NEWS : Here is a podcast of José James’s songs by Gilles Peterson. Here is the tracklist of this podcast with new songs : The Dreamer, Save your Love For me, Vijay Iver Trio : Mystic Brew (only song that is not from JJ – great tho!!), Touch, Blackmagic, Warrior and Dretoit Love Letter.

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Here is the tracklisting of the upcoming album (January 2010) “Blackmagic“:
1 CODE (prod. by Flying Lotus)
2 TOUCH
3 LAY YOU DOWN (prod. by BILO)
4 PROMISE IN LOVE (prod. by DJ Mitsu the Beats)
5 WARRIOR
6 MADE FOR LOVE (prod. by Flying Lotus)
7 SAVE YOUR LOVE FOR ME
8 THE GREATER GOOD
9 BLACKMAGIC (prod. by Flying Lotus)
10 DETROIT LOVELETTER (prod. by Moodymann)
11 LOVE CONVERSATION feat. Jordana de Lovely (prod. by Taylor McFerrin)
12 BEAUTY
13 NO TELLIN’ (I NEED YOU)

I just realized that the website schememag.com wasn’t working anymore. I had done an interview of José James for this mag in early 2008 so I just wanted to put it back here.
I’ve seen José James for the first time in Paris in 2007 for a free show at La Flèche D’or. It was an amazing night with Soil and Pimp after José James’s show. The music was beautiful, the energy unique. When I was living in NYC in 2008, I’ve decided to contact again José James to do an interview of him, he nicely accepted it. We’ve met in NYC, at this time I didn’t really know the city as I was new there. If my memory is well, we’ve met in West 4 with his drummer at this time Steve Lyman and had a nice walk until we found an empty place to sit, eat and do the interview. I really like the energy of JJ, on stage and as a human being, it’s all about positive energy without avoiding the reality. Rare and unique artist, I am truly waiting for his new album in January “BlackMagic”.
Hope you will enjoy the reading.

Can you tell me more about your debuts? How did you start playing Jazz?
José James : One day I was listening to the Radio, I was like fourteen, « taking the A train » , and I’ve never really listened to big band’s stuff. All the Jazz I knew was very confusing, I didn’t understand it. And I heard this very powerful song, I got very excited. It was so much different from the hip hop of the 90′s that I was use to. And I really liked this thing it made me very happy. And then I heard Duke Elligton, Chalie Parker, so I bought those people. And I just listened to it over and over, for like a summer. And I said « whoah, i really like this music, it‘s interesting». But I didn’t think I wanted to do Jazz. I just liked to listen to it. Then, I just bought more and more album of everything, but a lot of jazz stuff, like Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and I just sort of work my way through Nate King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Wes Montgomery, un till I got to John Coltrane, and when I heard that song « Equinox », I felt very passionate about it. And I was trying to find singers who are like sort of complementing the instrumentals too, like Lester Young and Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker. But when I heard John Coltrane, I couldn’t find any singer who could sing the same stuff. You have Betty Carter but she wasn’t as avant-garde. So I felt like there was something missing, and I couldn’t find any recording like « central park west », so I started writing lyrics to it because I started singing in high school a little bit. It was just for fun, not professionally, but then I started showing that to the people and they were very impressed. So I started performing really at seventeen and became very serious about jazz and John Coltrane, I would do « equinox », I would do « Mingus » just stuff like that. But also « Blackeyesusan , “summertime”. So that’s how I started it.

Why did you choose to do a jazz album as a first musical project? Knowing that you told us 2 months ago you were planning on doing a soul record? Did you want to introduce yourself as a jazz singer? Read more