Singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones has been hard to pin down-- stylistically, geographically and in most other ways--as her fascinating memoir, Last Chance Texaco, makes clear. While Time Magazine dubbed Rickie the “Duchess of Coolsville” this is a woman who has stormed through a life of challenges that would have felled most people, making her cool mien even more impressive.

While Rickie has always thought of herself as a jazz singer—and was voted best jazz singer in Playboy and Rolling Stone polls two years in a row—she has not always been embraced by the jazz community. And while some of her past CDs have included jazz, her latest, Pieces of Treasure, is her first focusing completely on jazz as she celebrates some of her favorite standards from the Great American Songbook.