards, Rickie, is there something that they have in common that has helped them stand the test of time?

Rickie Lee Jones: The first thing I think of is great singers made them come to life. Those singers have fans that lived their whole lives with them and then pass them on to other generations, which is what we do in rock, what we do with Frank Sinatra, and any great song. A song can be even better than it is with a great singer who brings their life and puts it into the song. It can be a very simple lyric, but you feel so many more things because the singer tells you about them in just the smallest inflection. I'd say singers are what they have in common.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Rickie Lee Jones. Her new album is called Pieces of Treasure. It drops today. Just in Time is the first track and first single. I'm curious about track arrangements, especially when you're dealing with songs that people will have an attachment to or know already. The sequencing of the songs, what goes into that conversation, into that thought process?

Rickie Lee Jones: We live in a time where nobody listens to albums anymore and the streaming services put them on random and what you intended the experience to be is lost. Thank you for that question. I think if it was me, by myself, it would be a different answer, but with Russ and I, we're listening first and foremost for pacing. Did I keep your intention when I move from that to that. Then we can think about key changes, is it compatible or is it odd? When we don't have that many upbeat things and obviously I like really slow language, loving, lovely music, but for the audience's sake, we pick it up here or there. Where to put those songs. That doesn't sound like we just tried to pick it up, keep it moving naturally. That's what we did. Do we start side B with All the Way, stuff like that? I knew I wanted to end it with All In The Game. I knew I wanted to start with Just in Time. Then so what went on in the middle for me, if I had the right beginning and end would be gravy.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear how the record kicks off. This is Just in Time from Rickie Lee Jones.

[MUSIC - Rickie Lee Jones: Just in Time]

Just in time, you found me just in time

Before you came, things were runnin' low

I was lost, the losing dice were tossed

My bridges all were crossed, then I met you

Now you're here and now I know just where I'm goin'

No more doubt or fear, I found my way

Love came just in time

You found me just in time

Alison Stewart: That's Just in Time from Pieces of Treasure. My guest is Rickie Lee Jones. You mentioned Russ, Russ Titelman who you know has worked with everybody. Randy Newman, Chaka Khan, Cyndi Lauper, co-produced your self-titled debut. How is he the most helpful to you as a producer?

Rickie Lee Jones: By listening very, very carefully to everything I did, because when I sing, I'm singing to someone, and if there's no one in the studio that I love or who likes me, then I have to make somebody up. In this case, I knew he would be witnessing and experiencing everything that I was doing, and that made me do better than I would have done by myself. We lifted it up each time we played. I really think it's because I had a loving, discerning, smart person who gets me. He can say things about me because I'm pretty thorough in how I listen to myself, but he hears things I don't hear. He made me feel very good about myself just by listening and feeling good about myself. I did the best job I could do.

Alison Stewart: What's a choice that he made or wanted to make that at first you thought, "Okay, I don't know. Okay, Russ. I trust you on this," and it turned out to be the right choice?

Rickie Lee Jones: What's coming into my mind? Can you help me with this? Is this a song idea? I feel like, for the most part, well, just making the album I had come to make-- talked to him about doing a new record of my compositions, and he said, "No, this is the time to do a jazz record." I was like, "Oh, okay."

Alison Stewart: That's a pretty big suggestion.

Rickie Lee Jones: I trusted him right away that he feels so strongly about this. This is something I let go of long ago, and he's like, "No, not letting go of it. Now is the time." That was a great lead. I don't think there were any songs that we were in disagreement with. Here's That Rainy Day, I didn't know. It's a little complicated. It starts here and then it [sings]. It seems like right away it changes keys in the first or second bar. It was harder than you think, required more listening than you would think, but once I got that, it went into my muscles because the rest of it is natural. That was only one. He says this isn't true, but I remember that he was unsure about All in the Game. I thought, well, maybe it was out when he was a teenager and he didn't like it that much anymore. If he ever did. The vocal group thing really made a stamp on that song that not many people have recorded it since. It's hard to get into things when somebody has done them so definitively for good or bad.

How do you dare say, "Abandon that other one and come with me on mine?" There are some songs you can keep those too, but you have to do that suspension of belief. You have to set aside all other remembrances and come on this journey with me as if it is new, and I'll make it new for you. Stay with me till the second line and it'll be new. All in the Game I thought I have a sweet boyfriend. We've been together for a couple of years, three or four, but now, as ever, if there's any kind of riff, I feel like, "Is this the end?"

That's just always been a problem with me. I don't have a sense that it's okay to have conflict. Things will resolve fine. I go, "Oh, is this the end?" There's a lyric in here that addresses all those feelings, and in it it's a woman. She says, "You had words with him and your future is looking dim." He doesn't say you have a broken heart. He says your future. I went, "Okay, this is such a far more desperate and serious lyric than anybody has pulled out of it."

This patriarchal voice, I don't know why I think it's a man, but he's saying to her, "Hold on." The tenderest tiniest thing you dream of, of just him touching your hands again. He will come and touch your hand again. Oh, my God, I can't even repeat the lyric. It's so tender and beautiful. I thought the way in, we're going to do it very, very slow. You have to wait with her while she's waiting for him to come back.

I really enjoyed doing it that way and I love doing it live. I like people making the transition from this rhythm we use all the time to the very, very slow one.

Alison Stewart: Since you just said live because somebody just tweeted on their own to us a picture of you at Birdland. It says, "Brilliant performance. Thanks for bringing the songs. My dad turned me onto back around again."

Rickie Lee Jones: That's wonderful.

Alison Stewart: That's lovely. My guest is Rickie Lee Jones. The album drops today. It's called Pieces of Treasure. Let's listen to another track. You know this one, it's One for My Baby.

[MUSIC - Rickie Lee Jones: One for My Baby]

Oh, I guess that's how it goes

Joe, I know you're anxious to close

Thanks for the cheer

I hope you didn't mind my bending your ear

The torch that I felt must be drown or to my explode

Make it one for my baby

One more for the road

Alison Stewart: Rickie, I read this, but you know the internet, so I want to ask you myself. It took five days to make this record, is that it?

Rickie Lee Jones: It took five days to do the tracks. We recorded 10 tracks in five days, which is-- Oh, no, we recorded much more. That's remarkable. We were getting three songs a day. [laughs] You're lucky if you get one. Then we spent another month putting on or trying to put on solos, putting the ood on Nature Boy and dressing it up. We did like-- For instance, Here's That Rainy Day has these spaces we left for a soloist, but once we lived with it, we went, "Yes, to have this space is so beautiful. Let's just leave it as it is."

In one case, one or two, we put a playroom, but for the most part, we just wasted another month [laughs] because we were having fun.

Alison Stewart: That's great that you were having fun, that this was a fun experience.

Rickie Lee Jones: It's so anxiety provoking. Not just, "Will I succeed in getting the best from the player that's out there from myself?" but also figuring into it because it's a lifelong career and a business, is will this find its way not only to an audience that likes it, but will it serve the larger purpose of bringing me and my voice and my work to a larger audience? There's no way to pretend that that's not part of what you hope will happen.

You don't think it while you're working, but in this case we went, "Wow, this is so good." I never dare to say this, but Russ said, "I think you might have made a great record here.

[laughter] Okay, don't say that out loud." It was a great goal.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Rickie Lee Jones and Jazzy Lee Jones, the French bulldog. The name of the record is Pieces of Treasure. It drops today. Rickie, thanks for making time.

Rickie Lee Jones: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on All the Way from Pieces of Treasure.

[MUSIC - Rickie Lee Jones: All the Way]

When somebody loves you it's no good

Unless she loves you all the way

Happy to be near you

When you need someone to cheer you all the way

Taller than the tallest trees

That's how it's got to feel.

Deeper than the deep blue sea is

That's how deep it goes If it's real

When somebody needs you, it's no good

Unless he needs you

 

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