Norah Jones with the Charlie Hunter Quartet - Day Is Done - Non-Album Tracks (2001)

I'm very proud of this album, because I feel I've put together an album that could have sold very well, and yet nothing like this has been even bootlegged yet.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a bootleg of a Charlie Hunter Quartet concert from 2001, with Norah Jones sitting in to sing a couple of songs. I already had two songs from a 2001 Charlie Hunter Quartet album with Jones singing, and they were different songs. So I wondered if I could scrape up enough songs to put a whole album together.

It turns out Jones never really sang extensively with the Quarter, but in late 2001 she did show up at a number of their concerts to have a guest spot in which she sang a couple of songs each time. Luckily, it turns out that she sang a variety of songs. Even more luckily, I was able to find soundboard bootleg recordings in nearly every case. (One song comes from an obscure officially released live compilation album, and another is from an in-person radio station appearance.)

Thus, it turns out there's enough material for an entire album of Jones singing with the Charlie Hunter Quartet. At the time, Jones was a "nobody," though with great potential. Given that, only a few months later, she would release her first solo album and it would go on to sell 30 million copies (!), I'm sure the Charlie Hunter Quartet were kicking themselves that they didn't record a full album with her. Finally, after all these years, here it is.

I'm sure that if this had been released at the time, it would have sold at least a million copies from the Norah Jones name alone. But the good news we don't just have to lean on her name, because the music is excellent. This is more of a collaborative effort than most of Jones' stuff, with lots of talented jazzy soloing.

And what's really nice is that almost all the songs have never been done by Jones before or since. The songs "Day Is Done" and "More than This" (covers of Nick Drake and Roxy Music respectively) are the two songs that were officially released on a 2001 Charlie Hunter Quartet album.

"Tennessee Waltz" has been played live by Jones sometimes in her solo career, but it's never been officially released (unless one counts its appearance on a "Live in New Orleans" DVD).

So that leaves just "Turn Me On," which was included on "Come Away with Me," that 2002 album of hers that sold 30 million copies. If you don't want the duplication of that song, I've put it at the end so you can remove that and you'll still have a 35-minute long album.

I'm not sure who wrote "Old Country." "Close Your Eyes" appears on the 2001 Charlie Hunter Quartet album that Jones guested on, but it's sung by someone else there. "Love Having You Around" is a cover of a Stevie Wonder song. The Quartet apparently have never put it on an album. "It Makes No Difference Now" is an old country song that was also recorded by Ray Charles, and the Quartet apparently never released their version of that either.

It's a shame that no album like this was ever released, because the songs here are all good, and most of the songs generally have been "lost" even for Jones and/or Charlie Hunter fans.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Day Is Done (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
02 Old Country (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
03 Close Your Eyes (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
04 More than This (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
05 Tennessee Waltz (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
06 Love Having You Around (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
07 It Makes No Difference Now (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)
08 Turn Me On (Charlie Hunter Quartet with Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848603/NorahJ_2001_DyIsDone_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art, but I don't know what year the photo is from. Based on her haircut though, I'm guessing it's from very early in her career.