Jazz phenom Jamie Cullum makes U.S. debut

NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- The buzz that preceded bantam-weight British jazz singer Jamie Cullum's U.S. debut at the Algonquin Hotel's legendary Oak Room was almost unprecedented for a virtually unknown 24-year-old vocalist and composer, even if he did entertain Queen Elizabeth II on the 50th anniversary of her reign and has a admirer in Prince William.

Cullum made headlines in Britain earlier this year when he signed a $1.5 million contract with Universal's Verve label for four albums after a bidding war with Sony. Only three years ago, when he was studying English literature and film at Reading University, he used a student loan to record his first album, which earned him enough to record another, "Pointless Nostalgic," that was picked up by Candid, a small label.

The Candid album got him noticed and pushed him to the forefront of cross-over jazz artists, most generally compared to American star Harry Connick Jr., whose career was launched at the Oak Room, or Canadian-born diva Diana Krall. Unlike them, he is a self-taught musician whose brash pianism and ebullient but gritty tenor singing style still have some rough edges, and he has yet to establish himself as an international star.

But Dickon Stainer, the Universal marketing director for jazz, said in an interview he would have done anything to sign Cullum for his label, because "He is simply the most talented musician we've ever come across." And a born showman, too.

Cullum's three-week engagement ending next Saturday at the Algonquin -- the first ever for a European jazz singer there -- has gone a long way toward making his name a familiar one in pop music circles on this side of the Atlantic, but he is the first to admit he still isn't completely comfortable with his growing fame and the excitement surrounding his just-released first album for Verve, appropriately titled "Twentysomething."

"I never set out to make a career of this, and I never sought a record deal," Cullum told UPI. "I had hoped to become a journalist or a filmmaker. To be honest, I still think someone is going to come and tell me that it's all big joke."

Cullum has sung well over 1,000 gigs since he was 15 and was pianist for the now defunct rock group Taxi, and his experience shows. Judging from his Oak Room performance, he is a supremely confident artist who has been able to realized his goal of "being the young guy singing old songs with a fresh mentality." He is full of surprises, such as beating on the piano case like a drum, and never lets his audience relax its attention for a moment.

Blessed with the support of two great backup instrumentalists -- Geoff Gascoyne on bass and Sebastiaan deKrom on drums -- the diminutive singer with tousled hair and soulful brown eyes romps impishly through nearly a dozen songs, opening with "All at Sea," a charming sea ditty of his own composition recalling his experiences as a cruise ship pianist.

Then he pays his respects to some of his favorite composers -- George Gershwin ("But Not for Me" and "It Ain't Necessarily So"), Cole Porter ("I Get a Kick Out of You" and "I've Got You Under My Skin"), Burton Lane ("Old Devil Moon") and Bob Durrough's "Not For Now," a catchy romantic ballad saved for his encore number.

He is at his supreme best singing a revved-up, foot-stamping version of Radiohead's "High and Dry" and Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary," which he ends by literally beating up the keyboard to create a sound storm. If any of his renditions could be said to be banal, it is that of Sammy Cahn's "It Had To Be You," but he ends it with a dazzling scat riff. The only number sung languorously was an unfamiliar Oscar Levant ballad, "Blame It on My Youth."

There is little to blame on Cullum's youth, except for an overly energetic brashness that may moderate with time. It is not surprising to learn he comes from a musical family, son of a successful Wiltshire businessman father of Palestinian descent who played the guitar and a mother of Burmese background who sang. Together with a granddad on sax, and an uncle on guitar, the Cullum family played pub dates in the 1960s.

Cullum also is a guitarist, as is his 28-year-old brother, Ben, a musical star in his own right who composes songs with his younger brother. They wrote the title song for "Twentysomething," a post-modern, deprecating but funny song about "freaking out in your twenties, after all that education and still not knowing how to live your life."

"I'm still learning, still discovering," Jamie Cullum says. "There's even a couple of Beatles albums I haven't heard and a lots of corners of jazz I haven't explored. I want to make jazz more acceptable to young audiences. I'm not pushing boundaries, but I am mixing things up a bit."