Jamie Cullum Biography
...But there was no time for celebratory pint of champagne or for self-congratulatory spending spree on eBay. Sure, he already knew he was playing for The Queen at her birthday party at St James? Palace the next month. But there were more pressing commitments. Jamie Cullum had a gig to do at Soho Pizza Express and a few wedding receptions to perform at. As he?d been doing since he was 16, 17 - since he first started playing piano round the pubs, clubs and hotels of his native Wiltshire - he got back in the car and back on the road.
Twelve months later, he's still on it.
Since it came out in October Twentysomething, Cullum's first major label album, has sold 650,000 copies, making it double-platinum. In those four final months of 2003, Cullum sold more albums than Kylie Minogue, The Strokes, Radiohead, Pink, The Coral and Enrique Iglesias did last year. He was the second-biggest-selling debut act in the UK last year, behind The Darkness.
Twentysomething is the fastest selling jazz album in UK jazz history, and Cullum is the biggest selling UK jazz artist ever. Yet he's the first to acknowledge how - frankly - mental that is. As he told The Independent earlier this year:
'Someone who is in love with jazz is going to get annoyed when I'm called the greatest British jazz artist alive today, which is fair enough. People question whether I'm jazz at all, and I resolutely say I am, but I'm not pushing the boundaries in the usual way. I'm pushing the limits of the music in terms of how entertaining and accessible it can be without making lift-music. I'm trying to find out whether you can get 16-year-olds who listen to The Strokes and 20-year-olds who listen to house music to think, "Actually, this is cooler than I thought." I'm lucky enough to have my music pushed by a major label. So I'm able to bring jazz to a new audience.'
Those new audiences are all over the place. Cullum won the Best Newcomer Award at the Radio 3 Jazz Awards, but was also nominated for Best Breakthrough Artist at this year's Brit Awards, alongside The Darkness, Busted, Lemar and Dizzee Rascal. At the Brits ceremony Cullum performed with Katie Melua on a duet of The Cure's 'Lovecats'.
From the jazzily sublime to the bling-bling ridiculous: at the Brits aftershow party, Cullum fulfilled a long-standing ambition by hooking up with Pharrell Williams: one half of uber-producers The Neptunes, frontman with their live band side-project NERD and, famously, The Handsomest Man In Hip Hop. Cullum has been a fan for ages. When he'd been on Jo Wiley's Radio 1 show the previous week, he had performed his own unique version of 'Frontin'', Pharrell's astonishing debut solo single from last summer. When NERD guested on the same show, Wiley played them Cullum's version. They loved it, raving about this mad young kid and his mad new version. So, when they hooked up at the Brits, there was a lot of love in the room.
Rumours that The Neptunes will be producing Cullum's next album could not be confirmed at time of writing. Nor the suggestion that Pharrell, noting Cullum's appeal to the ladies, has booked him to model for his soon-to-be-launched fashion line Billionaires' Boys Club. What is definite, however, is that Cullum's version of 'Frontin'' appears on the b-side of his current single, 'These Are The Days' - alongside a live version of Radiohead's 'High And Dry', recorded at the Brecon Jazz Festival in August last year.
Brit Awards, The Cure, Katie Melua, Pharrell Williams, Radiohead, Brecon Jazz: in this short sequence of events and artists we can see the span of Jamie Cullum's musical interests, and of his appeal. Little wonder, perhaps, that his invigoratingly eclectic tastes and staggeringly enthusiastic abilities have struck a chord around the world.
Around the release of Twentysomething he took his music to America for the first time. He undertook a three-week residency at The Oak Room at The Algonquin hotel in New York, the first white European to do so at the legendary jazz venue.
Here's what the New York Times had to say about it:
'When the scrappy English jazz singer and pianist Jamie Cullum performs ''Blame It On My Youth,'' his age (only 24) and frisky personality lend the regretful ballad a desperate immediacy that a more mature interpreter could never evoke. Mr Cullum... is a natural showman with the confidence of a bantam rooster waking up the neighborhood with his crowing.
'A fiercely swinging pianist, he attacks the instrument, daring himself to play almost faster and harder than his fingers will allow. When not pounding the keyboard, he often works up a head of steam by stamping his feet and drumming on the piano with his hands.
'To watch a performer go so fearlessly on his nerve is exciting. And at the opening-night show the restless energy that poured out of Mr. Cullum recalled the younger Ewan McGregor in one of his bad-boy movie roles. It also evoked the early Harry Connick Jr., who conveyed the same ravenous enthusiasm when he burst out of the Oak Room a decade ago.'
Since then, Cullum has been back to the US, performing on humungously popular chatshow The Late Show, and doing a short series of showcases on the West Coast.
Said the Hollywood Reporter of his Los Angeles show:
'Pianist Jamie Cullum decided to sing "I Get a Kick Out of You" for his inaugural number here in the vortex of the music industry, and few would have expected him to hit the keyboard of the piano with his foot when he got to the word "kick." The visiting young Briton gallivanted through the Cole Porter sophistry of "I Get A Kick Out Of You" at a Seabiscuit pace, sniffing loudly when he got to the line about indifference to cocaine and whacking the piano with his fist, palm and fingers when he felt striking the keys was not doing the job.
His openhearted enthusiasm got you ready to like him as he played standing up, like Little Richard or Sugar Chile Robinson, or whipped out a passage of Earl Hines licks while seated, bringing to mind Dudley Moore and his beloved Errol Garner.
'"It Ain't Necessarily So" was an even speedier screamer but lighthearted and fun - remember that, jazz fans? - sung in a twangy midrange voice with a Cockney flavour.'
Finally, acknowledging 'All At Sea' - written at a particularly low moment during Cullum's stint entertaining pensioners aboard a cruise ship in the Norwegian fjords - the entertainment bible concluded:
'The kid can write.'
With praise like that emanating from both coasts, anticipation is high in the US for Cullum's first proper American tour this spring.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, he?s found time to visit Europe and Japan; complete two sell-out UK tours and book a third; fulfil a lifelong ambition and play at Ronnie Scott's in Soho; record a years-worth of video diaries for the recent South Bank Show documentary about his career and music; and - with his long-term musical collaborator, his brother Ben - write music for the West End adaptation of When Harry Met Sally (starring Luke Perry and Buffy The Vampire Slayer?s Alyson Hannigan). He's got to meet some of his heroes (Pharrell, Thom Yorke), and honour others: in London last December he played at a tribute concert to the late Jeff Buckley, whose 'Lover, You Should Have Come Over' he covers. Buckley's mother was effusive in her appreciation of Cullum's enthusiasm for her son's work, and gushingly grateful for his agreeing to perform.
Cullum was dumbstruck - he was the one that should be grateful. Being 'famous', it seems, takes a lot of getting used to.
'It's getting huge,' he acknowledges of his profile. 'But I don't think it's about me as a person, about me as a kid from Wiltshire who misses his mum and dad.' The excitement of the two albums he made and self-funded while still a film and English literature student at Reading University still loom large in his memory. 'People say it must be weird walking down the street,' he continues. 'It's not. I went to do the sound check for the Jeff Buckley gig on the Tube, and I was struggling away with this big African drum I was going to use. And I bumped into someone and they said, "F**k off"! And as that happened I was walking past my poster... It was a really surreal moment.
'I just think I view fame in a very different way. If you think you're famous, and you act out being famous, then fame will "happen" to you.
'You know,' he continues, 'there's the normal part of me that makes a huge mess in the flat and hasn't had time to wash his clothes. And there's the part on the posters and on the TV, and selling x amount of records and doing the PR parties. It's a very separate thing. I can switch off very easily.'
But not always as easily as he'd like. Jamie Cullum woke up this morning with a 'great idea' for a song. But he had an appointment he couldn't miss; when your life is as 'itinerised' as Cullum's, missing one obligation is like the butterfly flapping in the Amazon: it causes an earthquake in Siberia.
'I would have loved to cancel the day and just work on the song. But I couldn't.' He's not sure if he can remember the tune, but he still has the title: 'These Are The Things I Think I've Learned'.
'It's about when you get older, but not very old, about the age I am now, how you think you've learned loads of stuff and you realise some it to not be true. You realise,' says Cullum with a tired but cheerful grin, 'the stuff you thought was important is actually a load of bollocks.'
Cullum is currently working on new material.
Twelve months later, he's still on it.
Since it came out in October Twentysomething, Cullum's first major label album, has sold 650,000 copies, making it double-platinum. In those four final months of 2003, Cullum sold more albums than Kylie Minogue, The Strokes, Radiohead, Pink, The Coral and Enrique Iglesias did last year. He was the second-biggest-selling debut act in the UK last year, behind The Darkness.
Twentysomething is the fastest selling jazz album in UK jazz history, and Cullum is the biggest selling UK jazz artist ever. Yet he's the first to acknowledge how - frankly - mental that is. As he told The Independent earlier this year:
'Someone who is in love with jazz is going to get annoyed when I'm called the greatest British jazz artist alive today, which is fair enough. People question whether I'm jazz at all, and I resolutely say I am, but I'm not pushing the boundaries in the usual way. I'm pushing the limits of the music in terms of how entertaining and accessible it can be without making lift-music. I'm trying to find out whether you can get 16-year-olds who listen to The Strokes and 20-year-olds who listen to house music to think, "Actually, this is cooler than I thought." I'm lucky enough to have my music pushed by a major label. So I'm able to bring jazz to a new audience.'
Those new audiences are all over the place. Cullum won the Best Newcomer Award at the Radio 3 Jazz Awards, but was also nominated for Best Breakthrough Artist at this year's Brit Awards, alongside The Darkness, Busted, Lemar and Dizzee Rascal. At the Brits ceremony Cullum performed with Katie Melua on a duet of The Cure's 'Lovecats'.
From the jazzily sublime to the bling-bling ridiculous: at the Brits aftershow party, Cullum fulfilled a long-standing ambition by hooking up with Pharrell Williams: one half of uber-producers The Neptunes, frontman with their live band side-project NERD and, famously, The Handsomest Man In Hip Hop. Cullum has been a fan for ages. When he'd been on Jo Wiley's Radio 1 show the previous week, he had performed his own unique version of 'Frontin'', Pharrell's astonishing debut solo single from last summer. When NERD guested on the same show, Wiley played them Cullum's version. They loved it, raving about this mad young kid and his mad new version. So, when they hooked up at the Brits, there was a lot of love in the room.
Rumours that The Neptunes will be producing Cullum's next album could not be confirmed at time of writing. Nor the suggestion that Pharrell, noting Cullum's appeal to the ladies, has booked him to model for his soon-to-be-launched fashion line Billionaires' Boys Club. What is definite, however, is that Cullum's version of 'Frontin'' appears on the b-side of his current single, 'These Are The Days' - alongside a live version of Radiohead's 'High And Dry', recorded at the Brecon Jazz Festival in August last year.
Brit Awards, The Cure, Katie Melua, Pharrell Williams, Radiohead, Brecon Jazz: in this short sequence of events and artists we can see the span of Jamie Cullum's musical interests, and of his appeal. Little wonder, perhaps, that his invigoratingly eclectic tastes and staggeringly enthusiastic abilities have struck a chord around the world.
Around the release of Twentysomething he took his music to America for the first time. He undertook a three-week residency at The Oak Room at The Algonquin hotel in New York, the first white European to do so at the legendary jazz venue.
Here's what the New York Times had to say about it:
'When the scrappy English jazz singer and pianist Jamie Cullum performs ''Blame It On My Youth,'' his age (only 24) and frisky personality lend the regretful ballad a desperate immediacy that a more mature interpreter could never evoke. Mr Cullum... is a natural showman with the confidence of a bantam rooster waking up the neighborhood with his crowing.
'A fiercely swinging pianist, he attacks the instrument, daring himself to play almost faster and harder than his fingers will allow. When not pounding the keyboard, he often works up a head of steam by stamping his feet and drumming on the piano with his hands.
'To watch a performer go so fearlessly on his nerve is exciting. And at the opening-night show the restless energy that poured out of Mr. Cullum recalled the younger Ewan McGregor in one of his bad-boy movie roles. It also evoked the early Harry Connick Jr., who conveyed the same ravenous enthusiasm when he burst out of the Oak Room a decade ago.'
Since then, Cullum has been back to the US, performing on humungously popular chatshow The Late Show, and doing a short series of showcases on the West Coast.
Said the Hollywood Reporter of his Los Angeles show:
'Pianist Jamie Cullum decided to sing "I Get a Kick Out of You" for his inaugural number here in the vortex of the music industry, and few would have expected him to hit the keyboard of the piano with his foot when he got to the word "kick." The visiting young Briton gallivanted through the Cole Porter sophistry of "I Get A Kick Out Of You" at a Seabiscuit pace, sniffing loudly when he got to the line about indifference to cocaine and whacking the piano with his fist, palm and fingers when he felt striking the keys was not doing the job.
His openhearted enthusiasm got you ready to like him as he played standing up, like Little Richard or Sugar Chile Robinson, or whipped out a passage of Earl Hines licks while seated, bringing to mind Dudley Moore and his beloved Errol Garner.
'"It Ain't Necessarily So" was an even speedier screamer but lighthearted and fun - remember that, jazz fans? - sung in a twangy midrange voice with a Cockney flavour.'
Finally, acknowledging 'All At Sea' - written at a particularly low moment during Cullum's stint entertaining pensioners aboard a cruise ship in the Norwegian fjords - the entertainment bible concluded:
'The kid can write.'
With praise like that emanating from both coasts, anticipation is high in the US for Cullum's first proper American tour this spring.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, he?s found time to visit Europe and Japan; complete two sell-out UK tours and book a third; fulfil a lifelong ambition and play at Ronnie Scott's in Soho; record a years-worth of video diaries for the recent South Bank Show documentary about his career and music; and - with his long-term musical collaborator, his brother Ben - write music for the West End adaptation of When Harry Met Sally (starring Luke Perry and Buffy The Vampire Slayer?s Alyson Hannigan). He's got to meet some of his heroes (Pharrell, Thom Yorke), and honour others: in London last December he played at a tribute concert to the late Jeff Buckley, whose 'Lover, You Should Have Come Over' he covers. Buckley's mother was effusive in her appreciation of Cullum's enthusiasm for her son's work, and gushingly grateful for his agreeing to perform.
Cullum was dumbstruck - he was the one that should be grateful. Being 'famous', it seems, takes a lot of getting used to.
'It's getting huge,' he acknowledges of his profile. 'But I don't think it's about me as a person, about me as a kid from Wiltshire who misses his mum and dad.' The excitement of the two albums he made and self-funded while still a film and English literature student at Reading University still loom large in his memory. 'People say it must be weird walking down the street,' he continues. 'It's not. I went to do the sound check for the Jeff Buckley gig on the Tube, and I was struggling away with this big African drum I was going to use. And I bumped into someone and they said, "F**k off"! And as that happened I was walking past my poster... It was a really surreal moment.
'I just think I view fame in a very different way. If you think you're famous, and you act out being famous, then fame will "happen" to you.
'You know,' he continues, 'there's the normal part of me that makes a huge mess in the flat and hasn't had time to wash his clothes. And there's the part on the posters and on the TV, and selling x amount of records and doing the PR parties. It's a very separate thing. I can switch off very easily.'
But not always as easily as he'd like. Jamie Cullum woke up this morning with a 'great idea' for a song. But he had an appointment he couldn't miss; when your life is as 'itinerised' as Cullum's, missing one obligation is like the butterfly flapping in the Amazon: it causes an earthquake in Siberia.
'I would have loved to cancel the day and just work on the song. But I couldn't.' He's not sure if he can remember the tune, but he still has the title: 'These Are The Things I Think I've Learned'.
'It's about when you get older, but not very old, about the age I am now, how you think you've learned loads of stuff and you realise some it to not be true. You realise,' says Cullum with a tired but cheerful grin, 'the stuff you thought was important is actually a load of bollocks.'
Cullum is currently working on new material.
