Come Away With Me—Norah Jones

(Blue Note — 7243 5 32088 2 0)

With vocals all the rage in the Jazz retail world, here's a young singer you can't conveniently confine in a box. About the only thing jazzy about Norah Jones is some of her phrasing, the label printed on the CD, and probably bits of her record collection. Otherwise, Come Away With Me elegantly dodges the butterfly net of category, fluttering sometimes in the direction of stylist, sometimes in the direction of singer/songwriter.

Arif Mardin, who is undoubtedly not the first producer assigned to this project, sprinkles some very stark fairy-dust on the songs, most of which were written either by Jones or her musicians. Mardin is a hero to a lot of us music fans for different reasons. To many, his production on the Bee Gees' Main Course album immortalized him as a master of melody and pop arrangement, and of course, Come Away With Me is nothing akin to the Bee Gees' classic. The closest kissing cousin to this disc is an obscure record called Lost In Austin, cut in the late seventies by Marc Benno on the A&M label. Texans, Benno and now Jones found the rare and precise balance of rock, soul, folk, and jazz, something Eric Clapton desperately attempted to reproduce during his mid-seventies Slowhand/Backless sessions.

After just one listen, some of you may be scratching your heads as to why we've included this recording in the jazz mix. Yet after submitting demos to Blue Note Records back in October 2000, the label wisely chose to nurture Jones more in the direction of musicianship rather than strict style. Where a saxophone may have formulaically lurked, a National slide guitar whines and croons. Power drummer Brian Blade lays back throughout while acoustic guitars and pianos carry the bulk of the instrumentation.

While the "less is more" thing is an extremely difficult trick to pull off, Come Away With Me nevertheless succeeds, especially when Hank's "Cold Cold Heart" gets a new coat of paint. Still, if it's all too folksy, Jazz scaredy-cats can always resort to Hoagie Carmichael's "The Nearness of You."