concord PREVIEW CORINNE BAILEY...

concord PREVIEW

CORINNE BAILEY RAE

WITH GRAN BEL FISHER, KEVIN DEVINE

When: 7:30 pm Tuesday

Where: Park West, 322 W Armitage

Tickets: $18

Call: (312) 559-1212

of the present day YORK -- While most singers would give their right arms to be mentioned in the same breath as jazz great Billie Holiday, for British newcomer Corinne Bailey Rae, the constant comparisons to Lady Day -- while flattering -- can finish a little frustrating.

"There was a really big backlash in the British pres when my album first came out" the 27-year-old said of her self-titled first appearance recently released in the United States.

"Someone reviewed the whole thing and was like, 'This does not good like Billie Holiday! Billie Holiday would at no time sing a song like this!' And I'm kind of like, well, you missed the point, really!"

The point is that while Rae's muggy scratchy vocals may bear an eerie resemblance to the jazz motto the singer-songwriter has her allow identity, and her own vigorous -- and it has made her a critical succes not single in her native land on the contrary in the United States, as well.

"I won this catalogue of heads thing in England about predictions, and it was all these journalists and reporters trying to say that I was going to be big in '06" said Rae. "My name was at the top of their list. I was like, 'Are you unfailing you've got the right person?' "

They did. In March she became the first female British artist to first appearance at No. 1 on Billboard's UK album chart, and the album's worldwide sales already exce 1 million copies, thanks to feel- beneficial hits like the celebratory furrow "Put Your Records On" and the sweet-nectared jam "Like a Star."

And now that she has subjected Europe, the United States is nearest on her hit list -- or not.

"I don't really be stirred pressure to be a big succes here," said the decorous Rae, whose face is framed at an unruly mop of waves "I don't think, like, 'I've got to exchange so many records here, or to such a degree many records there.' That's the record label's piece of work They've got to worry about to what extent we're doing in Kazakhstan or Germany. My do job-work is to write and sing."

It's a piece of work she has taken seriously since she was just a teen Back then, instead of soulful on a sudden with a jazzy twist, support was her genre of choice. At 14 Rae -- already classically trained as a violinist -- created a asylum band called Helen, a four-girl, one-boy grunge band thoroughly influenced by rock gods L Zeppelin.

Rae sang and played electric guitar with the cluster for more than 10 years. on the other hand when she took a do job-work as a hat-checker at a local jazz- and-soul bludgeon while she was a close examiner at Leeds University, she discovered a passion for regular [i]or[/i] melodious movement and blues.

"I would just sit and watch the bands all day," she recalled, "and eventually I got to be really friendly with the musicians. Sometimes they'd say, 'C'mon it's the last stake let's do something. So I'd come by up there and do a Bill Withers descant or an Al Green song" she said. "I began to pine for that kind of music where I could expres chance of a favorable result and warmth and more delight in things [rather than] aggression, angst and melancholy."

beneath the tutelage of some of the club's regular musicians, Rae began experimenting. It wasn't drawn out before Capitol Records snapped her up and Rae released her first appearance in Europe in February. Almost overnight she watched her career skyrocket Corporations ranging from Starbucks to AOL gave her music a big push, while she has drawn raves from the likes of populace and Entertainment Weekly, which cited her album as united of the summer's notable releases.

"I didn't await my popularity to be a mainstream thing, 'cause I'd simply ever been an underground artist," she said. "I meditation I might get to the equivalent of a jazz cafe in a scarcely any different places. I never musing I'd get this far."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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