Rickie Lee Jones

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Ricky Lee Jones hit it big with her debut album in seventy nine. The following year, she won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and over the course of the next four decades, released numerous albums that pulled inspiration from jazz, rock, electronic music, and even musical theater. In late April, Ricky released her latest album, Pieces of Treasure, where she sings songs in the American songbook with a jazz slant producer and legendary an arman. Russ Titelman, who produced Ricky's first two albums, reunited with her on her latest and helped inspire Ricky to find a comfort in her lower vocal register. The result is an oftentimes sultry meditation on aging and survival. On today's episode, Bruce HEADLM talks to Ricky Ley Jones about her decades long fight to sing jazz, even though she's often viewed as an outsider. She also tells stories about leaving home as a young teenager and the abuse she endured while trying to survive on her own. She played songs from her career, including one she wrote after seeing John Lennon appear to her in a dream, and just a note before we get started. This episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse and might not be appropriate for all listeners. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman. Here's Bruce Hedlam with Ricky Lee Jones.

00:01:49
Speaker 2: I've always thought of you as someone who and I thought of this particularly on the new record. You're someone who is acting in the song in a strength. Did you always think of yourself as that one?

00:02:00
Speaker 3: I've just found the words to say that. But I've always put the song on and been inside of it, and I know everything about everybody in it. So if I sing something cool, I know where she's sitting, what she's wearing, where she bought it, everybody at the bar. I see it all. And I think that's what an actor does. They try to create everything about their character. But it happens to me instantaneously. I have a rich imagination, I guess, and when I sing, the tree instantly grows. And I started thinking this year, I'm acting songs, and there's a little difference between singing a song and acting. Being a song actor, it suggests i'mhow that I'm not a real singer, which of course I am. A serious singer, but I think I'm acting, I'm being the song.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: It's closer to singers from previous generations. We're like that, like Peggy Lee or Julie London. Yes, people like that seem to kind of inhabit songs become the characters and songs. They were singers, not primarily songwriters, although Peggy Lee did write some songs. But you you write them, so people think, oh, they must be confessions. They're yeah, pouring your soul out. Yeah, and you don't really pour your soul out.

00:03:25
Speaker 3: I like to write stories, and in this story might be some poignant, unresolved tear drop or something. That's the best way to show it in this way, as any writer does, you know, put their own emotion because that's the only palette we have right into what they write. And that thing again of the singer songwriter versus the singer how people see them, because after Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, it became crucial to be a songwriter. If you weren't a songwriter, then you're not really authentic. If you didn't write that song, then why even singing it? Kind of aut itude, which I of course disagree with. To me, the interpreter, the singer, the bard is who matters. Yes, yes, I'm glad you wrote the song. But if there's no one to sing it, what does it matter? So Peggy Lee or me or anybody who loves a song and loves to sing and loves hear other people, you know, whether it's a choir or whatever, loves singing. That's what I like most. When I had the ear of the press the way I did in the early eighties, I talk about Linda Ronstaff, for instance, who was not as in style now for a minute, because she wasn't punk rock and she didn't write songs. But I was like, bet, she's a great singer. And whatever comes into fashion, and I'm glad new things come into fashion. But you can't discard the meaning of a singer, I think.

00:05:11
Speaker 2: Because when you came out, you don't sound like Joni Mitchell, but you looked a bit like Jomie Mitchell, so much like her, so everybody's, oh, she's influenced by Joni Mitchell. And then I'm reading your book and it's like Jimmy Hendrix. It's West Side Story, which is a big thing for you. Yeah, and there's a very I won't give it away. There's a very lovely scene with that guy. I'll say his name, Tom Waite's the only time I'm going.

00:05:39
Speaker 3: To say it.

00:05:40
Speaker 2: Where you're outside of a bar and someone says a line and someone else yeah, and then you all sing it. He gets the line wrong, I think too. But it's this beautiful scene.

00:05:51
Speaker 3: Because and it's real, It really happened.

00:05:54
Speaker 2: And people grew up, you know, back then, like people would have records. They might have the Beatles, but then their parents would have South Pacific or Camelot or something, a sound of everybody had sound of music. Back then. You said you tended towards Laura Nero. What did you get from her? What was it that drew you?

00:06:14
Speaker 4: Well?

00:06:14
Speaker 3: I got that thing of these strange and I still haven't learned her songs. But these kinds of chords, right, and hers are much darker, but and they probably show up passing in Leonard Bernstein. So that's what she had. She had inversions that were magical to me, and I wanted to know them. She also happened to see her on public television at the same time I heard of so to see her is something else entirely. She looked like a terribly mentally ill person who could hardly sit there to perform this song. And as a teenager, I really identified with that part. Felt pretty barely together myself. So I liked that there was somebody there who dared to show herself as she was.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: And she was also very theatrical, Yes that's a better word. She was creating scenes with her people know, wedding bell Blues, that's one of her big songs, But it creates a big it does.

00:07:34
Speaker 3: It's like a show number, something like the one about Tomcat. Goodbye is like its own piece of theater from top to bottom. So it's a little bit of Gershwin's, a little bit of organbezz and then a lot of motown soul. And she's made her own kind of music. I'm not gonna say brand, but she's made her own and you know, I think what I love is the sound of her voice. But that that she did that probably was a map for me that I could also make my own room of my own imaginary people.

00:08:17
Speaker 2: What do you think are your songs that do that the best? What rooms do you go? I got that one?

00:08:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, the things from Pirates, I would say, And.

00:08:34
Speaker 5: He's got walk crazy act turns him into a car.

00:08:40
Speaker 3: Two and pretty girls go by. Nothing here to do anymore, so he sits on the stoop all day.

00:08:51
Speaker 4: I does something is waiting for Countfinger. Louis picks up Eddy in the alley.

00:08:58
Speaker 3: He likes to come here with them buzz from that town. Everybody there looks like Frankie Valley and they're fluently blonde from her leg to a cigarette. And Louis told Eddie fix him up, but he ain't come back in now this rhyme Frankie Valley. I was originally trying to rhyme Eddie Briggotti because Eddie Briggotty is from the Young Rascals, and I loved the Young Rascals and especially you know his How can I be sure there's not? And I like the idea that nobody's written about Eddie Briggotty, but I couldn't find anything to rhyme with Gotti. More people would know who Frankie Valley was. It's a very one of my funny lines. I have a few funny lines, but I always feel like it goes right by people. They're they're enchanted by the service. Start, what are you talking about? Now? Where everybody looks like Frankie Valley.

00:09:56
Speaker 4: And then.

00:10:04
Speaker 3: More trouble than it's worth?

00:10:09
Speaker 4: What trouble in his word? Oh wold to tell him where.

00:10:21
Speaker 6: You Oh wowld So that's one I think, tell him.

00:10:32
Speaker 4: Where you are?

00:10:36
Speaker 3: And then that one goes there, and there's another verse about the girl.

00:10:42
Speaker 7: Right.

00:10:43
Speaker 3: So those are the two boys Eddie and and oh and so those characters were inspired by my friend Salbernardi's childhood friends in Lodi, New Jersey. He had this one guy, so he had count fingered Louis. But the other one was the guy was one crazy all right that when he got nervous, it started spitting all around. So I brought his characters in. And then so zero quits cool. She lost her job again and her boyfriend beat her up and he won't let her in. She's walking by this joint in her black and blue dress.

00:11:33
Speaker 8: She looks a little welbones out of you, says, don't tell me, Leving guess.

00:11:41
Speaker 7: It's more trouble in his word, she's moore trouble in his word.

00:11:50
Speaker 4: Oh why? And then.

00:12:02
Speaker 9: Fast and west this way.

00:12:10
Speaker 8: When you've got all these ideas, you'd never to.

00:12:17
Speaker 4: Any one.

00:12:25
Speaker 8: There are these magnet's pulling j left, living every story.

00:12:35
Speaker 4: Only once.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: So in that part, remember when you're in a movie and the newspapers go by and they're spinning by it. This is the exciting time.

00:12:45
Speaker 10: That's what that was.

00:12:51
Speaker 6: Up.

00:12:52
Speaker 8: Hey, yeah, we'll liveving it.

00:12:55
Speaker 9: Up, welling up, we'll.

00:13:04
Speaker 4: It up, well.

00:13:08
Speaker 5: Up, ye will livevyvinge up.

00:13:19
Speaker 9: Welving it up? Yeah, well, liveving it up? Yeah, well, living up.

00:13:33
Speaker 3: Up. And then I think it was probably really inspired by my friendship with Lunetti found nor reason.

00:13:54
Speaker 4: Then in there carried her over the bridges.

00:13:58
Speaker 3: And fluttering pages. They didn't care, this terminal where dreams led so many tickets through and strange looking faces, and see somebody there.

00:14:12
Speaker 4: They knew.

00:14:14
Speaker 11: You could meet me tomorrow when all of the lights aide blooming. Feel a little lonely, a little sad, a little mean, But remember this place, Sada's Hotel.

00:14:31
Speaker 3: You could do anything you want.

00:14:34
Speaker 4: You could never tell.

00:14:38
Speaker 11: It's not trouble in its word, but trouble than its word.

00:14:54
Speaker 4: Whoa wow, I won't you tell me where you are?

00:15:12
Speaker 3: That? Yeah, so I'd say more than any song I've written. That song answers hers right, or a song about her characters living in the darker part of the city. This one sets them free to go somewhere else. Always I don't always, but for a long time I've felt it's a conversation we have when we're lucky enough to be writers of songs that people here and sing. We're all talking to one another and responding to one another. It's just a lie to pretend that you live in a vacuum and everything comes out of your own head. And if you're not being honest about it, then your thief and and you're stealing stuff. So we must learn from one another, and it has to be okay to say learning from somebody else. And then I made up my own thing. Yeah, I think so.

00:16:15
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things about that song you just played, you're constantly changing tempos. You know, you've stopped the whole band in the middle, and then it starts back up again. Where does that come from? Is that from musicals as well?

00:16:26
Speaker 3: Yeah? Maybe so. I've always liked things that changed directions and changed and they did it in the pop stuff for a while, right, Crosby stills a nish. It was exciting, but probably musical theater does it first?

00:16:41
Speaker 2: Can you tell me about Away from the sky that.

00:16:44
Speaker 3: Was inspired by the death of John Lennon. I dream I had about John Lennon. I feel pretty strong today, so I can probably talk about it. But sometimes if I just talk about sad stuff, it's overwhelming. But not that long after he died, I dreamed of him. I've never been there, but on a British or riding his bike with a stocking cap. And then like the three beards, in the back of him was Yokoa and in back of her was shown each one is in the little bike and there was a pier. And as he turned to go on to the pier, he looked at me. Gentleman is looking at me, and he sang this, Let's see. There was a crooked man who lived on a crooked shore. But now he'll never have to go away anymore.

00:17:47
Speaker 8: Away from the sky. Ahway from the sky.

00:17:56
Speaker 3: And turned onto the pier and they followed him. Really when I woke up, because sometimes those things dissolve instantly, I don't know why, but that part never made it into the recording, I saved the real party saying for myself and I made up a song based on a Dylan Thomas short story called After the Fair. You know the thing on the record is my demo. So I'm just going boom boomed, as minimal as it can be. And then, and because I was probably half writing it as I recorded. For all that it cost him, he never did complain. The chicken headed man. They're feathering the rain, but the last bassist tie.

00:19:00
Speaker 4: Everybody's gone.

00:19:03
Speaker 3: The horses are painted with the waiting.

00:19:07
Speaker 4: Of the lawn. Go from the rodeo.

00:19:21
Speaker 3: God, from the tundraug girl, it's after the fair.

00:19:30
Speaker 5: That's when I see you.

00:19:39
Speaker 3: There she sleeps in the canvas. The fat man hollers, O tender is the night I feel bleeding out of you. So come into my trailer. We can toast a little bread.

00:20:09
Speaker 4: Now.

00:20:09
Speaker 5: Look, you left a hole oil laid on my bed.

00:20:14
Speaker 4: He said. But you keep what you can keep. And when you dive into the deep this year, after Froz and you, that's where saved youse.

00:20:53
Speaker 10: Away from the sky, Oh.

00:21:05
Speaker 5: Away from the sky, Oh, away from the sky, Away from the sky.

00:21:42
Speaker 3: But everybody's gone.

00:21:44
Speaker 4: Now.

00:21:46
Speaker 3: It's after the fair. The horses are waiting in the middle.

00:21:52
Speaker 4: Of the So you turn the.

00:22:01
Speaker 3: Care yourself on. When the lights closed down, you can watch the ponies round through the middle of town.

00:22:16
Speaker 4: That you go, little girl, there you.

00:22:19
Speaker 6: Go, gone from the tongue run.

00:22:25
Speaker 5: Now it's after the fences.

00:22:34
Speaker 7: When over the fences again and the vacuum and the hole.

00:22:51
Speaker 3: And the plans up in.

00:22:53
Speaker 4: The air, that's where I.

00:23:01
Speaker 1: Can hear your best.

00:23:09
Speaker 5: But away from the sky, Away from the sky, Oh, from the sky.

00:23:49
Speaker 4: Away from the skyes.

00:24:17
Speaker 1: That was Ricky Lee Jones performing her song away from the Sky. We have to take a quick break and we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam and Ricky Lee Jones. We're back with more from Ricky Lee Jones.

00:24:34
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I reread your your autobiography and now you moved so much when you.

00:24:41
Speaker 1: Were a kid.

00:24:42
Speaker 2: Yes, it seemed that you were always having to reintroduce your or introduce yourself.

00:24:48
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:24:49
Speaker 2: Although you always did it, it seemed to fill you with terror, the idea that he.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: Yes, and that terror of people basic mistrust and expectation that at some point don't do their worst. Stayed with me. The playground seems to be ever with us, I could say with me, But it does seem like that that scenario is playing out over and over again of a bully kids who want to follow the bully, just so they don't get picked on. A couple kids who are one's different or one's as poor, or it's always the same dynamic of who's on top and who's underneath. And I think the fact that I was a little different, though I didn't think so, but I think I must have been gave me someone to be so that I wasn't anonymous, because I guess more than I hated being picked on, I hated being invisible. So I accepted that, but I really never understood why I'd look in the mirror and go, aren't I pretty? Why don't they like me? And it's still a mystery to me, really.

00:26:05
Speaker 2: Yes, even later in your book, you're very critical of what was sort of late stage hippies. So the people you hung around with, it seemed that when you were traveling, and you started traveling, I think at fourteen and just checking hiking, and you know, you lived in a cave for a while. There were other people in the cave too, but I was still a cave, you know. It seemed that, you know, particularly a lot of the menu met were very the usury. They're very predatory, and they were the hippies. They were they talked a good game, but a lot of them were very abusive.

00:26:47
Speaker 3: Well, I was really young, and I believed what I read, my impressions of what it would be like to be a grown up in that world, to be an active member of their idea of what life should be like. But those people were just greasers a little bit older, right, They were just the tough kids at school in nineteen sixty two, or whoever they were. I saw them as magically appearing with long hair like Christ. And so, you know, I was definitely needed a place to stay and needed something to eat, and the cost of that was my body, and you know, that was very hard. Sometimes I just wanted to be able to rest and not have to struggle with some guide. Would he relent and not try to put his dick in me? Or would that be the cost of having a night of food. I have never actually said that so starkly and truly, because it was so hard and a little kid, you know, and then getting up the next day if you lucky, if it's the next day and they don't want you there anymore. And I think every single guy I met, I thought, well he married me? Is he the one who loved me, every one of them, and so that was lots of disappointments. But I've, you know, have many years to think about it, and I was really just a very little kid in a woman's body, in a costume that looked like old enough for them. I think some of them would have withdrawn if they knew my two age, but most of them know. I think it was kind of cool, right to be attracted to a young teenager. They still sell that image a lot of school girl like hit Me Baby One More.

00:29:01
Speaker 2: Time Britney spears.

00:29:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, she sold that image as well. So as long as we let that image be sold and you know that stuff is going on in reality, I.

00:29:14
Speaker 2: Do want to talk about a nice guy. Yes, that's your producer on this project, Russ Titelman, who was one of your first producers. Yeah, my first, your first. He was your first.

00:29:26
Speaker 3: I had two producers, Lenny Warrenker and Russ Titleman, and I'd seen Lenny. I didn't know from producers, but I saw Lenny's name on the back of a Randy Newman record. It's about two years maybe before I got signed.

00:29:43
Speaker 2: Most people would have wanted to meet Randy Newman. No, you went into the small type.

00:29:48
Speaker 3: That's right. I've always known that's the way in. You can't go for the big, big thing because everybody wants to meet Randy. But if you find I was an infamous getter in Backstage Girl, and I'd watched the secret way that nobody was going and just slip in that way. So that was the same philosophy of how to get in. So anyway his name, and so we sent tapes around to three or four people. He got one of them and and I was exactly right. He was the way, and I pushed, you know, when the record companies went to sign me, this little I think it was called Portrait or something. This little company made the best offer, and we went back to Warner Brothers, my lawyer, a big shot working for free. We talked him and I'm going to be a big shot and said, you know, she wants to go with Lindy. So if you'll meet the offer. I don't know if that's okay to tell that, but if you'll meet the offer, it we'll come with you. And that happened exactly as it was meant to. So Lenny sent the tape to Russ because they were partners in production. Russ was working with George Harris in England, and he tells this story a lot now now that we're reunited. So when he heard Company, he called Lenny and said, this girl is a singer. She's like roberta Flock, which is a pretty big compliment. And Lenny said, I really noticed I was listening to the songs, so they were perfect. Him addressing the songs, we got to put an accordion on the bridge because the Italians are there, and him addressing the singer, you got to go sing that line again. So it was good.

00:31:47
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine now just what a incredible period that was for you. You'd only been writing songs for a couple of years. Yes, you were living in La I.

00:31:59
Speaker 3: Was homeless in the months before I was signed. I just tumbled into having nowhere to go.

00:32:07
Speaker 2: What was it like, suddenly the these record companies are bidding for you.

00:32:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, it felt as if it was always supposed to be that way.

00:32:14
Speaker 2: Did you always think that growing up that this was going to happen.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: No, But I always felt that I was going somewhere special. I always felt like I was always talking to the invisible world and God's cameras right about here. Is how you got it is look up today. So it's hard to explain what I always thought, but I feel a constant connection to something that almost has no words but is ever present in here. But I can't say that I did you know? My life was troubled and going nowhere. I didn't have any skills, I'd quit high school, but I had this. When I sang, it was all that I am. Anything I sang was totally emotional. And then I got this job as a singing way too, and everybody else was so much louder than me. I thought, I'm gonna have to learn how to sing louder or I'm never gonna get a job. So I taught myself. But there was a book, and I put my hands on my chest and found a way to put that sound in the bones and practice. And that was the first, you know, because always thought it was a great singer, But the fact was I could be a great singer, but it wasn't. So I taught myself to be a better singer. As soon as I did that, within a year, it presented itself to me. It was just life presented itself to me.

00:33:53
Speaker 2: Did you not know you wanted to be a singer before that. What made you finally focus on that?

00:34:00
Speaker 3: You know, since I was sixteen, I'd been practicing, you know, sweet Juty blue Eyes and singing and play with my girlfriend Julian, playing everywhere. But when I was on my own and got to La, it seemed like that will never happen there. It's a town full of people trying to do it. And you're so weird. You're not like Joni Mitchell. You can't sing like Joe Bias. You're so weird, right because you're different, and so somebody will come. They might not all, but somebody will come because you're different. They'll like that about you. And I had this natural thing for jazz. My father sang jazz and his father was a vaudevillion And I began to you know, what I know how to do is my funny Valentine. And so I started singing the jazz ballads in Venice when and nobody was doing it. So that felt powerful. I have something that's just mine and I did it really well, and the local snooty musician and suddenly were like, we like you come and sit in with us again. So I started to feel like I had a possibility and an identity, and then in a short time I had my own Friday night gig at a bar, and then a short time later I was making a demo for a record company. So once I set aside doubt and my mother said, I said, Mom, I'm going to go to school and be a stenographer. I've only got to go eighteen months and I'll have a job. She said, but I thought you wanted to be a singer, imagine, And I said I did, but I just can't see how that would ever happen. And she said, don't you give up on your dreams.

00:35:59
Speaker 2: Interesting because your mother had had a very tough life, very tough. She'd been an orphan. Yeah, your father lost his mother very young.

00:36:07
Speaker 3: As well, so they're both that in common.

00:36:10
Speaker 2: And she seemed to live a very controlled life and either keep she had to keep things. She kept things together for other people. It's interesting that she was the one who said to you, I thought you wanted to be a sending.

00:36:23
Speaker 3: No, it was almost divine, like the other voice said, we got to speak through Betty right now, or she's going to give up. Don't give up on your dreams. Yeah, it was unexpected and so heartfelt that I thought, my mother is invested in me trying with all my might to make a dream come true, And it almost seemed like it was more she wanted me to try, But I thought, maybe she thinks I can do it too. She's not here, she didn't see what's happening, but she believes me.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: When you got into the studio for the first time, you played with bands, and you had fabulous players I did.

00:37:05
Speaker 3: You had Steve gadd Andy, Newmark, Willie Week, the incredible Victor Feldman who was in Miles Davis's band, and did all that's Teelee Dan work. So one of the things about when you were with the top tier players is they're very kind. It's the other ones that's jabbulut. But the best players are very kind and they love making music. And so I couldn't write it, but I could sing it all. So I sang all the horn parts, and somebody wrote them down and they played them and they were exactly how I thought they would sound in my head. But the other aspects of recording, like Chucky's in Love and stuff, as it manifested into the physical world, it wasn't at all what I only ever heard my voice and me. So the producers endeavored to bring to reality whatever feeling they thought I had, and their own, you know, how to make a good record. I think their choices were always much cleaner, tamer, precise. Then I might have gone. And I'm glad, you know, and I've known people like this about me best I think then the more raggedy stuff. But they took me out gently and my guitar playing and put in.

00:38:36
Speaker 2: So what was that like? That incredible year? You're signed, you make this record with these amazing players, You're on Saturday Night Live, you argue with them on Saturday Night Live, which I thought was pretty gutsy. They wanted you to do one song you wanted to do Coolsville.

00:38:56
Speaker 10: I did.

00:38:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing that Saturday Night Live. Everybody does. It was a you were suddenly huge. Yeah, and you had a check for fifty thous that's right. Was what was the first thing you bought with that?

00:39:13
Speaker 3: Probably? You know, dinner? First of all, I had nowhere to put it. I didn't have a bank account, so when I got that check, I still had to borrow some money from Lenny because I didn't have a cash and really I didn't know how anything worked. And know how to have a bank account or how to tip or so what was that like? You know, it's almost like the whole life was holding his breath so for for a little while, everything was just shimmering and still and right, that's what it was, like, I think, But.

00:39:52
Speaker 2: You beat the second album curse I did?

00:39:55
Speaker 3: I meant to too that, you're like, I was well aware of it. I had met Bet Middler at a dinner.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: Was this before your record?

00:40:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, before the first record? So because you thought, she said, let me tell you what's going to happen. You're gonna put this one out and if it doesn't do horrible, they'll pick up your second one, and not to your third record. Will you have any kind of acclaimer success? And that was kind of what happened to most people. And that was I thought, nah, we'll see. I think my first record's probably gonna do pretty good. So when we had the big success, so big, bigger than anything. Hard to find a woman who had had that kind of success coming out the gate, though you know, they probably weren't telling it up in the sixties in exactly the same way, but it was. It was a very big thing, and it was a crossover kind of thing, and culturally, I got to expand the idea. You know, I was a singer songwriter, but I wasn't a fochy And these things sound small now, but they were big making people accept that it works. It'll make everybody money, and it's different than what was before. So I know I can't match this record in any way. I'm not the same person. I'm not as happy, and those are a lot of beautiful, happy songs, and I'm not on this side of the mountain anymore. So from the other side of the mountain, I will draw the picture of what I see fiercely, and I won't give one eyelash to the idea of a song that you'll play on the radio. And so a little bit of it is defiance, and that's okay. You can't help but not respond to what's happening. You know, if that hadn't happened, what would I have written?

00:41:58
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:41:59
Speaker 3: But so what I wrote was what was happening to me. And I think that the incredible thing that happens with the recording is it captures more than in the song itself. It captures your intention and it captures your spirit That's the inexplicable thing about a great record is it has spirit, and people put it on the list of their important records. I personally think the first record is important, but I don't exactly know why Pirates matters more. I'm guessing people who put it on their favorite lists don't know it's the SECA record, so they don't know it's overcoming expectations. But I like it. It's dreamy. It's remarkable in its musicality and sophistication for a girl who had no education. But I like a song I can sing, like I was saying, I like a melody that you remember. I don't know if anybody can sing the traces of the Western slopes, you know. So I don't mean to insult myself, but I'm glad that it hit with people. But then the curse probably came some years later. I took a long time to make the third record. It was nineteen eighty four, I think, so I had gone in and out of heroin addiction, and a couple of times I had drunk on stage, not many, but the times I did. There was a big, full length photograph in a newspaper, and the promoters. The promoters Union exiled me from many stages. Guys did much worse, but I think that there was an expectation of proper, pristine behavior from me because of the quality.

00:44:01
Speaker 9: Of the work.

00:44:02
Speaker 3: We don't like our girls to behave badly, and they want to think of of a woman. It's a tragic, falling figure. And so many people want to disrespect to anybody instead of loving, forgiving, spreading that goodwill. So I was in a really defensive posture when I did the magazine. I was off drugs and I wanted everybody to know it, and I did a cover looking really off drugs.

00:44:33
Speaker 2: And everybody's very healthy, very.

00:44:35
Speaker 3: Healthy, and I was super healthy. But I spent some time in France and I was leaning towards a more classical kind of music. Now I'd heard Eric Sati and it was expanding in another way. So these are weird. This was the one album I wrote that I wanted to do theater with it, So this was the direction I would have liked to have grown in some version of my life, to write theater and act. But at that point I seemed to be just collapsing emotionally. The broken love affairs, the trail of dead, and the very beginning of living with Tom Waits for the rest of my life because nobody would stop asking me about him. In every interview. Aside from that, it was kind of emotional. It's like, but aren't I a musician? You have no respect or interest in the person who's sitting in front of you. Now, if you want to talk to Tom, the phone over there, call him, But why do you want to talk to me about that? So you know, there were years where I was resentful and angry and tell them if they mention it, they'll be escorted out, and all these things till finally, I don't know, in the last ten years I went, isn't that wonderful? We have lived together all our lives, that brief time, that beautiful time that was so remarkable to audiences and so enchanting. We looked like we belong together that song, and they won't let it go? Isn't that wonderful? And would have liked to have had some peace with him, but that did not and would never happen, And that was all that turned out to be just as hard as living with the questions, you know, twenty years ago.

00:46:44
Speaker 2: But now I'm mean living with the unresolved yeah.

00:46:47
Speaker 3: And also the pain of this breakup was really hard. But to be reminded by every passing stranger who comes to talk, especially in Europe, they really want to know, poke at it all the time.

00:47:05
Speaker 2: And did you think that your persona became the kind of spurned woman or is that the role people put you in?

00:47:14
Speaker 3: And bet you yeah, yes, spurned woman, that would be an assumption that. But then when he became very popular, when that then it was more like we want to touch you because you're part of the purple of Tom Waits, the purple cloth. So at that point is where that would probably happen.

00:47:38
Speaker 2: No offense to Tom Waits. He's never been as popular as you were, though, oh so.

00:47:42
Speaker 3: Much more, sells so many more tickets, you know, I see him as more popular than Bob Dylan. You know, there are so many people copying his style. I'm just like in awe, how did how did that happens? That's what I saw. You didn't see that.

00:48:00
Speaker 2: Never had an album that was as big as your first couple albums.

00:48:03
Speaker 3: But I think some cultural thing. I remember the guy in nine inch Nails talking of about him when my daughter was so probably ninety five or ninety six, and that was when he seemed to take on this other alternative world status of a golden god. And I was one of the women who had touched him. And that was the hardest part. That was the hardest time in the nineties when people were like, we don't know Avrind, but you were Tom Waits's girlfriend, and that we want to talk about. Whereas before we love your music and you talk to us about your broken heart. But now I go, look, it's part of the legend of human beings. And when we're gone, we'll still be there together. We're one of the lovers. Isn't that wonderful? Come on, you gotta love that.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: We'll be back after another quick break with more from Bruce Hudlam and Ricky Lee Jones. We're back with the rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Ricky Lee Jones.

00:49:15
Speaker 2: Can we talk about a couple of your songs? Well, you mentioned Company, that that was the song that was that Russ that liked Company? Or was that that was Reuss Russ? What did he tell you he heard in.

00:49:25
Speaker 3: That He said that Lenny sent this cassette to him, which was the demo I made at Warner Brothers, you know, to entice him to co produce, because I like, I said, I went with Warner Brothers if Lenny would produce me. So he said he you know, heard the first couple of songs, Chuck is in Love, my dad's song the Moon Is Made of Gold, one that didn't get on the record called the Real Things Back in Town. And then Company, which I wrote with my the only co writer I think I've really had, which who is Alfred Johnson. He and I wrote that song one night together. The story of writing Company was so I had a job working for this gangster named Rocky Miller. Rocky was a real gangster, and he'd show me his money in his sock and he wore garters stays, I guess they're calling, I think, And he's a real creep. And he'd make me sit on his lap. He'd call me into the office and say come over here, and I don't want to come over there. He said, come here, I'll fire you. And so I'd sit on his lap like an angry teenager, which is all you can do in nineteen seventy eight. And that was the terrible part of the job. But the great part was that I had access to a typewriter all day long. And when I had a typewriter, another kind of you know, it was like another kind of lyric came out. And so I sat there and wrote the lyrics to young Blood and Company and the beginnings of something else. So I have my little notebook and files full of lyric ideas. And I met Alfred on the beach in Venice. He was playing some little feet maybe I was standing there listening to him, and I'll sing.

00:51:26
Speaker 4: A little bit.

00:51:29
Speaker 3: Ah madam singing with him, and he looked at me kind of and he said, and so I said, do you know any lower nero? And little stars floated out of his eyes. And then he invited me over to his house, and I said okay, and I got in between him and his friend and we drove a mile down to Culver City, and then we went into his house, which just like I stayed now in this motel right by where his house was. And as we walked in the door, there were dismembered dolls everywhere, and dolls hanging from things and heads here, and right away I went, oh cool. And it was like I passed the test with them, because you had to decide right away, Are you dead or is this some kind of goofy art installation? And there were two men, you know so, but I was pretty sure he was a kind of odd musician, and right away we had this powerful language together. And then a few weeks later we wrote Company together, which was kind of like having a love affair. By the end of the night we were done, but we wrote every single bar entwined together. And it's a beautiful odd lyric. You know, when I reach across the galaxy, I'll miss your company, And in that way it was a little different than a regular.

00:53:10
Speaker 4: You're leaving me song.

00:53:12
Speaker 3: That's one of the only straight ahead lyrics I wrote about you and what you're doing and how I feel. Normally I would have made up some guy somebody's name and how she feels.

00:53:26
Speaker 2: She has an old fashioned quality, though it has a book.

00:53:29
Speaker 3: Quality for that. At that time, we you know, we were writing thinking maybe we'd get these songs to famous people. Chucky's in Love was kind of aimed at Bette Midler, and Company was aimed at Frank Sinatra. And when I got signed, I told Moe Austin, who was a good friend when I was there, and Lenny, would you take this to Frank because they'd fly over to the desert for these meetings, you know. So they said, we're taking it to Frank and then they didn't tell me when. So what happened? Is he going to do it? And they said, you don't want him to do it, said he can't hit those notes anymore. I don't know if I just say this on the air, But the other one said, and anyway, he went to publishing for anything he does, so I don't know if you want him, he won't even consider doing it unless he has the publishing.

00:54:22
Speaker 2: Is that right?

00:54:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what they said.

00:54:25
Speaker 2: Okay, because I guess he had his own writers anybody.

00:54:27
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's greed. Yes, But when you're that powerful, if he records the song, the world will hear it. Yes, So what is a publisher anyway? They're the guy who's supposed to bring the song to the world, and they should get their half of the penny if they do that job. We Folky's bought our own publishing. But also it didn't make our songs anybody, So you know, everybody had said you must keep your publishing as you age. It's going to be the only way you keep making money. And of course they were right, but I probably, you know, with Alfred's permission, would have given up the public sing on that if Frank, I mean that at least it seems from here.

00:55:13
Speaker 2: That I might have that. Were you always a fan of Frank?

00:55:16
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, yes, yes always. My father was a singer. The timber and style of him is like the Mills Brothers and Frank Sinatra, and my mom had a you know, schoolgirl crush on him, so he, more than any other singer, felt like he was telling my story when he sang any woman, anybody, until I heard the Beatles, whose collective harmony was otherworldly to me. But those were my two main guardian angels initially. Then you know, expanded.

00:55:54
Speaker 2: Throughout your career. You've done cover records, you tend not to mix them with originals. Yeah, you've done rebel, Rebel you did for no One. So tell me about this album, how it came about? Yes, why the songs? And is there a story you're telling with these songs.

00:56:12
Speaker 3: There's not a story I'm telling with them. They were picked because I could sing them well and I wanted people to know I was a jazz singer. But there was a journalist a couple of weeks. This is important to me because I hadn't really gotten this feedback. So clearly there was a journalist a couple of weeks ago who said, I saw you in Cleveland in nineteen seventy nine, and you opened with Chuck's in Love and we were going, what is she got to do now? And then you introduced us to Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and Saramon and I was like, there, it is what I waited all my life to hear, and heard it here there. So that's as important that long ago, in the long ago history. I was singing it peers or love it, but the jazz world said, you are not allowed in here, you cannot enter.

00:57:21
Speaker 2: Did you feel that you bet? You early in your.

00:57:23
Speaker 3: Career, and I've figured out I think partially you know, because there are unusual First of all, women are are the last person allowed in the room. Singers and women singers. But if you didn't only sing jazz, you can't come in. If you sang a pop song, you can't come in. You have to have exclusively devoted yourself to this one discipline or you can't come in. I called the jazz station and long beached in your disgustard? Would you play Rickney Jones highly Hi Lo said no, we don't play Rickin Jones. Okay said, like on the wall behind it, we don't.

00:58:09
Speaker 2: I regularly do your picture with a big excid Yeah.

00:58:12
Speaker 3: And you know it hurt. It always hurts to people go, yeah, we've decided what you are no matter what you do. So I did jazzy songs with some pop in him. I was mixed it up a little bit and after pop pop, which got a really weird reviews. You know, it was my fortieth birthday and one of the great bebop players, Joe Henderson, had played on two songs. He came to the party and at a moment took me aside and said, I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry to see that you didn't make another record, because I really thought you were onto something. And it was a revelation because this is from a musician and you're listening to critics. Stop it. So it took a long time, and for whatever reason, I found myself thinking about res titleman, and I need to be in the loving care of a real producer who not only knows what they're doing, but loves the sound of my voice. And I looked him up. I was thinking we would maybe work on some of my new material, but he said, I want to do a jazz I want to do a jazz record. You have not done the American Songbook. That's what we're going to do. And so I said, okay, and we began to exchange ideas. But what happened was I knew in the last two years that my voice has begun to change a little because of aging, not a lot, and I don't smoke it to take good care of but it was thinning here and tired there. And jazz is the most demanding, I think, because you can in other things. You can yell, you put that up in the back of the throat and hit anything. But if you're going to do quiet stuff, what seemed to happen when I started, is this this other quiettitude that was a little bit, you know, saucy and sensual. She just stepped right up to the microphone and she just what she was doing.

01:00:45
Speaker 4: Like, who is this?

01:00:48
Speaker 3: I love her voice, it's got a lower thing. But right away I heard the command that I prayed i'd have and didn't expect, and there it was, so we made an extraordinary record that's kind of magic. We went full circle back to the time we left off our professional relationship at Pirates. It's not like Pirates, but something in the power of what happens when we work together was there. I think it stands well next to any beloved vocal work from the fifties or sixties here so because there's a feeling of sensual love and humor and all the things that you can get if you survive. I'm sixty nine this year. If you survive, you can bring all this stuff to your life and then bring it to the sound of your voice into music. And I think that's what's there, is humor and the love of life and the idea that we're singing, you know now for ourselves anymore. We're not going to be here to you know, and maybe I will, but I'm singing now for others and reaching out right.

01:02:10
Speaker 2: That's a great place to stop. Thank you so much. That was just wonderful.

01:02:17
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ricky Lee Jones for playing and reminiscing about her career with Bruce Headland. You can hear all of our favorite Ricky Lee Jones songs on a playlist at broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Taliday, Nisha Venkutt, Jordan McMillan, and Eric sam Our. Editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription service that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for only four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like this show, remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast stat or the musics by Canna Beats. I'm Justin Richman.