She's got that right.
Pennies in a Jar (***½), released last month on S-Curve Records, is more than impressive on its musical merits. It offers a familiar-but-fresh take on the pop stylings of the '60s and '70s, from the Motown bop of "My Love" (written with Lamont Dozier) to the hummable girl-group plea "What's a Girl Supposed to Do" (with Jeff Barry) to the silky "How to Unring a Bell" (with Philly soul architect Thom Bell).
The aforementioned heavyweights are all one-song-apiece collaborators on the album by the sweet-voiced piano player, who was born Nicholle Jean Harvey and moved to Philadelphia after graduating from Howard University. Pennies also pairs her up with other elder statesman (and -woman) songwriters such as Jimmy Webb, Paul Williams, Carly Simon, Luigi Creatore, and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil.
So how did you hook up with so many luminaries for your debut album, Nikki Jean?
"I think the idea was just so crazy that nobody ever had it before," says Jean, 27, taking a seat at the Prohibition Taproom in the loft district after coolly posing for photos on a sweltering afternoon while singing songs from Singin' in the Rain and twirling around à la Gene Kelly.
The idea, as she explained it to her producer, Sam Hollander, was to "make the new Tapestry." That is, Carole King's 1971 mega-selling singer-songwriter standard-bearer.
The plan was to enlist not only King, but a wish list of songwriters who have been her favorites since she saw Irving Berlin's 100th birthday party special on TV when she was 5 years old, in 1988.
"Heaven, I'm in heaven," Jean coos, channeling Ella Fitzgerald on Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" and flashing a radiant smile at the memory of the crush that she, the daughter of a black father who worked for government aid agencies and a white labor-lawyer mother, held for a Russian Jewish immigrant a mere 95 years her senior.
