POP MUSIC REVIEW : Charming Jazz or Is Jones Just Kidding Around? : *** RICKIE LEE JONES “Pop Pop” <i> Geffen</i>

Taking her cue from Peter Pan, Rickie Lee Jones gives her typically half-bohemian, half-childlike treatment to “I Won’t Grow Up,” one of a dozen selections on this thoroughly charming album of mostly acoustic, mostly standard songs. The obvious irony is that Jones is casting her de facto lot with a plethora of modern songstresses, from Ronstadt to Cole, who’ve earned their grown-up stripes by momentarily returning to a presumably classier pre-rock era.

Unlike most such willful grown-ups, though, Jones isn’t going for something so suffocatingly classy, and if you’ve seen her interrupt her infrequent shows to dip into the classics, you know “Pop Pop” isn’t a nostalgic genre exercise or just the fruition of a jazz wanna-be’s frustrations. The emphasis is on the Sammy Fain, Sammy Cahn and Ray Henderson era, but Jones also ekes equal loveliness out of not-so-old hands Jimi Hendrix and even Marty Balin.

Whether this recording--co-produced by Jones and David Was with acoustic guitar, bass and occasional reeds dominant--will catch on with the generation of “Unforgettable” yups, or merely be a cult sen-saysh among the pseudo-continental coffeehouse crowd, remains to be seen. But with Jones’ alternately weepy and teasing pipes providing these tunes a range of playful expressiveness they aren’t usually afforded at the Cinegrill, “Pop Pop” works even better as an album than as a marketing phenomenon.