NORAH JONES RECORDING SESSIONS HISTORY: October 8 - 9, 2000

Sorcerer Sound Studios, New York, NY

Band members: Norah Jones (piano, vocals), Lee Alexander (bass), Dan Rieser (drums), Jesse Harris (guitar), Adam Rogers (guitar), Tony Scherr (guitar)

Producer/Engineer: Jay Newland
Assst. Engineer:  Mark Birkey

Set:

• [O] Don't Know Why
• [O] Come Away With Me
• [U] A Dream Today
• [O] Something Is Calling You
• [U] I Didn't Know About You
• [O] Turn Me On
• [O] Lonestar
• [U] The Only Time
• [U] What Am I To You?
• [U] Hallelujah, I Love Him So
• [O] Peace
• [U] Day Dream
• [U] When Sunny Gets Blue

Best available sources:

Notes: Norah's first studio session under Blue Note. 

After Norah met Shell White at a San Francisco gig on her birthday in 2000, her future manager made it her personal goal to get Norah a record deal. While White was only a mere industry accountant at the time, her husband (who was one of Lee's friends) worked in EMI's royalties department, and so she used this distant connection to Blue Note to arrange a meeting between Norah and the label's CEO, Bruce Lundvall.  A few weeks later, the meeting took place and Norah had the opportunity to play him a three-song demo.  He was so impressed that he signed her to a demo deal that very day.   This session was then set up as the culmination of that deal.

Brian Bacchus, A&R for the label, went about recruiting personnel for the session, and settled upon Jay Newland, an independent engineer, to produce the demo session. Newland had worked in RCA's midtown New York studio from 1987-1992, working with such jazz greats including Charlie Haden and Dizzy Gillespie before the studio shut down.  After this, he went independent and engineered records for several highly-regarded blues artists, but perhaps his biggest feat was engineering Etta James' 1994 Grammy-winning record Mystery Lady, which was a record of Billie Holiday covers.

Narrowing down the songs to perform at the sessions could have taken place as late as two to three weeks before the session.  This conclusion is based upon the songs performed at a Living Room gig Norah and the band performed on September 20, 2000.  This show featured the first known performances of the Harris-penned "I've Got To See You Again" and "One Flight Down," neither of which were even attempted at this session but sounded nearly identical to their final form on Come Away With Me.  However, it is possible that other songs may have been performed that night, as the recording of this show was distributed in the form of four MP3 files from Norah's website and it is unclear if they constitute the entire show.  It is also possible that songs from this session could have been attempted at any or all of several shows Norah definitely performed in August and early September.

Newland met Jones a few days before or after the show, and the two of them scoped out Sorcerer Sound, where they settled on what Newland called a "funny-shaped room with a drum booth way in the back, and two 6-foot x 6-foot booths in the middle, sort of like a railroad apartment."  The "main room" refers to Sorcerer's smaller upstairs room, where recording took place on a home-made, custom-designed console that is known as the Acoustilog, to a Studer 820 recorder, a 2-inch analog machine.  The monitors used were Genelec 1031s and Yamaha NS-10s.

Mark Birkey, a Sorcerer employee who was also the founder and lead guitarist of the influential '90s no-core band Gutter Poets and an occasional trombonist, would assist Newland with the session.  He would later remark that while normally the assistant engineer assists the engineer with getting his preferences synced to the equipment at the studio, Newland had used Sorcerer in the past and was quite familiar with the studio and its equipment.

Recording, which would take 13 hours over two days, began on a Sunday.  All songs were recorded live, with additional takes only being done to add more layers to a song.

After some experimentation, Norah's vocal was cut on a Neumann M49 mic.  "It was magic the second we tried it on her voice," Newland says.  A B&K 4011 was used on Norah's piano, a Telefunken U47 and RCA 44 on Lee's acoustic bass, and a Newmann KM-84 for all the guitarists. As for Dan, he was equipped with another Telefunken U47 for his overhead drums, a Shure SM57 for his snare, an AKG D112 on his kick, and a Sennheiser 421 on the toms.  A B&K ambient mic was also used. Mic preamps on Norah and the band included Neve and Manley models.  Neve preamp was plugged directly into the Acoustilog.  Three types of processors were used: a Teletronics LA-2A, multiple Neve Compressors, and a Lexicon 480.

Birkey adds that the studio also had a great-sounding piano, a 6-foot Steinway grand, which is presumably what Norah played on at this session.

The session began with "Don't Know Why," which would eventually become the track that would propel Norah to international superstardom.  Before the session, this was officially regarded as a Harris track--he and the Ferdinandos had included it on their 1999 self-titled debut. But it seems that Jesse and Tony Scherr, who was also present at this session, decided to make an executive decision and "give" this song to Norah.  This version is the same take that would eventually be featured on Come Away With Me, but is missing Harris' second layer of guitar and Norah's backing vocals, both of which were later added for the full-length record. This results in a more stripped-down sound.  In regards to this track, Newland remarks: "She sang it so beautifully; it held up and that was it."

"Come Away With Me" features renowned jazz guitarist Adam Rogers.  This song would eventually be re-recorded with Arif Mardin in August 2001 as the title track for Norah's future album.  Rogers contributes what seems to be a more improvisational solo compared to the released version, and is the only guitar player in this rendition.  Conversely, the subsequent version would feature both Harris and Adam Levy on guitar.

The bluesy/country-sounding track “A Dream Today” features an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar to complement Norah's piano and Lee's bass, with heavy-hitting drums by Rieser.  Harris features on acoustic guitar while Tony Scherr joins in on electric.  This song, which remains unreleased, was co-written by Norah and Jesse.

"Something Is Calling You" is another song penned by Jesse, and features Rieser hitting the drums with his bare hands like a tabla on the released version when he is not using brush sticks.  However, the unofficial release actually features Rieser on a tabla, with this percussion starting early in the song (as opposed to slightly later in the final version that features drums).  It is unclear when the decision was made to replace the tabla with a take of Rieser on the drums, as the other channels/tracks in this song appear to be the same in both versions.  This is another song that was featured on a Ferdinandos album, but is significant because it showed up on their album over a year after this session. It appears that this was originally intended to be a Norah Jones song written by Jesse Harris (in the vein of "One Flight Down" and "Shoot The Moon"), but ended up becoming a Jesse Harris song occasionally covered live by Norah Jones (as she continued to play it live even after the release of Crooked Lines up until late 2002).

"I Didn't Know About You" is a Duke Ellington cover, and the guitarist appears to be Adam Rogers, who would presumably have been more familiar with Ellington's work than the other guitarists based upon his extensive jazz background.

"Turn Me On" is a John D. Loudermilk cover which also features Rogers on guitar, and other than an organ that would be added later on, this is the exact same version that appears on Come Away With Me.

"Lonestar" is the only song penned by Lee that was attempted at this session, and this version is much more stripped down than what would be re-recorded a year later with Mardin.   This version features Scherr on acoustic guitar, and he accompanies himself with a second layer on the guitar solo. In the Mardin version, Scherr shifts to slide guitar while Adam Levy takes over acoustic guitar.  This version also has no drums, whereas the latter version would end up having Brian Blade on percussion.  Finally, here the song starts out with the guitar riff and then the vocals kick in a few seconds later, whereas the vocals and the instruments start off the song at the same time in the final version.  For Birkey, this song was the highlight of the session: "I personally think [this version] was much better than what's on [Come Away With Me].  It was slower and sultry and sublime, and I can understand that in the context of the full-length CD maybe it seemed too much like more of the same, but I think that was my favorite song during the session, and the final version seems more like a straight-ahead country song."

"The Only Time" is a Harris-penned tune that didn't make the final cut.  Along with Harris on guitar, the song features a "weepy" fiddle playing intermittently in the background.  This song was never released by Norah or Jesse, but it was previously attempted at Norah’s first New York studio session with Jesse and Lee a year earlier.

This session is also notable for featuring a jazzy, first-ever attempt at "What Am I To You?," a song that Norah claimed, around the time of Feels Like Home, they had attempted five times. This would mean that this song was attempted at every subsequent studio session after this.  It is unclear who plays guitar on this version, but this initial take is different from all released future versions for a number of reasons.  First of all, while it is not as upbeat as the version that was attempted with Mardin for Come Away With Me, it is also not as slow as the version that was eventually released on Feels Like Home. Also, this version is done in the D sharp key, while all future versions are in the standard C key--and this causes Norah to sing a little higher. Finally, this is the only known version that features Norah on the regular piano, while the later versions feature her on a Wurlitzer electric.

Before she would work with Ray Charles three years later, here Norah covers his classic "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" and reworks it into a song from the female point of view.  The manner in which this song is performed is very similar to how Lee and Norah reworked Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart."  This is also the only unreleased cover from this session that Norah would ever play live, as nearly two years later she would revive it and perform it on a German TV broadcast.

After this, the rest of the band presumably packed up their instruments for the session and either departed from the studio or hung around to watch Norah perform the last three songs of the session by herself.  The first of these solo tracks is "Peace," a Horace Silver cover that would eventually be selected to round off the record.  The placement of this song in the final release would also begin a trend for Norah, as she would end her next two records with a solo track.

Another Duke Ellington cover follows, with "Day Dream," and Norah closes the session with Jack Segal's "When Sunny Gets Blue," made popular by Nat King Cole's cover of this song, and this may have been a rendition that Norah may have possibly referenced before recording her own version.  It is interesting to note that while these three solo songs are the jazziest of the session, this quality may have in fact been why she and Lundvall decided to only include one of them on the EP, as Norah had been signed on the strength of her being not purely a jazz artist but a performer who had a unique blend of many styles.

At the end of the session on Monday, Newland rough mixed the session, and sent it "off to the record company.  I knew this was great stuff. I played Norah's demo at my sessions in Memphis, New Orleans, and Paris. People loved it everywhere. My parents loved it, and so did my niece who is in college. That usually doesn't happen. I knew Norah was someone to watch."  We presume that the wider circulation of this demo originated from one of these sources that Newland shared it with.

Birkey adds, "The thing that sticks out most is my first impression of her voice, which was just unbelievable. The control, the grace, the maturity--it was amazing, but it also sounded like everything she did with it was coming straight from inside her and serving the songs, not like she was trying to win a contest or something.  The other first impression was that the songs were great, that this style they had developed was unique and cool but also accessible, but I did not at all think about it in terms of commercial potential--I'm not sure anyone did."

As for Norah herself, she looked back fondly upon the session, calling it a "very special document of a working band--Jesse, Lee, Dan and me." Adam and Tony also "fit right into the band vibe we had going."  She stated that they decided to release the EP because "we liked it, and we knew the record wasn't going to be available for a long time. We really liked it and Blue Note really liked it, so we thought it would be nice to have an EP."

We would like to especially thank Mark Birkey for his invaluable assistance in sharing his thoughts with us on this session.

References--Coming Soon.

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