Elsewhere: Out of the clubs and into the country

By GRAHAM REID

A couple of weeks ago in this column the New York-based singer-songwriter - and possibly "jazz" artist - Norah Jones was given a favourable reception for her debut album Come Away With Me on the Blue Note jazz label.

It's a gentle, appealing blend of piano jazz and the country music which she grew up hearing in Texas. Jones - who will feature on the cover of Monday's Arts pages - has been acclaimed in the straight jazz press but has also appeared with Willie Nelson and covers Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart on her album.

This crossover between jazz and country is hardly new: just ask fans of Bob Wills whose Texas swing was popular in the 30s and 40s. Since then Asleep at the Wheel and others have picked up Wills' mantle, bassist Charlie Haden (formerly of Ornette Coleman bands) frequently reaches back to his mid-west roots, and in '97 jazz guitarist Bill Frisell recorded an album of country music, Nashville, using musicians from Alison Krauss' Union Station band. Albums by singer and bluegrass fiddle player Krauss also regularly appear in the jazz sections.

Singer Cassandra Wilson (like Jones, on Blue Note) has adopted a very inclusive approach to jazz. Previously she's included songs by Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, scary bluesman Robert Johnson, U2 and others on her albums. And, like Jones, she's also re-interpreted Hank Williams.

On her new Belly of the Sun she heads even further out of the urban clubs and into the country, titles alone tell you that much. It opens with the Band's The Weight and elsewhere there's Darkness on the Delta, Witchita Lineman, and the brilliantly entitled Drunk as Cooter Brown.

As with the Jones album, it raises questions about whether Wilson, whose roots are in Mississippi, is actually a "jazz" singer at all and when you hear her take on Dylan's mythic narrative of Shelter from the Storm or the gritty treatment of Mississippi Fred McDowell's You Gotta Move she's certainly some distance from the Sarah Vaughan/Ella Fitzgerald axis.

No matter, with smart backing ranging from lonely slide guitar to fullblown Latin arrangements (on James Taylor's Only a Dream in Rio) this one stacks up on its own idiosyncratic merits.

Wilson's vocal style brings together the earthy and ethereal which means her version of The Weight will be down to taste (don't like it myself) but her originals are mesmerising (especially the soulful Just Another Parade with India.Arie, and Show Me a Love). And she brings a fresh and feminine perspective to Jimmy Webb's Witchita Lineman.

So Belly of the Sun is probably a "not-jazz" album like Jones', but both are persuasive - if different - evidence that the contract for artists on the Blue Note jazz label is very open indeed.

Silje Nergaard isn't a household name, aside from perhaps in her native Norway where she's posted a number one single and that rarity, a top 10 jazz album. In the early 90s she worked with guitarist Pat Metheny and, somewhat oddly, was also big in Japan where there is a wine named after her. Her second album featured a duet with Morten Harket of the pop band A-Ha, and her third was a blend of jazz with country'n'western with the unfortunate title Cow on the Highway.

She did another couple of country-jazz albums but for her seventh album At First Light (Universal) she's very much a jazz singer with her own trio and guests such as German trumpeter Till Bronner and acoustic guitarist Georg Wadenius who has played with Aretha, Steely Dan and Dr John.

A more conservative view of "jazz" than either Wilson or Jones, this is still an impressive introduction to one who lives comfortably between the cocktail lounge and concert stage, who writes melodically supple songs, and possesses a voice which shifts effortlessly from coquettish chanteuse to mature interpreter of an adult lyric.

So it's a touch of Latin, a lazy if sexless interpretation of Two Sleepy People, a sliver of funk-rock, and tasteful ballads.

Yes, At First Light is pretty nice, and my suspicion is that by being the more conservative it will have wider appeal than the Wilson, which round my way has had more repeat-play action.