Ricky Lee Jones meets M. Python meets Native Amer.
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 6:44 pm
Ricky Lee's videos have always a certain Native American mystical quality, a Monty Python weirdness, and a nebulous message...always intriguing, and the music is always great of course! And the relationship with Tom Waits gave her music a theatrical sensibility that added to her already strange & creative take of the world of music.
Falling up..some Monty Pythonesque animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2m6IXl7qQY
Flying Cowboys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9N_BPreGNg
Rickie Lee Jones (born November 8, 1954) is an American vocalist, musician, songwriter, and producer. Over the course of a career of over three decades, Jones has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, blues, pop, soul, and jazz standards. Her songwriting has been characterized as "a blend of bravado and vulnerability [that] wavers on indefinable borders."[1] She is also known for her unique singing style, especially in live performances. One concert reviewer, describing her rendering of "We Belong Together," states she "reached her apex, skating from swells into near screams into breathy whispers, from pontillist stacatto scats into brassy, trumpetlike bursts."[2]
In 1999, Jones was listed at #30 in the VH1 list of 100 greatest women of rock.
Rickie Lee Jones was born on the north side of Chicago to Bettye and Richard Jones. Her paternal grandfather, Frank 'Peg Leg' Jones, and her grandmother, Myrtle Lee, a dancer, were Vaudevillians based in Chicago, Illinois. A singer/dancer/comedian, Peg Leg Jones' routine consisted of playing the ukelele, singing ballads, and telling stories. Jones's father, one of four children, was a WWII veteran. A singer, songwriter, painter, and trumpet player, Her father worked as a waiter. Her mother, Bettye, was raised in orphanages in Ohio with her three brothers until she was old enough to leave. Bettye and Richard met in a drugstore coffee shop. Rickie Lee was the third of four children and was born in Chicago in 1954.
The family moved to Arizona in 1959, and the dry desolation and heavenly skies would provide the emotional landscape and lyrical imagery (Last Chance Texaco, Flying Cowboys) that marks her early music. Childhood in the Jones family was lonely, but her imagination flourished. She grew up riding horses, studying dance, and practicing swimming with her AAU coach before and after school. When she was 10 years old her brother had an accident which changed the direction of her life. The family moved to Olympia, Washington, where her father finally left the family for good. Rickie Lee finally dropped out of school in the 11th grade, took her GED and enrolled in college in Tacoma. She moved to Huntington Beach, California on her 18th birthday, and found her way to Venice, California and to boyfriend Mark Vaughan who would support her in these formative years. She worked at odd jobs and enrolled in Santa Monica College, studying anthropology and music.
Just My Baby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFyUc9AFT5U
Falling up..some Monty Pythonesque animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2m6IXl7qQY
Flying Cowboys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9N_BPreGNg
Rickie Lee Jones (born November 8, 1954) is an American vocalist, musician, songwriter, and producer. Over the course of a career of over three decades, Jones has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, blues, pop, soul, and jazz standards. Her songwriting has been characterized as "a blend of bravado and vulnerability [that] wavers on indefinable borders."[1] She is also known for her unique singing style, especially in live performances. One concert reviewer, describing her rendering of "We Belong Together," states she "reached her apex, skating from swells into near screams into breathy whispers, from pontillist stacatto scats into brassy, trumpetlike bursts."[2]
In 1999, Jones was listed at #30 in the VH1 list of 100 greatest women of rock.
Rickie Lee Jones was born on the north side of Chicago to Bettye and Richard Jones. Her paternal grandfather, Frank 'Peg Leg' Jones, and her grandmother, Myrtle Lee, a dancer, were Vaudevillians based in Chicago, Illinois. A singer/dancer/comedian, Peg Leg Jones' routine consisted of playing the ukelele, singing ballads, and telling stories. Jones's father, one of four children, was a WWII veteran. A singer, songwriter, painter, and trumpet player, Her father worked as a waiter. Her mother, Bettye, was raised in orphanages in Ohio with her three brothers until she was old enough to leave. Bettye and Richard met in a drugstore coffee shop. Rickie Lee was the third of four children and was born in Chicago in 1954.
The family moved to Arizona in 1959, and the dry desolation and heavenly skies would provide the emotional landscape and lyrical imagery (Last Chance Texaco, Flying Cowboys) that marks her early music. Childhood in the Jones family was lonely, but her imagination flourished. She grew up riding horses, studying dance, and practicing swimming with her AAU coach before and after school. When she was 10 years old her brother had an accident which changed the direction of her life. The family moved to Olympia, Washington, where her father finally left the family for good. Rickie Lee finally dropped out of school in the 11th grade, took her GED and enrolled in college in Tacoma. She moved to Huntington Beach, California on her 18th birthday, and found her way to Venice, California and to boyfriend Mark Vaughan who would support her in these formative years. She worked at odd jobs and enrolled in Santa Monica College, studying anthropology and music.
Just My Baby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFyUc9AFT5U