How does a blonde, smiling, barefoot 16-year-old from Devon become the new queen of soul? Jim Carroll on the voice of Joss Stone.
There are a lot of people opening and closing their eyes in disbelief at La Salumeria della Musica. If you have your eyes closed, what you're hearing in this former salami factory in a gritty part of Milan is the sound of solid gold, a vintage female voice which oozes troubled soul of the hurting kind, a well-worn voice which roars into view somewhere between Janis Joplin and Mavis Staples and which is, right now, turning The Drifters' Some Kind of Wonderful on its head.
Open your eyes and the source of that awe-inspiring voice turns out to be a smiling, blonde, barefoot 16-year-old girl who hails from Devon, not Detroit. This is Joss Stone and she's only just begun.
How Stone took the road to becoming "Joss Stone!" is quite a tale, taking in talent shows, Atomic Kitten, the legendary Betty Wright and the Roots via The White Stripes, and the kind of soul masters who really thought they'd seen (and heard) it all. At the end of this journey lies The Soul Sessions, the album she is promoting to suitably impressed members of the Italian media this evening, which is attracting a veritable avalanche of attention. If you haven't experienced Stone soul already, just turn on the radio and wait until the ad break ends. She'll be along in a moment.
The story begins when Stone appeared on the BBC's Star for a Night show. She's not so sure why she actually did it - "I wouldn't go back and do it again," she says dismissively of this TV appearance during a telephone interview a few days before the Milan show - but she won. A jury consisting of two actors from EastEnders and a member of Atomic Kitten deemed her version of a Donna Summer track to be better than some chap's Robbie Williams impersonation.
Management and record company offers flooded in but Stone and her mother, Wendy, put their trust in US independent label S-Curve and its boss, Steve Greenberg. Bizarrely, Greenberg was responsible for both Hanson (toothy mid-1990s teenage weirdos who had a hit with Mmm-Bop) and the Baha Men (they did Who Let the Dogs Out? and are probably still living off the royalties), but he's also the compiler of an award-winning box-set for the Stax soul label.
Greenberg's first action was to introduce his young charge to Betty Wright. A soul star who had had several hits, including Clean-Up Woman, Wright's own singing career began at 13, so she was naturally sympathetic to what Stone was experiencing.
"Every time I tell her about something that has happened," says Stone, "or something that has gone wrong, she's like: 'I know, that happened to me too.' She's amazing."
What happened next was not in the plan. During a four-day recording session in Miami with such seminal soul players as organist Timmy Thomas and guitarist Little Beaver, who had been rounded up by Wright, Stone put her stamp on some classics.
There's Aretha Franklin's All the King's Horses, the Isley Brothers's For the Love of You, and Joe Simon's The Chokin' Kind, among others.
"It was just a side project, it wasn't meant to be my album, it was an idea to introduce my voice rather than my lyrics - and that's why they're covers. It was originally supposed to be five tracks but it ended up as 10 because we got carried away," explains Stone.
The most surprising track is Fell in Love with a Boy, Stone's gender-reversal rewrite of a White Stripes song - and the music gets a major reworking. "When my manager played it to me and Betty, we just laughed. I was like 'mate, I love the song and everything but how can we make this into a soul record?'. But he was going 'no, we'll get the Roots and Angie Stone to do it and it will be really cool'. So we slowed it down, changed the lyrics, just vibed on it, and hey presto."
It's so startling that you have to seek out The White Stripes's Fell in Love with a Girl to assure yourself that Stone's version is a cover, the electric zip of the original transformed into a soulful, funky shaker with her voice pushing the song in all manner of directions. Little wonder that The White Stripes now introduce it at shows as "a Joss Stone song".
When Stone does the track live, it is, like all of her show, incredibly dramatic. While some soul singers yell and shout to get your attention, Stone knows that volume is no match for passion. With her band still a few shows away from total cohesion (but showing signs that they're speaking the same language), Stone has no problems putting on a performance of authority and confidence.
Offstage, she's chatty, bright and friendly, but Stone is no Billie Piper or Charlotte Church. Her current roll may have begun with a TV show yet Stone has the gumption to see where that road usually leads for those who take it.
"I did do that one show but it was a one-song thing. I'd have no interest in doing a whole series or going back every week. You just get known for the show rather than for doing your own thing," she says.
While it may be remarkable that a 16-year-old girl has the musical chops to take on Aretha and the Isley Brothers, Stone sees little wrong with her taste for this kind of soul. Her friends at home, around Ashill in Devon, certainly have no problems with it or where it's taking her.
"They're really happy for me. Quite a lot of them also have musical ambitions, they're very musical. My best friend, Bonnie, she's the indie one, and there are other friends into old-school hip-hop and old-school soul," she says. "Where I live, there are no specific musical trends you follow - you like what you like and everybody likes something completely different. I'm sure none of them would be keen on that Pop Idol route."
One thing she has become used to is the company of older folk. This is obvious in the way she talks (she mentions "artist development" at one stage) but she is taking it in her stride.
"I do find it hard sometimes not having people my own age around but I've got used to it," she says. "They're all really sweet and I'm very fond of all them. If I didn't get on with them, I know it would be a pain in the arse. And I do tend to get my own way . . . "
There's no doubt Stone has quickly become a pro at dealing with the media and the music business. She charms the Italian journalists at a chaotic post-gig press conference by happily answering the same questions she'll probably have to answer for a long time to come.
Besides being on the promotion roller-coaster, Stone has to find time to finish her next album, the one which should have been her début. She has co-written songs for it with various people (including Desmond Child, Paul Weller, Betty Wright and producer Mike Mangini) but the timing of its release will naturally depend on how Soul Sessions fares.
In the midst of all this, one thing Stone is looking forward to is her Glastonbury appearance in June.
"I've never gone, but I've always had this vision of it," she explains, her fast speaking voice finding a new gear. "Some of my friends have been but I've never had the chance to go. The best thing, though, is that the first time I go, I'll get to play. That's crazy. I can't wait, you see I'm really just a hippy-chick at heart."
The Soul Sessions is on S-Curve/EMI