Madeleine Peyroux is an American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris. A native of Athens, Georgia, Peyroux grew up in New York and California. In interviews, she has called her parents “hippies” and “eccentric educators” who helped her pursue a career in music. As a child, she listened to her father’s old records and learned to play her mother’s ukulele.
When she was thirteen, Peyroux’s parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to Paris. Two years later she began singing with street musicians in the Latin Quarter. She joined a vintage jazz group called the Riverboat Shufflers, then The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, with whom she toured Europe.
Peyroux was discovered by a talent agent from Atlantic Records, which released her debut album, Dreamland (1996). She recorded cover versions of songs from the 1930s and ’40s with a group of seasoned musicians: James Carter, Cyrus Chestnut, Leon Parker, Vernon Reid, and Marc Ribot. A year later she covered the song “Life is Fine” for a Rainer Ptacek tribute album.
In 2004 she released the EP Got You on My Mind with William Galison. Her second full-length album, Careless Love, was released by Rounder Records and produced by Larry Klein. Careless Love was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America after having sold half a million copies. It included songs by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, and Leonard Cohen. Klein produced her next album, Half the Perfect World, which was recorded with Jesse Harris, k.d.lang, and Walter Becker. Half the Perfect World reached No. 33 on the Billboard magazine Top 200 albums chart.
Klein and Becker returned to work with Peyroux on her album Bare Bones (Rounder, 2009). She wrote all the songs on the album, co-writing some with Klein and Becker and Julian Coryell. Two years later, Standing on the Rooftop was released by Decca Records, produced by Craig Street. In 2006, she performed a live session at Abbey Road Studios in England which was released on the album Live from Abbey Road. During the next year she won Best International Jazz Artist at the BBC Jazz Awards.
