Rickie Lee Jones

Venice and the first album

Rickie Lee Jones was born on November 8, 1954 on the north side of Chicago and lived in Phoenix, Arizona from age four to fourteen; her father was a singer, songwriter, painter and trumpeter, and her grandfather a vaudevillian. In the mid-1970s she sang jazz and her own songs in bars and coffeehouses in Venice, California, where she met the pianist and songwriter Alfred Johnson, who co-wrote with her and later played in her band. A four-song demo with "The Last Chance Texaco", "Easy Money", "Young Blood" and "After Hours" led to a Warner Bros. contract.

Rickie Lee Jones was recorded between September and December 1978 at Warner Bros. Recording Studios and The Burbank Studios, produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, 42:11, and released on February 28, 1979 (MusicBrainz lists March 23). "Chuck E.'s in Love" reached 4 in the US and "Young Blood" 40; the album reached 3 in the US, 1 in Australia and 18 in the UK, and went platinum in the US. She appeared on Saturday Night Live on April 7, 1979, played Carnegie Hall on July 22, 1979, was called the Duchess of Coolsville by Time, was on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1979 and 1981, and won the 1980 Grammy for best new artist, with a Song of the Year nomination for "Chuck E.'s in Love".

The records since

Pirates followed on July 15, 1981 (US 5, Rolling Stone's five stars; NPR ranked it 49th on its 150 greatest albums made by women), the EP Girl at Her Volcano (1983) and The Magazine (1984). Flying Cowboys (1989), Pop Pop (1991, a jazz album produced by David Was), Traffic from Paradise (1993, with a "Rebel Rebel" that Bowie reportedly loved), Ghostyhead (1997), The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard (2007), The Devil You Know (2012, produced by Ben Harper), Kicks (2019) and Pieces of Treasure (April 28, 2023, reunited with Russ Titelman, Grammy-nominated for best traditional pop vocal album) came after, and she played Glastonbury in 2019. She lives in New Orleans, and her memoir Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour came out from Grove Press on April 6, 2021. VH1 ranked her 30th among its greatest women in rock and roll in 1999. Setlist.fm lists 664 sets.