A rock-paved road to jazz

Jamie CULLUM darts onto the stage for a showcase performance before a celebrity-studded crowd at Hollywood’s Room 5. The bantamweight, spiky-haired English singer-pianist in T-shirt and jeans -- a cross between Michael J. Fox and Leonardo DiCaprio -- electrifies the room. He’s been described in the English press as “Sinatra in sneakers.” But Sinatra would surely never have scrambled under the piano to play percussion on the bottom of the case or climbed onto a piano bench to accent phrases in “I Get a Kick Out of You” by crunching the keyboard with his feet. And he would probably never have sung a tune by Jimi Hendrix.

Cullum, 24, does that, and more, in a set that contrasts the insistent groove rhythms he finds in “I Could Have Danced All Night” with the touching intimacy of “Blame It on My Youth.” He wraps up the evening with another shift, leading his audience in a singalong replete with Charlie Parker bebop licks.

Seated at a table near the stage, an entranced blond twentysomething turns to her friend and says, “Oh my God, isn’t he hot?”

Asked if she’s referring to Cullum’s singing or his persona, she adds, “Oh, his singing is cool. But he’s really hot!”

Cool and hot. A pretty good description of Cullum’s appeal, at least in Britain, where his album “Twentysomething” -- a coolly swinging jazz framework surrounding a hot performing persona -- first reached the jazz audience, and has since crossed onto the pop charts. As of this writing, the album -- more than five months after its release -- is still in the U.K. Top 10 pop listings and has sold over 800,000 copies. It will be released in the U.S. on May 11.

Even without an album to create momentum in this country, Cullum has generated a growing buzz, partly via CD imports, but largely through a series of showcases in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In each case, favorable reviews emphasized his charismatic appeal, his eclectic song choices and his remarkable capacity for using jazz to reach audiences across the generations.

Musical education in reverse

The day before his appearance at Room 5, Cullum is in a studio at the Capitol Records building, wrapping up a final track for the new album. And he’s well aware that he’s found his way into the inner sanctum in which Sinatra recorded many of his classic albums.

“I love Sinatra,” says Cullum. “There’s no doubt about it. But I found out about him through listening to Stevie Wonder and Donnie Hathaway. I don’t consider myself a crooner.”

Not by a longshot. Cullum does not fit into the Peter Cincotti/Michael Buble post-Sinatra genre. More likely references for Cullum’s style, with its warm but edgy sound and its jazz-based phrasing, might be Harry Connick Jr., with traces of Billy Joel, Mark Murphy and Leon Russell. But Cullum’s point is well taken -- his musical education has, in effect, taken place in reverse, from the present to the past.

“I was very much a kid of my age when I was growing up in Wiltshire [west of London],” he says. “My brother Ben and I were listening to a lot of older rock -- Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But also Rage Against the Machine, the Seattle grunge bands and a lot of hip-hop. And we listened to a lot of pop music, as well -- English bands like Level 42 and the Housemartins, then dance music, drum and bass.”

All that began to change when Cullum began to “get into the sound of Fender Rhodes electric piano” on a Connick album, which led him to Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way” and Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters.”

“That was it,” he says. “Jazz began filtering into my existence. I started working backward, back to the beboppers and even further back. My early favorites were Monk and Herbie Hancock, then Erroll Garner and Bud Powell, then Art Tatum. From there, I turned around again, this time to more modern pianists -- Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau, some of the freer players like Paul Bley, and then Bill Evans.”

At this point, Cullum’s desire to be a rock guitarist (“because the girls at school all liked it”) was redirected to his original childhood instrument, the piano.

“I did my first jazz kind of gig -- three or four songs, solo, just playing piano -- when I was about 16 or 17,” he recalls. “It went down so well that they said, ‘Oh, do another song.’ But I didn’t know any other songs on the piano to play, so I had to sing a couple of tunes.”

A year later Cullum’s first album was released -- a self-produced, self-financed CD titled “Heard It All Before” that has become a collector’s item.

“When it shows up on EBay,” he notes with a wry laugh, “a single CD is going for more than it cost me to make all 500 of the original copies.”

Cullum’s next album, “Pointless Nostalgic” (on the veteran jazz label, Candid) stirred up enough attention to generate a signing with Universal. With the October 2003 release of “Twentysomething” in Britain, he was on his way.

The Jones factor

Every new young act that has arrived in the past year or so -- especially those with jazz aspects -- has had to deal with Norah Jones comparisons. Cullum is no exception, and the resonance between the two is beginning to ring some bells. Despite their considerable differences in style, the similarities -- their engaging voices, their intuitive understanding of jazz swing, their capacity to reach audiences both young and old -- are worth keeping in mind as Cullum’s career unfolds.

Mention such exalted thoughts to Cullum, however, and he simply shrugs, refusing to be locked into anyone’s career game plan.

“I’m still changing, every day,” he says. “I’m still finding out about things all the time. People say, ‘What are your five favorite albums?’ And I say, ‘Well they were that yesterday and they’re this today.’ And surely I should be afforded that level of immaturity, if only because I’m 24 years old.

“I mean, look, I’m not a change-the-world kind of guy. I’m not relying on trying to sound like Mark Murphy or Bud Powell. I’m trying to integrate the whole thing, to make it sound more like me. And I love it when I see our gigs filled with people under the age of 20 who are cheering bass solos and asking about Miles Davis and Cole Porter, and older audiences who are asking who Radiohead are.”

Cullum pauses, takes another look around the storied Capitol studio and adds, “To have the chance to be here, working in a place like this, is amazing. So I’m going to enjoy it, make the most of it, whatever it is. And if I make a lot of money too, I won’t buy an expensive sports car. I’ll build a studio and invite Stevie Wonder around to jam with me.”