Stylish and beguiling describes French-American singer/songwriter and guitarist Madeleine Peyroux. She’s at times reminiscent of Billie Holiday, a primary influence but she covers a wider repertoire that blends jazz, acoustic blues, country ballads, torch songs and pop that sounds both classic and contemporary. Her bittersweet, brokenhearted alto shines on tunes by Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, and Joni Mitchell. She has also written some indelible, soul-baring songs of her own. Her new CD, Standing on The Rooftop, is another brilliant album to what is already a notable and brilliant career. Songstress Madeleine Peyroux is known to her fans for intimately arranged covers of the early American blues and jazz repertoire. She began as a teenage busker, honing her vocal and guitar skills on the famously quaint, acoustic streets of Europe, where she molded her style on the cornerstones of jazz: Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Amidst an oddly sparse recording career beginning in 1996, she is most known for her 2005 release Careless Love (Rounder Records), produced by Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock) who fused Peyroux's personal and vulnerable take on more modern material, i.e., Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, cult legend Elliott Smith, with that of her beloved torch songs and early blues.
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