I stumbled upon a Madeleine Peyroux video at Tumblr. I wish I could remember the site (does Tumblr call them sites?) where I saw it, so that I could credit the person. In any case, Peyroux is terrific.
The video I first saw was “I’m All Right,” which is above. The video itself seems to be self-consciously quirky. (It’s the old meeting odd circus performers while wandering through the countryside at night thing.) But the song is just great. Below, Peyroux sings “The Kind You Can’t Afford” before a studio audience at the Bing lounge. To answer the question posed at the top of the comments, yes — the guitarist indeed is the great Jon Herington, who has toured with Steely Dan for years. Herington may be the best thing to come out of Silk City — Paterson, New Jersey — since Lou Costello.
Here is the beginning of a profile of Peyroux at a fan site:
Madeleine Peyroux [pronounced like the country Peru] was born in Athens, Georgia, she grew up between Brooklyn, Southern California and Paris, though it was in the City of Light where she found her voice. As a teen she was drawn to street music, and in 1989 she started to perform with a group of buskers. She then joined the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band, becoming the only female in the group, which toured around Europe for several years.
Madeleine burst onto the recording scene in 1996, with her stunning debut album Dreamland. Madeleine was greeted with a veritable torrent of gushing reviews. Most raved about her smoke-and-whiskey vocals, often comparing her to the late, great Billie Holiday. Others wondered how someone so young could perform classic songs by Holiday, Bessie Smith and Patsy Cline so convincingly as to make them sound like her own. Time magazine pronounced the groundbreaking Dreamland “the most exciting, involving vocal performance by a new singer this year.” (Continue Reading…)
Peyroux’s official site is here. She will be on tour through early May.
(Homepage Photo: Mary Ellen Mark)
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