This paper documents the music and career of singer Norah Jones. A versatile singer most often classified as a jazz singer, Jones shot to fame in 2002 with a multi-Grammy winning CD and has maintained her success with her abilities as a composer, pianist, and singer.
Jones was born on March 30, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York. Her full name at birth was Geethali Norah Jones Shankar, though she later legally changed it with the blessing of both of her parents. At the age of four, she and her mother, Sue Jones, moved to a suburb of Dallas, Texas. As a young girl, she sang in the church choir and started piano lessons when she was seven, briefly also playing saxophone in her junior high school band.
Jones attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, where she won several prestigious in-school awards for her singing and composing. After graduating, she attended the University of North Texas, majoring in jazz piano and singing "dark, jazzy rock" with a local band.[1] After two years, she moved to New York City, and by 2001, she had signed with Blue Note Records and worked with several groups of musicians.
Her first CD, Don't Know Why, was released in 2002, and she won five Grammy Awards that year-Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album. Her followup CDs include Feels Like Home (2004), Not Too Late (2007), and The Fall (2009). In 2010, she released her fifth CD, ...Featuring.
According to her fan site, her earliest musical influences included an eight-album collection of Billie Holiday recordings, especially a recording of "You Go to My Head."[2]
Because Blue Note specializes in jazz recordings, this is how Jones is most often categorized. Tracey E. W. Laird describes Jones as a "light jazz songstress."[3]
However, like many contemporary artists, her work includes a variety of inf...