A jazz student from Texas whose debut sold twenty-seven million

Geethali Norah Jones Shankar was born in Manhattan in 1979, the daughter of concert producer Sue Jones and the Indian Bengali musician Ravi Shankar. After her parents separated in 1986 she grew up with her mother in Grapevine, Texas. She sang solos in the local Methodist church, took piano and voice lessons, and at sixteen, with her parents' consent, officially became Norah Jones.

Her heroes were Bill Evans and Billie Holiday. She once recalled picking one disc from her mother's eight-album Holiday set and playing it over and over. At Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas she won Down Beat Student Music Awards, and at the University of North Texas she majored in jazz piano. There she met Jesse Harris, who began sending her lead sheets of his songs.

In 1999 she moved to New York City, and within a year started a band with Harris. She worked as a lounge singer before recording, and Peter Malick has described hearing her sing the Dinah Washington classic "Since I Fell for You" at the Living Room, and being struck breathless. Malick invited her to sessions in South Boston in August and September 2000.

Come Away with Me, released in 2002, blended jazz with country, blues, folk and pop. It was certified diamond, sold more than 27 million copies and earned her five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best New Artist. Her next albums, Feels Like Home, Not Too Late and The Fall, all went platinum.

By 2023 she had sold over 53 million albums worldwide and collected ten Grammys. She also appeared in Wong Kar-Wai's film My Blueberry Nights in 2007. A music built on restraint, it turned out, could reach an audience far larger than anyone planned for.