Jamie Cullum is telling me that he never dreamt of success on this scale. He is outlining the upcoming tours of the UK, France, the US, Japan, Australia and, oh, pretty much most of the known world, that will accompany the anticipated multimillion sales of his new album. “I honestly, honestly never thought it would pan out like this,” says the 30-year-old singer who, looking tanned and fit, radiates a mix of easy charm and brittle energy. “When I started by financing my own recordings and looking round for gigs my aim was to be as big as, maybe, Ian Shaw,” he says. Shaw, for non-jazz buffs, is a well-regarded British jazz vocalist who has a small but dedicated coterie of fans for his minorlabel releases but is not exactly a threat to U2’s market share.
Instead, Cullum has quantum-jumped out of Britain’s diminutive jazz scene to a world where selling a mere million or so copies of your last album (Catching Tales) is regarded in some quarters as a bit of a flop; a world where you can hang out at Clint Eastwood’s Bel Air home; where you can sell out the Carnegie Hall, no problem, and where you can become engaged to a voluptuous former model.
It is also a world where, less desirably, the press may make stories up about you; where the 6in height difference between you and said ex-model (Sophie Dahl) is catnip to the cattier gossip columnists; and where nosy journalists are wont to ask “When’s the big day?” rather than how the tunes on the new album came about. Shaw does not have to put up with any of this.
Still, Cullum is eager to muscle back into the limelight. In Britain at least, his star has dimmed a little and Catching Tales was four years ago. What’s he been up to? He chuckles. “In England there was this sort of Twentysomething [his 2003 breakthrough album] apocalypse where I splashed on to the scene, making a kind of big mess. It’s been different in other countries, where I have been touring and gradually becoming a success. I had six years on the road, which was fantastic. I enjoyed every second of it.”
Playing the States in the old-fashioned way — comprehensively — after college radio power-played All at Sea, the first single from Twentysomething, Cullum began to think he probably had a job for life. “That was the point I realised that as long as I wasn’t dreaming of being on a Britney Spears level it was looking good.”
Last year he took a break, rented a small house in LA for three months and wrote the tunes for his new record, The Pursuit. But by the time they were delivered to the record company he was told he had missed the all-important Christmas market. Instead the singer was advised to wait until now, which gave him time to rejig the album a little as the company planned a “long lead promo” campaign.
This also offered a break for enjoyable side projects such as singing with Clint Eastwood. Cullum has been a chum of Kyle, Eastwood’s jazz-playing son, for some years. Last year Cullum helped Kyle out with some soundtrack work — the singer took music that Clint had composed for the John Cusack film Grace is Gone and merged it with lyrics by Clint’s neighbour Carol Bayer Sager. The demo Cullum sang on was supposed to go to James Blunt. “Clint got my demo and he was like: ‘Who is this guy? I like his work.’ So we met and we hit it off.”
A short while later Cullum was at the piano in Eastwood’s front room recording the theme to the movie Gran Torino in two takes. He smiles at the memory. “He’s an easy guy to get on with if you’re a music person. He showed me his private collection of Monterey Festival live jazz recordings and played me his two favourites — both Sonny Rollins solos that lasted 15 minutes, ones that aren’t commercially available. That’s the level of music he’s into.”
The song Gran Torino was nominated for a Golden Globe. Bruce Springsteen eventually won for the theme to the Mickey Rourke film The Wrestler, but Cullum points out that millions more Americans will now be aware of him.
The break from the road also gave Cullum more time with his fiancée. The granddaughter of Roald Dahl and the woman formerly known as “Britain’s largest model”, Sophie is now embarking on a career as a cookery expert. Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights came out in spring and she is filming a cookery programme for the BBC. They will get married “some time next year”, Cullum says with deliberate vagueness, faintly exasperated at my inquiry.
There is no prospect of Cullum becoming half of a celebrity couple. Dahl has her place in London but stays in his house in non-celeb Kensal Green (we meet at a nearby pub, which the management seem to have kindly opened up just for us at 10.30am). “I don’t really embrace that party lifestyle,” Cullum says. “The one thing we did lately was the Fantastic Mr Fox premiere — for obvious reasons.” The movie is based on Roald Dahl’s book.
“When I was single I would go to all the parties and they were brilliant fun, but you swiftly realise that a party with your friends is much better — and a party without photographers . . .”
Ah yes, the paparazzi. Being with Dahl has led him into a tabloid world that she may be used to after her Opium poster, the dalliance with Mick Jagger, but he is not. How does he feel when pictures come with comments about their height difference? Is it a case of: “What’s your problem?”
Cullum looks wanly into the middle distance. “No, I get it. I just don’t have any interest in engaging in it. My life is defined in many ways that I’m perfectly happy with — but that’s my business. The only thing I’ve really gone on record to say is that it sends out a slightly odd message by proclaiming that it’s weird in some way.”
He’s a musician; there are other people who are largely interested in being famous who are better equipped for such questions, “the sort of people who come as a package, always having to wear something different”.
Does he have a stylist? He bursts out laughing. “Did you really just ask that question?” He points to his jeans, white T-shirt and comfortable cardie. “Yeah, it takes a team of experts to achieve this look.”
He gamely insists that there is not much tabloid tittle-tattle to tolerate (a story that he leaves love notes in Sophie’s Louboutin heels is apparently nonsense, as is the speculation about wedding venues and dates. It will be a very discreet affair). As for remarks about his stature — he's about 5ft 5in — Cullum isn’t above sending himself up. At a recent Spanish concert he reportedly introduced Twentysomething with: “I know I have the body of a 12-year-old boy, but underneath I have the spirit of a man”.
It’s that ability to engage with an audience that has always marked him out. I know someone who went on a jazz summer school near Montpellier six years ago. Cullum had attended a previous school. The tutors recalled him as a decent pianist, but what stood out was his gift for performing, for galvanising a room. Cullum tells me proudly how his trio won over a hairy Belgian festival crowd that had just moshed through Queens of the Stone Age. “You don’t try to react to what you think they might want. You don’t play harder or softer. You just do what you set out to do. ”
It’s not immediately apparent where this urge to perform comes from (Jewish-Burmese parentage, comfortable upbringing in Wiltshire, English literature and film studies at Reading) but it was apparent in the earliest pub gigs — a stark contrast to the shoegazing of too many minor jazz shows. It means that he’s happy playing to 150, as he did in Paris the other week, or 30,000 at a show in the Czech Republic.
The principal hopes for the new album are pinned on the lead single, the breezy pop of I’m All Over It. The record also contains his first “non-ironic” love song, Love Ain’t Gonna Let You Down, inspired by Dahl. The jokey ballad I Think, I Love contains the line “I think I love every single little crack on your face”, which could surely inspire a smack from a 31-year-old woman — but this, Cullum has assured other interviewers, is about a purely fictitious persona. There are some inspired covers — Sondheim’s Not While I’m Around, for example — and a trip-hop take on Harry Secombe’s If I Ruled the World is an unlikely success. It all amounts to Cullum’s most convincing record to date, on which he’s worked out how best to marry his jazz swing with pop grooves.
Not everyone will love it. For the NME crowd he’s just too chipper, too eager to please. Cullum himself thinks the purist jazzers are a lost cause, even though he admires his peers such as Nathaniel Facey and Gwilym Simcock who pursue the path of jazz righteousness. “Making a perfect little pop record is the way it works for me,” he says. It’s time for him to leave. “I’m on the promo treadmill,” he grins. “Showcases, being on telly, smiling and playing the single.” You sense he doesn’t mind a bit.
There is no clear career route for a young jazz cat with designs on pop glory. In Britain Georgie Fame was probably the last to succeed. But Cullum is having fun finding his own road.
The Pursuit is out on Decca on Nov 9
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