On November 1, EMI’s Blue Note Records will release …Featuring, a star-studded collection of the multi-platinum selling, multi-Grammy Award winning singer Norah Jones’s musical collaborations from the past decade. The 18 songs on the album include duets with such legends as Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton, and with 21st Century icons from OutKast to the Foo Fighters.
“It's so exciting and flattering and fun when I get asked to sing with somebody that I admire,” says Jones. “It takes you a little bit out of your comfort zone when you're doing something with another artist. You don't know what to expect-it's kind of like being a little kid and having a playdate.”
The tracks on …Featuring span her entire career, from one of her earliest recording sessions (a version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” with guitarist Charlie Hunter in 2001) to her most recent performance, a song called “Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John” that she cut with Belle and Sebastian, which will also appear on their new album. The result serves as a kind of parallel history to her own four albums, which have sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
These collaborations reveal Jones’s astonishing musical versatility, from jazz to country, hip-hop to rock. Three of the songs on …Featuring originally appeared on records that won Grammy awards for Album of the Year (Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company, Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, and OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), and several others were also nominated for Grammys.
The album also includes recordings by some of Jones’s own bands and side projects (The Little Willies and El Madmo), and performances with artists that she’s toured with including M. Ward, Sasha Dobson, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Songs on …Featuring range from classics recorded by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and Roy Orbison to new material by such wide-ranging innovators as Ryan Adams and Q-Tip.
“A lot of the people on this record are people I've worshiped since I was a kid, and some of them are younger and more my contemporaries,” says Jones. “Even though the musicians are so varied, the vibe of the songs makes sense when we put them all together.”
