Speaker 1: Pushkin. Ricky Lee Jones hit it big with her debut
Speaker 1: album in seventy nine. The following year, she won the
Speaker 1: Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and over the course
Speaker 1: of the next four decades, released numerous albums that pulled
Speaker 1: inspiration from jazz, rock, electronic music, and even musical theater.
Speaker 1: In late April, Ricky released her latest album, Pieces of Treasure,
Speaker 1: where she sings songs in the American songbook with a
Speaker 1: jazz slant producer and legendary an arman. Russ Titelman, who
Speaker 1: produced Ricky's first two albums, reunited with her on her
Speaker 1: latest and helped inspire Ricky to find a comfort in
Speaker 1: her lower vocal register. The result is an oftentimes sultry
Speaker 1: meditation on aging and survival. On today's episode, Bruce HEADLM
Speaker 1: talks to Ricky Ley Jones about her decades long fight
Speaker 1: to sing jazz, even though she's often viewed as an outsider.
Speaker 1: She also tells stories about leaving home as a young
Speaker 1: teenager and the abuse she endured while trying to survive
Speaker 1: on her own. She played songs from her career, including
Speaker 1: one she wrote after seeing John Lennon appear to her
Speaker 1: in a dream, and just a note before we get started.
Speaker 1: This episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse and might not
Speaker 1: be appropriate for all listeners. This is broken record liner
Speaker 1: notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's Bruce
Speaker 1: Hedlam with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2: I've always thought of you as someone who and I
Speaker 2: thought of this particularly on the new record. You're someone
Speaker 2: who is acting in the song in a strength. Did
Speaker 2: you always think of yourself as that one?
Speaker 3: I've just found the words to say that. But I've
Speaker 3: always put the song on and been inside of it,
Speaker 3: and I know everything about everybody in it. So if
Speaker 3: I sing something cool, I know where she's sitting, what
Speaker 3: she's wearing, where she bought it, everybody at the bar.
Speaker 3: I see it all. And I think that's what an
Speaker 3: actor does. They try to create everything about their character.
Speaker 3: But it happens to me instantaneously. I have a rich imagination,
Speaker 3: I guess, and when I sing, the tree instantly grows.
Speaker 3: And I started thinking this year, I'm acting songs, and
Speaker 3: there's a little difference between singing a song and acting.
Speaker 3: Being a song actor, it suggests i'mhow that I'm not
Speaker 3: a real singer, which of course I am. A serious singer,
Speaker 3: but I think I'm acting, I'm being the song.
Speaker 2: It's closer to singers from previous generations. We're like that,
Speaker 2: like Peggy Lee or Julie London. Yes, people like that
Speaker 2: seem to kind of inhabit songs become the characters and songs.
Speaker 2: They were singers, not primarily songwriters, although Peggy Lee did
Speaker 2: write some songs. But you you write them, so people think, oh,
Speaker 2: they must be confessions. They're yeah, pouring your soul out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you don't really pour your soul out.
Speaker 3: I like to write stories, and in this story might
Speaker 3: be some poignant, unresolved tear drop or something. That's the
Speaker 3: best way to show it in this way, as any
Speaker 3: writer does, you know, put their own emotion because that's
Speaker 3: the only palette we have right into what they write.
Speaker 3: And that thing again of the singer songwriter versus the
Speaker 3: singer how people see them, because after Bob Dylan and
Speaker 3: Joni Mitchell, it became crucial to be a songwriter. If
Speaker 3: you weren't a songwriter, then you're not really authentic. If
Speaker 3: you didn't write that song, then why even singing it?
Speaker 3: Kind of aut itude, which I of course disagree with.
Speaker 3: To me, the interpreter, the singer, the bard is who matters. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you wrote the song. But if there's no
Speaker 3: one to sing it, what does it matter? So Peggy
Speaker 3: Lee or me or anybody who loves a song and
Speaker 3: loves to sing and loves hear other people, you know,
Speaker 3: whether it's a choir or whatever, loves singing. That's what
Speaker 3: I like most. When I had the ear of the
Speaker 3: press the way I did in the early eighties, I
Speaker 3: talk about Linda Ronstaff, for instance, who was not as
Speaker 3: in style now for a minute, because she wasn't punk
Speaker 3: rock and she didn't write songs. But I was like, bet,
Speaker 3: she's a great singer. And whatever comes into fashion, and
Speaker 3: I'm glad new things come into fashion. But you can't
Speaker 3: discard the meaning of a singer, I think.
Speaker 2: Because when you came out, you don't sound like Joni Mitchell,
Speaker 2: but you looked a bit like Jomie Mitchell, so much
Speaker 2: like her, so everybody's, oh, she's influenced by Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 2: And then I'm reading your book and it's like Jimmy Hendrix.
Speaker 2: It's West Side Story, which is a big thing for you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there's a very I won't give it away. There's
Speaker 2: a very lovely scene with that guy. I'll say his name,
Speaker 2: Tom Waite's the only time I'm going.
Speaker 3: To say it.
Speaker 2: Where you're outside of a bar and someone says a
Speaker 2: line and someone else yeah, and then you all sing it.
Speaker 2: He gets the line wrong, I think too. But it's
Speaker 2: this beautiful scene.
Speaker 3: Because and it's real, It really happened.
Speaker 2: And people grew up, you know, back then, like people
Speaker 2: would have records. They might have the Beatles, but then
Speaker 2: their parents would have South Pacific or Camelot or something,
Speaker 2: a sound of everybody had sound of music. Back then.
Speaker 2: You said you tended towards Laura Nero. What did you
Speaker 2: get from her? What was it that drew you?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I got that thing of these strange and I still
Speaker 3: haven't learned her songs. But these kinds of chords, right,
Speaker 3: and hers are much darker, but and they probably show
Speaker 3: up passing in Leonard Bernstein. So that's what she had.
Speaker 3: She had inversions that were magical to me, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to know them. She also happened to see her
Speaker 3: on public television at the same time I heard of
Speaker 3: so to see her is something else entirely. She looked
Speaker 3: like a terribly mentally ill person who could hardly sit
Speaker 3: there to perform this song. And as a teenager, I
Speaker 3: really identified with that part. Felt pretty barely together myself.
Speaker 3: So I liked that there was somebody there who dared
Speaker 3: to show herself as she was.
Speaker 2: And she was also very theatrical, Yes that's a better word.
Speaker 2: She was creating scenes with her people know, wedding bell Blues,
Speaker 2: that's one of her big songs, But it creates a
Speaker 2: big it does.
Speaker 3: It's like a show number, something like the one about Tomcat.
Speaker 3: Goodbye is like its own piece of theater from top
Speaker 3: to bottom. So it's a little bit of Gershwin's, a
Speaker 3: little bit of organbezz and then a lot of motown soul.
Speaker 3: And she's made her own kind of music. I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna say brand, but she's made her own and you know,
Speaker 3: I think what I love is the sound of her voice.
Speaker 3: But that that she did that probably was a map
Speaker 3: for me that I could also make my own room
Speaker 3: of my own imaginary people.
Speaker 2: What do you think are your songs that do that
Speaker 2: the best? What rooms do you go? I got that one?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the things from Pirates, I would say, And.
Speaker 5: He's got walk crazy act turns him into a car.
Speaker 3: Two and pretty girls go by. Nothing here to do anymore,
Speaker 3: so he sits on the stoop all day.
Speaker 4: I does something is waiting for Countfinger. Louis picks up
Speaker 4: Eddy in the alley.
Speaker 3: He likes to come here with them buzz from that town.
Speaker 3: Everybody there looks like Frankie Valley and they're fluently blonde
Speaker 3: from her leg to a cigarette. And Louis told Eddie
Speaker 3: fix him up, but he ain't come back in now
Speaker 3: this rhyme Frankie Valley. I was originally trying to rhyme
Speaker 3: Eddie Briggotti because Eddie Briggotty is from the Young Rascals,
Speaker 3: and I loved the Young Rascals and especially you know
Speaker 3: his How can I be sure there's not? And I
Speaker 3: like the idea that nobody's written about Eddie Briggotty, but
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anything to rhyme with Gotti. More people
Speaker 3: would know who Frankie Valley was. It's a very one
Speaker 3: of my funny lines. I have a few funny lines,
Speaker 3: but I always feel like it goes right by people.
Speaker 3: They're they're enchanted by the service. Start, what are you
Speaker 3: talking about? Now? Where everybody looks like Frankie Valley.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 3: More trouble than it's worth?
Speaker 4: What trouble in his word? Oh wold to tell him where.
Speaker 6: You Oh wowld So that's one I think, tell him.
Speaker 4: Where you are?
Speaker 3: And then that one goes there, and there's another verse
Speaker 3: about the girl.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: So those are the two boys Eddie and and oh
Speaker 3: and so those characters were inspired by my friend Salbernardi's
Speaker 3: childhood friends in Lodi, New Jersey. He had this one guy,
Speaker 3: so he had count fingered Louis. But the other one
Speaker 3: was the guy was one crazy all right that when
Speaker 3: he got nervous, it started spitting all around. So I
Speaker 3: brought his characters in. And then so zero quits cool.
Speaker 3: She lost her job again and her boyfriend beat her
Speaker 3: up and he won't let her in. She's walking by
Speaker 3: this joint in her black and blue dress.
Speaker 8: She looks a little welbones out of you, says, don't
Speaker 8: tell me, Leving guess.
Speaker 7: It's more trouble in his word, she's moore trouble in
Speaker 7: his word.
Speaker 4: Oh why? And then.
Speaker 9: Fast and west this way.
Speaker 8: When you've got all these ideas, you'd never to.
Speaker 4: Any one.
Speaker 8: There are these magnet's pulling j left, living every story.
Speaker 4: Only once.
Speaker 3: So in that part, remember when you're in a movie
Speaker 3: and the newspapers go by and they're spinning by it.
Speaker 3: This is the exciting time.
Speaker 10: That's what that was.
Speaker 6: Up.
Speaker 8: Hey, yeah, we'll liveving it.
Speaker 9: Up, welling up, we'll.
Speaker 4: It up, well.
Speaker 5: Up, ye will livevyvinge up.
Speaker 9: Welving it up? Yeah, well, liveving it up? Yeah, well,
Speaker 9: living up.
Speaker 3: Up. And then I think it was probably really inspired
Speaker 3: by my friendship with Lunetti found nor reason.
Speaker 4: Then in there carried her over the bridges.
Speaker 3: And fluttering pages. They didn't care, this terminal where dreams
Speaker 3: led so many tickets through and strange looking faces, and
Speaker 3: see somebody there.
Speaker 4: They knew.
Speaker 11: You could meet me tomorrow when all of the lights
Speaker 11: aide blooming. Feel a little lonely, a little sad, a
Speaker 11: little mean, But remember this place, Sada's Hotel.
Speaker 3: You could do anything you want.
Speaker 4: You could never tell.
Speaker 11: It's not trouble in its word, but trouble than its word.
Speaker 4: Whoa wow, I won't you tell me where you are?
Speaker 3: That? Yeah, so I'd say more than any song I've written.
Speaker 3: That song answers hers right, or a song about her
Speaker 3: characters living in the darker part of the city. This
Speaker 3: one sets them free to go somewhere else. Always I
Speaker 3: don't always, but for a long time I've felt it's
Speaker 3: a conversation we have when we're lucky enough to be
Speaker 3: writers of songs that people here and sing. We're all
Speaker 3: talking to one another and responding to one another. It's
Speaker 3: just a lie to pretend that you live in a
Speaker 3: vacuum and everything comes out of your own head. And
Speaker 3: if you're not being honest about it, then your thief
Speaker 3: and and you're stealing stuff. So we must learn from
Speaker 3: one another, and it has to be okay to say
Speaker 3: learning from somebody else. And then I made up my
Speaker 3: own thing. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things about that song you
Speaker 2: just played, you're constantly changing tempos. You know, you've stopped
Speaker 2: the whole band in the middle, and then it starts
Speaker 2: back up again. Where does that come from? Is that
Speaker 2: from musicals as well?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Maybe so. I've always liked things that changed directions
Speaker 3: and changed and they did it in the pop stuff
Speaker 3: for a while, right, Crosby stills a nish. It was exciting,
Speaker 3: but probably musical theater does it first?
Speaker 2: Can you tell me about Away from the sky that.
Speaker 3: Was inspired by the death of John Lennon. I dream
Speaker 3: I had about John Lennon. I feel pretty strong today,
Speaker 3: so I can probably talk about it. But sometimes if
Speaker 3: I just talk about sad stuff, it's overwhelming. But not
Speaker 3: that long after he died, I dreamed of him. I've
Speaker 3: never been there, but on a British or riding his
Speaker 3: bike with a stocking cap. And then like the three beards,
Speaker 3: in the back of him was Yokoa and in back
Speaker 3: of her was shown each one is in the little
Speaker 3: bike and there was a pier. And as he turned
Speaker 3: to go on to the pier, he looked at me.
Speaker 3: Gentleman is looking at me, and he sang this, Let's see.
Speaker 3: There was a crooked man who lived on a crooked shore.
Speaker 3: But now he'll never have to go away anymore.
Speaker 8: Away from the sky. Ahway from the sky.
Speaker 3: And turned onto the pier and they followed him. Really
Speaker 3: when I woke up, because sometimes those things dissolve instantly,
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but that part never made it
Speaker 3: into the recording, I saved the real party saying for
Speaker 3: myself and I made up a song based on a
Speaker 3: Dylan Thomas short story called After the Fair. You know
Speaker 3: the thing on the record is my demo. So I'm
Speaker 3: just going boom boomed, as minimal as it can be.
Speaker 3: And then, and because I was probably half writing it
Speaker 3: as I recorded. For all that it cost him, he
Speaker 3: never did complain. The chicken headed man. They're feathering the rain,
Speaker 3: but the last bassist tie.
Speaker 4: Everybody's gone.
Speaker 3: The horses are painted with the waiting.
Speaker 4: Of the lawn. Go from the rodeo.
Speaker 3: God, from the tundraug girl, it's after the fair.
Speaker 5: That's when I see you.
Speaker 3: There she sleeps in the canvas. The fat man hollers,
Speaker 3: O tender is the night I feel bleeding out of you.
Speaker 3: So come into my trailer. We can toast a little bread.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Look, you left a hole oil laid on my bed.
Speaker 4: He said. But you keep what you can keep. And
Speaker 4: when you dive into the deep this year, after Froz
Speaker 4: and you, that's where saved youse.
Speaker 10: Away from the sky, Oh.
Speaker 5: Away from the sky, Oh, away from the sky, Away
Speaker 5: from the sky.
Speaker 3: But everybody's gone.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: It's after the fair. The horses are waiting in the middle.
Speaker 4: Of the So you turn the.
Speaker 3: Care yourself on. When the lights closed down, you can
Speaker 3: watch the ponies round through the middle of town.
Speaker 4: That you go, little girl, there you.
Speaker 6: Go, gone from the tongue run.
Speaker 5: Now it's after the fences.
Speaker 7: When over the fences again and the vacuum and the hole.
Speaker 3: And the plans up in.
Speaker 4: The air, that's where I.
Speaker 1: Can hear your best.
Speaker 5: But away from the sky, Away from the sky, Oh,
Speaker 5: from the sky.
Speaker 4: Away from the skyes.
Speaker 1: That was Ricky Lee Jones performing her song away from
Speaker 1: the Sky. We have to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam and Ricky
Speaker 1: Lee Jones. We're back with more from Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I reread your your autobiography and now
Speaker 2: you moved so much when you.
Speaker 1: Were a kid.
Speaker 2: Yes, it seemed that you were always having to reintroduce
Speaker 2: your or introduce yourself.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Although you always did it, it seemed to fill you
Speaker 2: with terror, the idea that he.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that terror of people basic mistrust and expectation
Speaker 3: that at some point don't do their worst. Stayed with me.
Speaker 3: The playground seems to be ever with us, I could
Speaker 3: say with me, But it does seem like that that
Speaker 3: scenario is playing out over and over again of a
Speaker 3: bully kids who want to follow the bully, just so
Speaker 3: they don't get picked on. A couple kids who are
Speaker 3: one's different or one's as poor, or it's always the
Speaker 3: same dynamic of who's on top and who's underneath. And
Speaker 3: I think the fact that I was a little different,
Speaker 3: though I didn't think so, but I think I must
Speaker 3: have been gave me someone to be so that I
Speaker 3: wasn't anonymous, because I guess more than I hated being
Speaker 3: picked on, I hated being invisible. So I accepted that,
Speaker 3: but I really never understood why I'd look in the
Speaker 3: mirror and go, aren't I pretty? Why don't they like me?
Speaker 3: And it's still a mystery to me, really.
Speaker 2: Yes, even later in your book, you're very critical of
Speaker 2: what was sort of late stage hippies. So the people
Speaker 2: you hung around with, it seemed that when you were traveling,
Speaker 2: and you started traveling, I think at fourteen and just
Speaker 2: checking hiking, and you know, you lived in a cave
Speaker 2: for a while. There were other people in the cave too,
Speaker 2: but I was still a cave, you know. It seemed that,
Speaker 2: you know, particularly a lot of the menu met were
Speaker 2: very the usury. They're very predatory, and they were the hippies.
Speaker 2: They were they talked a good game, but a lot
Speaker 2: of them were very abusive.
Speaker 3: Well, I was really young, and I believed what I read,
Speaker 3: my impressions of what it would be like to be
Speaker 3: a grown up in that world, to be an active
Speaker 3: member of their idea of what life should be like.
Speaker 3: But those people were just greasers a little bit older, right,
Speaker 3: They were just the tough kids at school in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty two, or whoever they were. I saw them as
Speaker 3: magically appearing with long hair like Christ. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: I was definitely needed a place to stay and needed
Speaker 3: something to eat, and the cost of that was my body,
Speaker 3: and you know, that was very hard. Sometimes I just
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to rest and not have to
Speaker 3: struggle with some guide. Would he relent and not try
Speaker 3: to put his dick in me? Or would that be
Speaker 3: the cost of having a night of food. I have
Speaker 3: never actually said that so starkly and truly, because it
Speaker 3: was so hard and a little kid, you know, and
Speaker 3: then getting up the next day if you lucky, if
Speaker 3: it's the next day and they don't want you there anymore.
Speaker 3: And I think every single guy I met, I thought,
Speaker 3: well he married me? Is he the one who loved me,
Speaker 3: every one of them, and so that was lots of disappointments.
Speaker 3: But I've, you know, have many years to think about it,
Speaker 3: and I was really just a very little kid in
Speaker 3: a woman's body, in a costume that looked like old
Speaker 3: enough for them. I think some of them would have
Speaker 3: withdrawn if they knew my two age, but most of
Speaker 3: them know. I think it was kind of cool, right
Speaker 3: to be attracted to a young teenager. They still sell
Speaker 3: that image a lot of school girl like hit Me
Speaker 3: Baby One More.
Speaker 2: Time Britney spears.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she sold that image as well. So as long
Speaker 3: as we let that image be sold and you know
Speaker 3: that stuff is going on in reality, I.
Speaker 2: Do want to talk about a nice guy. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: your producer on this project, Russ Titelman, who was one
Speaker 2: of your first producers. Yeah, my first, your first. He
Speaker 2: was your first.
Speaker 3: I had two producers, Lenny Warrenker and Russ Titleman, and
Speaker 3: I'd seen Lenny. I didn't know from producers, but I
Speaker 3: saw Lenny's name on the back of a Randy Newman record.
Speaker 3: It's about two years maybe before I got signed.
Speaker 2: Most people would have wanted to meet Randy Newman. No,
Speaker 2: you went into the small type.
Speaker 3: That's right. I've always known that's the way in. You
Speaker 3: can't go for the big, big thing because everybody wants
Speaker 3: to meet Randy. But if you find I was an
Speaker 3: infamous getter in Backstage Girl, and I'd watched the secret
Speaker 3: way that nobody was going and just slip in that way.
Speaker 3: So that was the same philosophy of how to get in.
Speaker 3: So anyway his name, and so we sent tapes around
Speaker 3: to three or four people. He got one of them
Speaker 3: and and I was exactly right. He was the way,
Speaker 3: and I pushed, you know, when the record companies went
Speaker 3: to sign me, this little I think it was called
Speaker 3: Portrait or something. This little company made the best offer,
Speaker 3: and we went back to Warner Brothers, my lawyer, a
Speaker 3: big shot working for free. We talked him and I'm
Speaker 3: going to be a big shot and said, you know,
Speaker 3: she wants to go with Lindy. So if you'll meet
Speaker 3: the offer. I don't know if that's okay to tell that,
Speaker 3: but if you'll meet the offer, it we'll come with you.
Speaker 3: And that happened exactly as it was meant to. So
Speaker 3: Lenny sent the tape to Russ because they were partners
Speaker 3: in production. Russ was working with George Harris in England,
Speaker 3: and he tells this story a lot now now that
Speaker 3: we're reunited. So when he heard Company, he called Lenny
Speaker 3: and said, this girl is a singer. She's like roberta Flock,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty big compliment. And Lenny said, I
Speaker 3: really noticed I was listening to the songs, so they
Speaker 3: were perfect. Him addressing the songs, we got to put
Speaker 3: an accordion on the bridge because the Italians are there,
Speaker 3: and him addressing the singer, you got to go sing
Speaker 3: that line again. So it was good.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine now just what a incredible period
Speaker 2: that was for you. You'd only been writing songs for
Speaker 2: a couple of years. Yes, you were living in La I.
Speaker 3: Was homeless in the months before I was signed. I
Speaker 3: just tumbled into having nowhere to go.
Speaker 2: What was it like, suddenly the these record companies are
Speaker 2: bidding for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it felt as if it was always supposed to
Speaker 3: be that way.
Speaker 2: Did you always think that growing up that this was
Speaker 2: going to happen.
Speaker 3: No, But I always felt that I was going somewhere special.
Speaker 3: I always felt like I was always talking to the
Speaker 3: invisible world and God's cameras right about here. Is how
Speaker 3: you got it is look up today. So it's hard
Speaker 3: to explain what I always thought, but I feel a
Speaker 3: constant connection to something that almost has no words but
Speaker 3: is ever present in here. But I can't say that
Speaker 3: I did you know? My life was troubled and going nowhere.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any skills, I'd quit high school, but
Speaker 3: I had this. When I sang, it was all that
Speaker 3: I am. Anything I sang was totally emotional. And then
Speaker 3: I got this job as a singing way too, and
Speaker 3: everybody else was so much louder than me. I thought,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to learn how to sing louder or
Speaker 3: I'm never gonna get a job. So I taught myself.
Speaker 3: But there was a book, and I put my hands
Speaker 3: on my chest and found a way to put that
Speaker 3: sound in the bones and practice. And that was the first,
Speaker 3: you know, because always thought it was a great singer,
Speaker 3: But the fact was I could be a great singer,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't. So I taught myself to be a
Speaker 3: better singer. As soon as I did that, within a year,
Speaker 3: it presented itself to me. It was just life presented
Speaker 3: itself to me.
Speaker 2: Did you not know you wanted to be a singer
Speaker 2: before that. What made you finally focus on that?
Speaker 3: You know, since I was sixteen, I'd been practicing, you know,
Speaker 3: sweet Juty blue Eyes and singing and play with my
Speaker 3: girlfriend Julian, playing everywhere. But when I was on my
Speaker 3: own and got to La, it seemed like that will
Speaker 3: never happen there. It's a town full of people trying
Speaker 3: to do it. And you're so weird. You're not like
Speaker 3: Joni Mitchell. You can't sing like Joe Bias. You're so weird,
Speaker 3: right because you're different, and so somebody will come. They
Speaker 3: might not all, but somebody will come because you're different.
Speaker 3: They'll like that about you. And I had this natural
Speaker 3: thing for jazz. My father sang jazz and his father
Speaker 3: was a vaudevillion And I began to you know, what
Speaker 3: I know how to do is my funny Valentine. And
Speaker 3: so I started singing the jazz ballads in Venice when
Speaker 3: and nobody was doing it. So that felt powerful. I
Speaker 3: have something that's just mine and I did it really well,
Speaker 3: and the local snooty musician and suddenly were like, we
Speaker 3: like you come and sit in with us again. So
Speaker 3: I started to feel like I had a possibility and
Speaker 3: an identity, and then in a short time I had
Speaker 3: my own Friday night gig at a bar, and then
Speaker 3: a short time later I was making a demo for
Speaker 3: a record company. So once I set aside doubt and
Speaker 3: my mother said, I said, Mom, I'm going to go
Speaker 3: to school and be a stenographer. I've only got to
Speaker 3: go eighteen months and I'll have a job. She said,
Speaker 3: but I thought you wanted to be a singer, imagine,
Speaker 3: And I said I did, but I just can't see
Speaker 3: how that would ever happen. And she said, don't you
Speaker 3: give up on your dreams.
Speaker 2: Interesting because your mother had had a very tough life,
Speaker 2: very tough. She'd been an orphan. Yeah, your father lost
Speaker 2: his mother very young.
Speaker 3: As well, so they're both that in common.
Speaker 2: And she seemed to live a very controlled life and
Speaker 2: either keep she had to keep things. She kept things
Speaker 2: together for other people. It's interesting that she was the
Speaker 2: one who said to you, I thought you wanted to
Speaker 2: be a sending.
Speaker 3: No, it was almost divine, like the other voice said,
Speaker 3: we got to speak through Betty right now, or she's
Speaker 3: going to give up. Don't give up on your dreams. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was unexpected and so heartfelt that I thought, my
Speaker 3: mother is invested in me trying with all my might
Speaker 3: to make a dream come true, And it almost seemed
Speaker 3: like it was more she wanted me to try, But
Speaker 3: I thought, maybe she thinks I can do it too.
Speaker 3: She's not here, she didn't see what's happening, but she
Speaker 3: believes me.
Speaker 2: When you got into the studio for the first time,
Speaker 2: you played with bands, and you had fabulous players I did.
Speaker 3: You had Steve gadd Andy, Newmark, Willie Week, the incredible
Speaker 3: Victor Feldman who was in Miles Davis's band, and did
Speaker 3: all that's Teelee Dan work. So one of the things
Speaker 3: about when you were with the top tier players is
Speaker 3: they're very kind. It's the other ones that's jabbulut. But
Speaker 3: the best players are very kind and they love making music.
Speaker 3: And so I couldn't write it, but I could sing
Speaker 3: it all. So I sang all the horn parts, and
Speaker 3: somebody wrote them down and they played them and they
Speaker 3: were exactly how I thought they would sound in my head.
Speaker 3: But the other aspects of recording, like Chucky's in Love
Speaker 3: and stuff, as it manifested into the physical world, it
Speaker 3: wasn't at all what I only ever heard my voice
Speaker 3: and me. So the producers endeavored to bring to reality
Speaker 3: whatever feeling they thought I had, and their own, you know,
Speaker 3: how to make a good record. I think their choices
Speaker 3: were always much cleaner, tamer, precise. Then I might have gone.
Speaker 3: And I'm glad, you know, and I've known people like
Speaker 3: this about me best I think then the more raggedy stuff.
Speaker 3: But they took me out gently and my guitar playing
Speaker 3: and put in.
Speaker 2: So what was that like? That incredible year? You're signed,
Speaker 2: you make this record with these amazing players, You're on
Speaker 2: Saturday Night Live, you argue with them on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 2: which I thought was pretty gutsy. They wanted you to
Speaker 2: do one song you wanted to do Coolsville.
Speaker 10: I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing that Saturday Night Live. Everybody does.
Speaker 2: It was a you were suddenly huge. Yeah, and you
Speaker 2: had a check for fifty thous that's right. Was what
Speaker 2: was the first thing you bought with that?
Speaker 3: Probably? You know, dinner? First of all, I had nowhere
Speaker 3: to put it. I didn't have a bank account, so
Speaker 3: when I got that check, I still had to borrow
Speaker 3: some money from Lenny because I didn't have a cash
Speaker 3: and really I didn't know how anything worked. And know
Speaker 3: how to have a bank account or how to tip
Speaker 3: or so what was that like? You know, it's almost
Speaker 3: like the whole life was holding his breath so for
Speaker 3: for a little while, everything was just shimmering and still
Speaker 3: and right, that's what it was, like, I think, But.
Speaker 2: You beat the second album curse I did?
Speaker 3: I meant to too that, you're like, I was well
Speaker 3: aware of it. I had met Bet Middler at a dinner.
Speaker 2: Was this before your record?
Speaker 3: Yeah, before the first record? So because you thought, she said,
Speaker 3: let me tell you what's going to happen. You're gonna
Speaker 3: put this one out and if it doesn't do horrible,
Speaker 3: they'll pick up your second one, and not to your
Speaker 3: third record. Will you have any kind of acclaimer success?
Speaker 3: And that was kind of what happened to most people.
Speaker 3: And that was I thought, nah, we'll see. I think
Speaker 3: my first record's probably gonna do pretty good. So when
Speaker 3: we had the big success, so big, bigger than anything.
Speaker 3: Hard to find a woman who had had that kind
Speaker 3: of success coming out the gate, though you know, they
Speaker 3: probably weren't telling it up in the sixties in exactly
Speaker 3: the same way, but it was. It was a very
Speaker 3: big thing, and it was a crossover kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and culturally, I got to expand the idea. You know,
Speaker 3: I was a singer songwriter, but I wasn't a fochy
Speaker 3: And these things sound small now, but they were big
Speaker 3: making people accept that it works. It'll make everybody money,
Speaker 3: and it's different than what was before. So I know
Speaker 3: I can't match this record in any way. I'm not
Speaker 3: the same person. I'm not as happy, and those are
Speaker 3: a lot of beautiful, happy songs, and I'm not on
Speaker 3: this side of the mountain anymore. So from the other
Speaker 3: side of the mountain, I will draw the picture of
Speaker 3: what I see fiercely, and I won't give one eyelash
Speaker 3: to the idea of a song that you'll play on
Speaker 3: the radio. And so a little bit of it is defiance,
Speaker 3: and that's okay. You can't help but not respond to
Speaker 3: what's happening. You know, if that hadn't happened, what would
Speaker 3: I have written?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: But so what I wrote was what was happening to me.
Speaker 3: And I think that the incredible thing that happens with
Speaker 3: the recording is it captures more than in the song itself.
Speaker 3: It captures your intention and it captures your spirit That's
Speaker 3: the inexplicable thing about a great record is it has spirit,
Speaker 3: and people put it on the list of their important records.
Speaker 3: I personally think the first record is important, but I
Speaker 3: don't exactly know why Pirates matters more. I'm guessing people
Speaker 3: who put it on their favorite lists don't know it's
Speaker 3: the SECA record, so they don't know it's overcoming expectations.
Speaker 3: But I like it. It's dreamy. It's remarkable in its
Speaker 3: musicality and sophistication for a girl who had no education.
Speaker 3: But I like a song I can sing, like I
Speaker 3: was saying, I like a melody that you remember. I
Speaker 3: don't know if anybody can sing the traces of the
Speaker 3: Western slopes, you know. So I don't mean to insult myself,
Speaker 3: but I'm glad that it hit with people. But then
Speaker 3: the curse probably came some years later. I took a
Speaker 3: long time to make the third record. It was nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, I think, so I had gone in and
Speaker 3: out of heroin addiction, and a couple of times I
Speaker 3: had drunk on stage, not many, but the times I did.
Speaker 3: There was a big, full length photograph in a newspaper,
Speaker 3: and the promoters. The promoters Union exiled me from many stages.
Speaker 3: Guys did much worse, but I think that there was
Speaker 3: an expectation of proper, pristine behavior from me because of
Speaker 3: the quality.
Speaker 9: Of the work.
Speaker 3: We don't like our girls to behave badly, and they
Speaker 3: want to think of of a woman. It's a tragic,
Speaker 3: falling figure. And so many people want to disrespect to
Speaker 3: anybody instead of loving, forgiving, spreading that goodwill. So I
Speaker 3: was in a really defensive posture when I did the magazine.
Speaker 3: I was off drugs and I wanted everybody to know it,
Speaker 3: and I did a cover looking really off drugs.
Speaker 2: And everybody's very healthy, very.
Speaker 3: Healthy, and I was super healthy. But I spent some
Speaker 3: time in France and I was leaning towards a more
Speaker 3: classical kind of music. Now I'd heard Eric Sati and
Speaker 3: it was expanding in another way. So these are weird.
Speaker 3: This was the one album I wrote that I wanted
Speaker 3: to do theater with it, So this was the direction
Speaker 3: I would have liked to have grown in some version
Speaker 3: of my life, to write theater and act. But at
Speaker 3: that point I seemed to be just collapsing emotionally. The
Speaker 3: broken love affairs, the trail of dead, and the very
Speaker 3: beginning of living with Tom Waits for the rest of
Speaker 3: my life because nobody would stop asking me about him.
Speaker 3: In every interview. Aside from that, it was kind of emotional.
Speaker 3: It's like, but aren't I a musician? You have no
Speaker 3: respect or interest in the person who's sitting in front
Speaker 3: of you. Now, if you want to talk to Tom, the
Speaker 3: phone over there, call him, But why do you want
Speaker 3: to talk to me about that? So you know, there
Speaker 3: were years where I was resentful and angry and tell
Speaker 3: them if they mention it, they'll be escorted out, and
Speaker 3: all these things till finally, I don't know, in the
Speaker 3: last ten years I went, isn't that wonderful? We have
Speaker 3: lived together all our lives, that brief time, that beautiful
Speaker 3: time that was so remarkable to audiences and so enchanting.
Speaker 3: We looked like we belong together that song, and they
Speaker 3: won't let it go? Isn't that wonderful? And would have
Speaker 3: liked to have had some peace with him, but that
Speaker 3: did not and would never happen, And that was all
Speaker 3: that turned out to be just as hard as living
Speaker 3: with the questions, you know, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: But now I'm mean living with the unresolved yeah.
Speaker 3: And also the pain of this breakup was really hard.
Speaker 3: But to be reminded by every passing stranger who comes
Speaker 3: to talk, especially in Europe, they really want to know,
Speaker 3: poke at it all the time.
Speaker 2: And did you think that your persona became the kind
Speaker 2: of spurned woman or is that the role people put
Speaker 2: you in?
Speaker 3: And bet you yeah, yes, spurned woman, that would be
Speaker 3: an assumption that. But then when he became very popular,
Speaker 3: when that then it was more like we want to
Speaker 3: touch you because you're part of the purple of Tom Waits,
Speaker 3: the purple cloth. So at that point is where that
Speaker 3: would probably happen.
Speaker 2: No offense to Tom Waits. He's never been as popular
Speaker 2: as you were, though, oh so.
Speaker 3: Much more, sells so many more tickets, you know, I
Speaker 3: see him as more popular than Bob Dylan. You know,
Speaker 3: there are so many people copying his style. I'm just
Speaker 3: like in awe, how did how did that happens? That's
Speaker 3: what I saw. You didn't see that.
Speaker 2: Never had an album that was as big as your
Speaker 2: first couple albums.
Speaker 3: But I think some cultural thing. I remember the guy
Speaker 3: in nine inch Nails talking of about him when my
Speaker 3: daughter was so probably ninety five or ninety six, and
Speaker 3: that was when he seemed to take on this other
Speaker 3: alternative world status of a golden god. And I was
Speaker 3: one of the women who had touched him. And that
Speaker 3: was the hardest part. That was the hardest time in
Speaker 3: the nineties when people were like, we don't know Avrind,
Speaker 3: but you were Tom Waits's girlfriend, and that we want
Speaker 3: to talk about. Whereas before we love your music and
Speaker 3: you talk to us about your broken heart. But now
Speaker 3: I go, look, it's part of the legend of human beings.
Speaker 3: And when we're gone, we'll still be there together. We're
Speaker 3: one of the lovers. Isn't that wonderful? Come on, you
Speaker 3: gotta love that.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after another quick break with more from
Speaker 1: Bruce Hudlam and Ricky Lee Jones. We're back with the
Speaker 1: rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Ricky Lee Jones.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about a couple of your songs? Well,
Speaker 2: you mentioned Company, that that was the song that was
Speaker 2: that Russ that liked Company? Or was that that was
Speaker 2: Reuss Russ? What did he tell you he heard in.
Speaker 3: That He said that Lenny sent this cassette to him,
Speaker 3: which was the demo I made at Warner Brothers, you know,
Speaker 3: to entice him to co produce, because I like, I said,
Speaker 3: I went with Warner Brothers if Lenny would produce me.
Speaker 3: So he said he you know, heard the first couple
Speaker 3: of songs, Chuck is in Love, my dad's song the
Speaker 3: Moon Is Made of Gold, one that didn't get on
Speaker 3: the record called the Real Things Back in Town. And
Speaker 3: then Company, which I wrote with my the only co
Speaker 3: writer I think I've really had, which who is Alfred Johnson.
Speaker 3: He and I wrote that song one night together. The
Speaker 3: story of writing Company was so I had a job
Speaker 3: working for this gangster named Rocky Miller. Rocky was a
Speaker 3: real gangster, and he'd show me his money in his
Speaker 3: sock and he wore garters stays, I guess they're calling,
Speaker 3: I think, And he's a real creep. And he'd make
Speaker 3: me sit on his lap. He'd call me into the
Speaker 3: office and say come over here, and I don't want
Speaker 3: to come over there. He said, come here, I'll fire you.
Speaker 3: And so I'd sit on his lap like an angry teenager,
Speaker 3: which is all you can do in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: And that was the terrible part of the job. But
Speaker 3: the great part was that I had access to a
Speaker 3: typewriter all day long. And when I had a typewriter,
Speaker 3: another kind of you know, it was like another kind
Speaker 3: of lyric came out. And so I sat there and
Speaker 3: wrote the lyrics to young Blood and Company and the
Speaker 3: beginnings of something else. So I have my little notebook
Speaker 3: and files full of lyric ideas. And I met Alfred
Speaker 3: on the beach in Venice. He was playing some little
Speaker 3: feet maybe I was standing there listening to him, and
Speaker 3: I'll sing.
Speaker 4: A little bit.
Speaker 3: Ah madam singing with him, and he looked at me
Speaker 3: kind of and he said, and so I said, do
Speaker 3: you know any lower nero? And little stars floated out
Speaker 3: of his eyes. And then he invited me over to
Speaker 3: his house, and I said okay, and I got in
Speaker 3: between him and his friend and we drove a mile
Speaker 3: down to Culver City, and then we went into his house,
Speaker 3: which just like I stayed now in this motel right
Speaker 3: by where his house was. And as we walked in
Speaker 3: the door, there were dismembered dolls everywhere, and dolls hanging
Speaker 3: from things and heads here, and right away I went,
Speaker 3: oh cool. And it was like I passed the test
Speaker 3: with them, because you had to decide right away, Are
Speaker 3: you dead or is this some kind of goofy art installation?
Speaker 3: And there were two men, you know so, but I
Speaker 3: was pretty sure he was a kind of odd musician,
Speaker 3: and right away we had this powerful language together. And
Speaker 3: then a few weeks later we wrote Company together, which
Speaker 3: was kind of like having a love affair. By the
Speaker 3: end of the night we were done, but we wrote
Speaker 3: every single bar entwined together. And it's a beautiful odd lyric.
Speaker 3: You know, when I reach across the galaxy, I'll miss
Speaker 3: your company, And in that way it was a little
Speaker 3: different than a regular.
Speaker 4: You're leaving me song.
Speaker 3: That's one of the only straight ahead lyrics I wrote
Speaker 3: about you and what you're doing and how I feel.
Speaker 3: Normally I would have made up some guy somebody's name
Speaker 3: and how she feels.
Speaker 2: She has an old fashioned quality, though it has a book.
Speaker 3: Quality for that. At that time, we you know, we
Speaker 3: were writing thinking maybe we'd get these songs to famous people.
Speaker 3: Chucky's in Love was kind of aimed at Bette Midler,
Speaker 3: and Company was aimed at Frank Sinatra. And when I
Speaker 3: got signed, I told Moe Austin, who was a good
Speaker 3: friend when I was there, and Lenny, would you take
Speaker 3: this to Frank because they'd fly over to the desert
Speaker 3: for these meetings, you know. So they said, we're taking
Speaker 3: it to Frank and then they didn't tell me when.
Speaker 3: So what happened? Is he going to do it? And
Speaker 3: they said, you don't want him to do it, said
Speaker 3: he can't hit those notes anymore. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I just say this on the air, But the other
Speaker 3: one said, and anyway, he went to publishing for anything
Speaker 3: he does, so I don't know if you want him,
Speaker 3: he won't even consider doing it unless he has the publishing.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what they said.
Speaker 2: Okay, because I guess he had his own writers anybody.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's greed. Yes, But when you're that powerful,
Speaker 3: if he records the song, the world will hear it. Yes,
Speaker 3: So what is a publisher anyway? They're the guy who's
Speaker 3: supposed to bring the song to the world, and they
Speaker 3: should get their half of the penny if they do
Speaker 3: that job. We Folky's bought our own publishing. But also
Speaker 3: it didn't make our songs anybody, So you know, everybody
Speaker 3: had said you must keep your publishing as you age.
Speaker 3: It's going to be the only way you keep making money.
Speaker 3: And of course they were right, but I probably, you know,
Speaker 3: with Alfred's permission, would have given up the public sing
Speaker 3: on that if Frank, I mean that at least it
Speaker 3: seems from here.
Speaker 2: That I might have that. Were you always a fan
Speaker 2: of Frank?
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, yes, yes always. My father was a singer.
Speaker 3: The timber and style of him is like the Mills
Speaker 3: Brothers and Frank Sinatra, and my mom had a you know,
Speaker 3: schoolgirl crush on him, so he, more than any other singer,
Speaker 3: felt like he was telling my story when he sang
Speaker 3: any woman, anybody, until I heard the Beatles, whose collective
Speaker 3: harmony was otherworldly to me. But those were my two
Speaker 3: main guardian angels initially. Then you know, expanded.
Speaker 2: Throughout your career. You've done cover records, you tend not
Speaker 2: to mix them with originals. Yeah, you've done rebel, Rebel
Speaker 2: you did for no One. So tell me about this album,
Speaker 2: how it came about? Yes, why the songs? And is
Speaker 2: there a story you're telling with these songs.
Speaker 3: There's not a story I'm telling with them. They were
Speaker 3: picked because I could sing them well and I wanted
Speaker 3: people to know I was a jazz singer. But there
Speaker 3: was a journalist a couple of weeks. This is important
Speaker 3: to me because I hadn't really gotten this feedback. So
Speaker 3: clearly there was a journalist a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 3: who said, I saw you in Cleveland in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: and you opened with Chuck's in Love and we were going,
Speaker 3: what is she got to do now? And then you
Speaker 3: introduced us to Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and Saramon
Speaker 3: and I was like, there, it is what I waited
Speaker 3: all my life to hear, and heard it here there.
Speaker 3: So that's as important that long ago, in the long
Speaker 3: ago history. I was singing it peers or love it,
Speaker 3: but the jazz world said, you are not allowed in here,
Speaker 3: you cannot enter.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that you bet? You early in your.
Speaker 3: Career, and I've figured out I think partially you know,
Speaker 3: because there are unusual First of all, women are are
Speaker 3: the last person allowed in the room. Singers and women singers.
Speaker 3: But if you didn't only sing jazz, you can't come in.
Speaker 3: If you sang a pop song, you can't come in.
Speaker 3: You have to have exclusively devoted yourself to this one
Speaker 3: discipline or you can't come in. I called the jazz
Speaker 3: station and long beached in your disgustard? Would you play
Speaker 3: Rickney Jones highly Hi Lo said no, we don't play
Speaker 3: Rickin Jones. Okay said, like on the wall behind it,
Speaker 3: we don't.
Speaker 2: I regularly do your picture with a big excid Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know it hurt. It always hurts to people go, yeah,
Speaker 3: we've decided what you are no matter what you do.
Speaker 3: So I did jazzy songs with some pop in him.
Speaker 3: I was mixed it up a little bit and after
Speaker 3: pop pop, which got a really weird reviews. You know,
Speaker 3: it was my fortieth birthday and one of the great
Speaker 3: bebop players, Joe Henderson, had played on two songs. He
Speaker 3: came to the party and at a moment took me
Speaker 3: aside and said, I just wanted to tell you that
Speaker 3: I was sorry to see that you didn't make another record,
Speaker 3: because I really thought you were onto something. And it
Speaker 3: was a revelation because this is from a musician and
Speaker 3: you're listening to critics. Stop it. So it took a
Speaker 3: long time, and for whatever reason, I found myself thinking
Speaker 3: about res titleman, and I need to be in the
Speaker 3: loving care of a real producer who not only knows
Speaker 3: what they're doing, but loves the sound of my voice.
Speaker 3: And I looked him up. I was thinking we would
Speaker 3: maybe work on some of my new material, but he said,
Speaker 3: I want to do a jazz I want to do
Speaker 3: a jazz record. You have not done the American Songbook.
Speaker 3: That's what we're going to do. And so I said, okay,
Speaker 3: and we began to exchange ideas. But what happened was
Speaker 3: I knew in the last two years that my voice
Speaker 3: has begun to change a little because of aging, not
Speaker 3: a lot, and I don't smoke it to take good
Speaker 3: care of but it was thinning here and tired there.
Speaker 3: And jazz is the most demanding, I think, because you
Speaker 3: can in other things. You can yell, you put that
Speaker 3: up in the back of the throat and hit anything.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to do quiet stuff, what seemed
Speaker 3: to happen when I started, is this this other quiettitude
Speaker 3: that was a little bit, you know, saucy and sensual.
Speaker 3: She just stepped right up to the microphone and she
Speaker 3: just what she was doing.
Speaker 4: Like, who is this?
Speaker 3: I love her voice, it's got a lower thing. But
Speaker 3: right away I heard the command that I prayed i'd
Speaker 3: have and didn't expect, and there it was, so we
Speaker 3: made an extraordinary record that's kind of magic. We went
Speaker 3: full circle back to the time we left off our
Speaker 3: professional relationship at Pirates. It's not like Pirates, but something
Speaker 3: in the power of what happens when we work together
Speaker 3: was there. I think it stands well next to any
Speaker 3: beloved vocal work from the fifties or sixties here so
Speaker 3: because there's a feeling of sensual love and humor and
Speaker 3: all the things that you can get if you survive.
Speaker 3: I'm sixty nine this year. If you survive, you can
Speaker 3: bring all this stuff to your life and then bring
Speaker 3: it to the sound of your voice into music. And
Speaker 3: I think that's what's there, is humor and the love
Speaker 3: of life and the idea that we're singing, you know
Speaker 3: now for ourselves anymore. We're not going to be here
Speaker 3: to you know, and maybe I will, but I'm singing
Speaker 3: now for others and reaching out right.
Speaker 2: That's a great place to stop. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: That was just wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ricky Lee Jones for playing and reminiscing about
Speaker 1: her career with Bruce Headland. You can hear all of
Speaker 1: our favorite Ricky Lee Jones songs on a playlist at
Speaker 1: broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast,
Speaker 1: where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell,
Speaker 1: Ben Taliday, Nisha Venkutt, Jordan McMillan, and Eric sam Our.
Speaker 1: Editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin,
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Speaker 1: your podcast stat or the musics by Canna Beats. I'm
Speaker 1: Justin Richman.