Sound check: Jamie Cullum joins the super buskers

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Covent Garden's street entertainers will have to move their flaming unicycles to one side over the next couple of weeks — the professionals are taking over. Superbusking, a name seemingly designed to spark inferiority complexes in jugglers, will see musicians including Gabriella Cilmi, Athlete and Jamie Cullum taking over the piazza to play impromptu gigs in aid of homelessness charity Crisis.

Back to basics: Jamie Cullum has been busking

Further bands and showtimes will only be announced at late notice on the Covent Garden website but I can reveal that Wednesday 9 December will be the day to do your Christmas shopping if you fancy hearing some smooth jazz-pop by a man who looks about two decades younger than his 30 years.

Twentysomething, the album that in 2003 made Jamie Cullum the UK's biggest selling jazz artist ever, now seems a long way off. But even further in the past are his days as a proper busker, strumming guitar on street corners in Paris, Florence, Barcelona and Moscow.

“A good busker needs skin like a rhinoceros,” he tells me. “One person might be interested for every thousand that walk past you. Oasis songs always seem to go down well. You'll earn eight pence extra if you play Wonderwall.”

Cullum's ability on the piano eventually allowed him to graduate from the street — he paid his way through an English literature degree at Reading University by tinkling the ivories in Berkshire hotel bars and it was this early experience that gave him a depth of ability to earn respect in the jazz world before he was ever on television.

Jazz purists may bemoan his enthusiasm for pop but they can't deny that the boy can really play.
His genre-straddling has seen him tagged as a crossover artist (“that word makes me wince,” he says, “it usually applies to terrible music”) but it's easy to see how he can confuse his listeners. His latest album, The Pursuit, released by Decca earlier this month, is all over the shop, including covers of Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and R&B vixen Rihanna, as well as originals that veer from Keane-style piano-led rock to electronic dance music.

“I'm trying to move things on,” he says. “I wanted to embrace the breadth of influences I've got and try to do them all justice. It's boring just to do what you've done before.”

The Pursuit has yet to produce a hit, though the Louis Prima-esque swing of You and Me are Gone or his blissful piano ballad Wheels sound more than capable of mass appeal. He's still considered a safe musician, the go-to guy for a prime time collaboration. In the past month he's played the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance and a Carpenters special on ITV1, performing Rainy Days and Mondays as a duet with Kimberley Walsh from Girls Aloud. But then he'll surprise by revealing that he only got into the duo through the 1994 compilation If I Were a Carpenter, a collection of cool covers by indie bands such as Sonic Youth.

“I'm a music geek. I take a perverse pleasure in talking about [obscure Danish electronica producer] Trentemøller to Good Housekeeping magazine.”

What about those who think this dextrous jazzer is holding back from what he can really do musicially? “I don't think I consciously hold back. I do appreciate music that's pretty melodic, so that's often a starting point.”

And it's the best tunes that will make the most money when he passes the hat for Crisis in Covent Garden. But I wouldn't put it past this consummate crowd pleaser to try a bit of juggling, too.

Superbusking for Crisis, Covent Garden market, 1-12 December. www.coventgardenlondonuk.com
Jamie Cullum plays 16-23 May 2010, London Palladium, W1 (0870 895 5505; www.london-palladium.co.uk).

I have to admit Boyle's got talent
Sunday's album chart will install Susan Boyle in the number one spot, by all indications through Christmas and beyond. I Dreamed a Dream (Syco) sold a ludicrous 130,000 copies on its first day of release, suggesting that cat-owning, Lloyd Webber-loving spinsters such as Boyle herself are but a fraction of the vast potential audience for the Britain's Got Talent runner-up.

Your intrepid reporter has been spending time with the album this week, suicide pill within easy reach. I was amazed to discover that it's nowhere near as cosy and Titchmarshy as I was expecting. Boyle's voice is higher and sweeter than I remembered from her lung-busting first television sighting, and it stays restrained and tasteful throughout. Approach her gospel-tinged version of Patty Griffin's Up to the Mountain as for a blind tasting and you'd never know Simon Cowell was responsible for something that is more Deep South soul than Songs of Praise.

Even the crashingly obvious (Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, Silent Night) is handled delicately. Despite the early signs, it looks like this isn't merely another case of the British public's embarrassing hunger for what it perceives to be novelty (unattractive people who can sing, twins who can't, etc). When your granny plays it on Christmas Day, you won't need to join the turkey in the oven. It's when the Jedward album arrives that the real gnashing of teeth will begin.

New on the net
As they get ready to play two nights at Brixton Academy next week, art-rock trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs release a special iTunes Originals album in the iTunes store on Sunday. Joining previous participants such as Jack Johnson, REM and Sting, they'll talk about their inspirations and perform acoustic versions of their best-known songs.
 
Texan rock band Spoon have been going for 15 years now but only managed a real US breakthrough with their last album. Their seventh long-player, due in January, might just achieve something similar over here. The first taster, their comeback single Written in Reverse, is in download stores from next week.
 
This week's supergroup is Apparatjik, consisting of Coldplay's Guy Berryman, Magne Furuholmen of A-ha and Jonas Bjerre from Mew.
First heard on Bruce Parry's BBC TV show Amazon, the band are
now releasing a proper single, Electric Eye, through http://apparatjik.com on Monday.

 

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