Corinne Bailey Rae, the singer they're calling the new Billie Holiday, talks to Dave Simpson
Several weeks ago, Corinne Bailey Rae was filming a slot for BBC2's Later With Jools Holland when she was suddenly offered a handshake. She smiled, gingerly, took the hand and then clammed up.
"He was like 'hi, it's nice to meet you', and I just froze," she says, miming shaking a hand with eyes closed in terror. "He said: 'You sounded really good, fabulous.' And I was speechless, just squeaking! Afterwards I thought, God, I should have said something. But what do you say to Burt Bacharach? I mean, he's going to have heard it all before. At the end Jools came up to me and was going 'Burt likes you, Burt likes you!'."
As a writer for Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin, Bacharach should know a great vocal when he hears one, but he's not alone in getting excited about Bailey Rae. Since appearing on Later a fortnight ago, her Like a Star single has exploded on to the radio. It was originally intended as a low-key release, although such is the clamour that she's now being talked about as a major discovery for 2006. The industry is never slow to push potential moneyspinners, but it's less common that industry voices form a chorus with ordinary people.
Ever since Holland introduced "a voice so fabulous that after I hear this I will melt", the Later website has been besieged by people wanting to know more about this mysterious talent who addresses a microphone as if she's talking to a friend.
"She's such a natural singer," says Alison Howe, Later's series producer, who took the almost unprecedented step of booking Bailey Rae for the programme before she'd even released a single. "Most singers think about what they're singing. She just opens her mouth and that voice comes out."
That voice is already attracting comparisons to Billie Holiday, although Bailey Rae sounds less world-weary, is not American and is not battling with a heroin habit. In fact, while some have suggested her voice could hail from the Mississippi Delta, she grew up near the River Aire, a grubby waterway that runs through her home town of Leeds.
Sitting in her favourite cafe in Hyde Park (that's Hyde Park, Leeds 6, not London), Bailey Rae's speaking voice is that of a giddy Yorkshire lass. She squeals as she recounts hearing herself on the radio for the first time.
"Trevor Nelson played the new Pharrell single and then me!" she says. "I just went 'aieeeeee!' "
BUT IT WOULD be wrong to think of her as some naive, uncultured, starstruck girl. She is 26, has a degree in English literature, has been married for four years and her "overnight sensation" belies years of work. When she appeared on Later, she had a certain smile.
"I know exactly the smile you mean," agrees Alison Howe. "When the camera zooms in and she just looks at it out of the corner of her eye, as if to say 'oh, you've found me'."
Bailey Rae has spent half her life in Hyde Park, moving there from the only marginally more prosperous Moortown. The daughter of a West Indian father and a Yorkshire mother, she's "always been skint". The family rarely owned things like televisions, and holidays were limited to "church holidays, camping a few miles away".
She played violin at school, but the first time she sang was in church, "a Brethren church, kinda like Puritans".
"It was totally sexist," she says. "The men got to do whatever. The women wore a lot of hats. We'd sit in silence. I don't think they actually believed in music. We'd sing a cappella hymns, but because there were no instruments we'd create these amazing harmonies. It was a brilliant sound."
In her teens, a youth leader gave her an electric guitar and introduced her to Radiohead and Led Zeppelin. Soon she discovered bands such as L7 and Veruca Salt, who offered escape from the patriarchal church environment.
"It was the first time I'd seen women with guitars," she says. "They were kinda sexy, but feminist. I wanted to be like that, at the front of something."
Forming the sweetly named if not sweet-sounding band, Helen, she raised eyebrows. "There weren't many mostly-girl bands with a black girl singer," she says. She put everything into the band ("We were such friends. It was like taking off in a spaceship with all my favourite people") and quit university when it was offered a deal by Roadrunner, usually a label for extreme metal.
"We were to be their first indie signing," she says. But then the bass player got pregnant with "this one guy that she'd been friends with, slept with him once! We thought, well, rock'n'roll, she can be onstage with her little bump. We told the guy who was setting up the deal, he said he'd call us back."
Instead, they called him, and kept on calling, until it dawned that the deal had fallen through.
Devastated, Bailey Rae returned to university and finished her degree. She took a series of odd jobs that were actually evidence of her undimmed musical ambition.
"I didn't want anything that would pin me down," she says.
One of her jobs was as cloakroom attendant in a soul club, and when it got quiet she was allowed to sing.
"I kept hearing this jazz and soul stuff and I realised I loved that music too," she says. Gradually, blending soul with a hint of indie (her current likes include Bloc Party and the Magic Numbers), Bailey Rae found her voice.
"Because of my background, I never felt comfortable with these r&b divas, but I'd hate to be just some pensive girl with a guitar. Because I'm the oldest, I've always had to be stronger, not showing that anything bothers me. Letting my guard down, trusting that someone will look after me . . . I've found that hard to do."
IN SONGS, SHE'S finding the means to step from behind her protective shell. There is a lot of buried hurt. Her parents divorced when she was 14.
"I don't remember them ever being happy. When they got divorced I was relieved because it took the tension out of the house. They think you don't notice things, you know, because you're children. But you do."
Her songs document "real life - just because you love someone doesn't mean everything's happy-happy".
Those songs have enabled Bailey Rae and her husband, a saxophonist, to put down a deposit on their first house after four years of marriage. But as she takes the latest steps to what may well end up as superstardom, Bailey Rae is adamant that she won't change.
"I was Corinne Bailey," she says. "I added on Rae, my husband's name, when I got married." She erupts with laughter. "There's no hyphen. Stops it being posh!" - (Guardian service)
The EP Like a Star is on EMI