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Jones sings of such capers in a musky voice that slides across the lyrics, scatting between them and eliding words in vintage hipster style, as if English were a foreign language learned in a speed-speech course. For slow learners, lyrics are printed on the back of the album, and they make for some of the best new reading in pop. Still, one can appreciate the offhand confusion of Randy Newman, no small influence on Jones, and no master of elocution either. Specially imported to play synthesizer on one album cut, Newman was asked what he thought of the song. "Can't tell," he replied. "Couldn't understand a word."
Communication during the production of the album was something of a scattershot affair. Producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman brought Jones into the recording studio, corralled some of the best musicians in town to play behind her, invested four or five patient months until the album was done. "Lenny and Russ could appreciate a ... um . . . wild and unusual personality," says Rickie Lee. "They gave me complete space."
With only one semester of piano lessons behind her, Rickie Lee put her musical ideas across by spinning out stories to set the mood she wanted. "If I'd allowed myself to be told what to do," she says, "I'm sure somebody would have loved to tell me. But I wouldn't stand for it." That kind of stubbornness also gave the musicians a good deal of room to move. "She steps back and lets us play," says a back-up musician on her current sold-out club tour. "She knows what she wants and we like that. She's a good muscian. It's hard to believe this is really her first professional gig."
He may not know about what Rickie Lee calls "extensive education in music at home." Born in Chicago, hard by Wrigley Field, the third child of a couple "in the restaurant business" (which, from the ironic Jones argot, translates as "waiter and waitress"), Rickie Lee had a vagabond childhood. Her parents split up, reunited, drifted from state to state and job to job. Her father sang a lot, wrote his daughter a little tune called The Moon Is Made of Gold ("So don't feel bad because the sun went down/ The moon is made of gold"), which she includes in her show. Kicked out of high school in Olympia, Wash., Rickie Lee started drifting and bumming, drinking heavily, getting a firsthand taste of the lowlife. "I've been as far down as I can go and I made it out," she reflects. "So there's nothing to be afraid of any more." Eventually she made her way out to Venice, held down a job as waitress and started playing small clubs for free in Los Angeles.
Just now, she is polishing up her show. Rickie Lee's performance, loose and good-natured, is also self-deprecatory in a winning way. "Oh, for Christ's sake, sit down," she smiles at some folks in the audience attempting to give her a standing ovation. Also, to make sure she keeps close to her roots, she fixes a parking meter downstage as part of the show. "I really do hang out at the parking meter," she explains. She was even going to load it up with change to time her set, but she forgot. She just got too carried away with excitement.
—Jay Cocks