When vocalist Madeleine Peyroux began busking on the streets of Paris as a singer/guitarist at age 16, she didn’t have a clear plan for her life. Eight recordings later, with her ninth, Anthem, due out in August, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what Peyroux’s genre is. With influences from early jazz, blues, folk, funk, and pop, her music reflects her own, unusual personal journey.

When she broke into the spotlight in 1996 with her debut album, Dreamland, her sultry, smoky voice immediately drew comparisons to jazz legend Billie Holiday. She didn't release her second album, Careless Love, for another eight years: Unprepared for the physical strain of being a professional singer, she lost her voice for a while. But her retro, French cabaret arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s song “Dance Me to the End of Love” put her back in the spotlight.

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Twenty years after her recording debut, Dreamland, Madeleine Peyroux continues her musical journey of exploring beyond the ordinary with Secular Hymns, a spirited and soulful masterwork of loping, skipping, sassy, feisty and sexy tunes delivered in a captivating mélange of funk, blues and jazz. With her trio that had been touring together for two years—electric guitarist Jon Herington and upright bassist Barak Mori—Peyroux set out to record in a live setting a collection of songs that have their own hymn-like stories of self-awareness and inner dialogue, a communal consciousness and a spiritual essence.

“Music has been our spiritual life, so I think of these as hymns, secular hymns—songs that are very individual, personal, introverted.”
- Madeleine Peyroux

Rounder Records is pleased to announce the release of Keep Me in Your Heart for a While: The Best of Madeleine Peyroux, the debut anthology of the critically acclaimed, singer-songwriter’s nearly 20-year career. The album includes favorites not only from Peyroux’s releases with Rounder, but also tracks from her Atlantic and Decca/Emarcy catalogs. Additionally, the compilation includes one previously unreleased recording—the collection’s title track and Warren Zevon cover, “Keep Me in Your Heart”—which appeared in 2011’s independent film Union Square. Liner notes by former Atlantic Records A&R man, Yves Beauvais, who discovered Peyroux, complete the package.

Track Listing

Disc One:

  1. Don't Wait Too Long 3:11
  2. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome 3:25
  3. (Getting Some) Fun Out Of Life 3:13
  4. Between The Bars 3:43
  5. I'm All Right 3:28
  6. La Vie En Rose 3:19
  7. Half The Perfect World 4:22
  8. Dance Me To The End Of Love 3:56
  9. Smile 3:59
  10. Once In A While 4:00
  11. The Summer Wind 3:56
  12. Careless Love 3:50
  13. Guilty 3:52
  14. Desperadoes Under The Eaves [Extended Version] 5:20

Disc Two:

  1. Changing All Those Changes 3:09
  2. J'ai Deux Amours 2:55
  3. River Of Tears 5:20
  4. The Things I’ve Seen Today 3:42
  5. Damn The Circumstances 4:36
  6. La Javanaise 4:11
  7. The Kind You Can't Afford 3:58
  8. Bye Bye Love 3:28
  9. Walkin' After Midnight 4:49
  10. Standing On The Rooftop 5:46
  11. Instead 5:12
  12. Keep Me In Your Heart [First Audio Release] 3:32
  13. This Is Heaven To Me 3:12

When Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music was released in the summer of 1962, it caused quite a stir. For those of us who already worshipped Ray Charles and were initially exposed to the album through its first single “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” the massive, very white choir that sang the first lines of the song made us cringe. It convinced us that our idol had sold out to the major label mentality. To purists with a tendency toward musical genre profiling, Ray Charles had no business giving credibility to redneck hillbilly music.

This wasn’t the first time Ray Charles had crossed the line in his pursuit of a natural fusion of the music he heard growing up. He dipped into boogie woogie for “The Mess Around.” But when he blended country blues and urbane rhythm & blues with Gospel music in mid-fifties hits like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” and “I Got A Woman,” he added blasphemy to his list of crimes against humanity. Now he wanted to cross the color line with the music of the deep South. Clearly, he didn’t know his place.

Oh yeah, then there was the general public who came out in droves to make Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music  Ray Charles’s most successful album to date rather than his most controversial. After all, genius is half talent and half impeccable instincts and Ray Charles was a genius. By September, he was in the studio cutting Volume 2. And everyone came around. The second single from the album was “You Don’t Know Me,” an eight-year-old song by Canadian country singer Eddy Arnold, who delivered the original version in his unemotive, plaintive style. Ray Charles, on the other hand, elevated it to its status of instant standard with a raw, poignant, heart-breaking reading.

What we all eventually realized in hindsight was that this album, like no other Ray Charles recording before it, represented an artistic freedom that most recording artists over the past fifty years have routinely enjoyed. Nobody wanted Ray Charles to sing country & western songs… except Ray Charles. When he reluctantly left Atlantic Records where his musical artistry and style emerged and took shape, he signed a revolutionary recording contract with ABC-Paramount in 1960 where he retained artistic control of his sessions and ownership of his masters. It was unprecedented and a major blow to the label system that foisted bad songs and mediocre arrangers on singers in search of the almighty hit. In the process, he used his artistry and genius to break down musical categories and barriers and legitimize cross-pollinating, genre-bending music.

A year later, the ‘60s (the era, not the decade) began in earnest with the assassination of Medgar Evers and Governor George Wallace’s attempt to block the entrance of two black students at the University of Alabama in June, the Civil Rights March On Washington in August, the church bombing in Birmingham which killed four children in September and the assassination of President Kennedy in November. A succession of assassinations, protests, abuses of authority and riots defined the next seven years as race, war and class divided a country. Bob Dylan articulated our outrage and Ray Charles healed our wounds and fed our souls. Oh yeah, 1963 was also the year that Billboard combined its mono album and stereo album charts. Heavy stuff.

By the time Larry Klein discovered Modern Sounds, he was 12 and it was 6. Modern Sounds was already a classic and its hits were golden oldies. By that time, the massive white choir didn’t sound so alien; it had just become an ingredient in the final work.

Larry found himself revisiting the album frequently over the next four decades.

In an inspired moment, he thought a re-examination of this album would be an ideal project for Madeleine Peyroux because “she comes from the same places – jazz, country and blues.” His concept was in no way intended to replicate the instrumentation or arrangements or style or sequence of the original album. Trying to beat Ray Charles at his own game is the true definition of “Born To Lose.”

Georgia-born and Brooklyn and Paris-bred with a New Orleans pedigree, Madeleine Peyroux grew up in a household rich in Southern culture and yet vehemently against the ignorance and racism associated with that region. Born in 1974, her childhood home was filled with the sounds of Fats Domino, Fats Waller, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Buddy Holly to name a few. “Ray Charles was a part of that mix and an important one,” she explains, “but I never knew that album per se. I knew many of the songs as part of anthologies alongside tunes like “Georgia On My Mind” and “Hit The Road, Jack.” But Ray Charles had a huge impact on me and even more so when I moved to Paris at age 11 because those American artists were so much more revered there than they were in the United States in the ‘80s.”

Madeleine is an artist whose sensibility and eclectic musical mix make for magnificent story-telling. And the songs that Ray Charles chose for Modern Sounds are, above all, stories. Wisely, Madeleine felt that the infusion of newer but like-minded material was essential to this project and gems like Warren Zevon’s “Desparadoes Under The Eaves” and Randy Newman’s “Guilty” attest to her impeccable instincts, as does the resurrection of a wonderful and obscure Buddy Holly song “Changing All Those Changes.”

Larry Goldings, Dean Parks, David Piltch and Jay Bellerose form the group that provides the spare, tasteful backing arranged by Larry Klein for each song. Vince Mendoza’s string arrangements on six tracks are beautiful, unpredictable and perfectly appropriate to the tone and mood of each song. If there is a direct musical link to Ray Charles, it’s Goldings’s soulful, in-the-pocket keyboard work with the same kind of perfectly placed notes and use of space that were part of Charles’s signature.

Larry Klein is a producer who knows his artists well and creates hand-tailored environments that suit them perfectly. When Madeleine takes “Bye Bye Love” slower than usual or “Take These Chains” faster than most, these are not decisions of style, but fundamental choices in her approach to the material. This is an album of music that is letter-perfect but coursing with blood, and it is as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. And like the Ray Charles album to which it pays homage, it reinvents everything it touches.

 

Michael Cuscuna
November 2012

Renowned for her interpretive song skills, the vocalist followed her creative muse on 2009’s “Bare Bones” by challenging herself to write a full album of her own compositions. Now with “Standing On the Rooftop” (Emarcy/Decca), she delves deeper into her reinvention, not only writing the bulk of the songs, but pushing past any preconceived notions about her music and daring herself to expand her sonic template.

Appearing on the album

Madeleine Peyroux
Christopher Bruce
Charlie Drayton
John Kirby
Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Glenn Patscha
Marc Ribot
Mauro Refosco
Jenny Scheinman
Allen Toussaint
Patrick Warren

Track list

  1. Martha My Dear (J. Lennon / P. McCartney)
  2. The Kind You Can't Afford (M. Peyroux / B. Wyman)
  3. The Things I've Seen Today (M. Peyroux / J. Scheinman)
  4. Fickle Dove (M. Peyroux / J. Scheinman)
  5. Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love (W. Auden / M. Ribot)
  6. Standing on the Rooftop (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  7. Threw It All Away (B. Dylan)
  8. Love in Vain (R. Johnson)
  9. Don't Pick a Fight with a Poet (M. Peyroux / A. Rosen)
  10. Meet Me in Rio (M. Peyroux)
  11. Ophelia (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  12. The Way of All Things (M. Peyroux)

Madeleine Peyroux's fourth album isn't the normal mix of standards (contemporary or traditional) with a few songs of her own composing; each of the 11 tracks is a new song written by Peyroux, usually in tandem with producer Larry Klein or a guest. Still, she appears in her usual relaxed setting, with a small group perfectly poised to translate her languorous vocals into perfect accompaniment — organist Larry Goldings, pianist Jim Beard, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, plus producer Klein on bass, Dean Parks on guitar, and Carla Kihlstedt on violin.Peyroux is not only a great interpreter of songs, she also knows how to write in what might be called the old-fashioned way, the type of song with a universal, direct, emotional power that became a rarity during the late 20th century.

Appearing on the album

Madeleine Peyroux
Larry Klein
Vinnie Colaiuta
Dean Parks
Jim Beard
Larry Goldings
Carla Kihlstedt
Luciana Souza
Rebecca Pidgeon

Track list

  1. Instead (J. Coryell / M. Peyroux)
  2. Bare Bones (W. Becker / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  3. Damn The Circumstances (D. Batteau / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  4. River Of Tears (L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  5. You Can't Do Me (W. Becker / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  6. Love And Treachery (J. Henry / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  7. Our Lady Of Pigalle (D. Batteau / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  8. Homeless Happiness (J. Coryell / M. Peyroux)
  9. To Love You All Over Again (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  10. I Must Be Saved (M. Peyroux)
  11. Somethin' Grand (L. Klein / M. Peyroux / S. Wayland)

Produced by Larry Klein
Recorded and mixed by Helik Hadar
Recorded at Henson Studios, Hollywood, CA and Market Street, Santa Monica, CA.
Assistant engineer: Nicolas Essig
Mixed at Market Street, Santa Monica, CA
Mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood, CA
Production Coordinator: Cindi Peters for Worlds End (America) Inc.
Chart preparation: Mark Shilansky

This time around, Peyroux focuses primarily on songs written by artists from her lifetime, including Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Fred Neil. (more…)

With the release of her long awaited follow-up album, Careless Love, Peyroux's potential as an artist is truly realized. Her smoky voice and knowing delivery make each song her own, whether she's singing vintage tunes by W.C. Handy and Hank Williams, or contemporary songs by Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith. Producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin) weaves strands of acoustic blues, country ballads, classic jazz, torch songs and pop into a vibrant fabric that is both timeless and thoroughly up to date, with Peyroux's arresting vocals always front and center. (more…)

Madeleine's debut album from 1996 offers a wide variety of swing standards, originals, and hints of country and folk music. Her supporting cast, which changes on each selection, includes a restrained James Carter on tenor and bass clarinet, Marc Ribot on dobro and guitar, trumpeter Marcus Printup, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, and violinist Regina Carter. (more…)

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