Long before Diana Krall was a jazz superstar, accompanying herself on piano for Nat King Cole, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin cover songs that’ve sold millions of copies, she was a kid listening to the radio in the ’70s. She bought Elton John and Linda Ronstadt records with the money she made baby-sitting other musicians’ children in her late teens. Sometimes she played pop hits to live audiences, because jazz didn’t pay the bills.
“I thought, ‘If I’m going to play music that’s popular, I’m going to play music that I like,'” she recalls in a phone interview from Louisville, Ky. “I started making money playing gigs when I was 15, before I could drive. I had to make a living.”
In that context, Krall’s latest album, 2014’s “Wallflower,” full of old pop and rock hits such as the Eagles’ “Desperado,” Jim Croce’s “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” isn’t such a sharp turn away from her background. She and David Foster, the slick producer who helped turn Josh Groban and Michael Buble into stars, first envisioned the concept in late 2013, after Krall played Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit with Tom Waits, Crosby Stills & Nash and others.
“We just decided we wouldn’t try to reinvent pop songs. I said, ‘If I’m going to do pop songs, let’s just not try to make them into jazz songs,'” she says. “It’s not a jazz record.”
Krall used 1983’s “What’s New” and Ronstadt’s other pop-standards collaborations with veteran swing-band arranger Nelson Riddle as a spiritual blueprint for “Wallflower.” She asked Foster to accompany her on piano, so she could focus almost exclusively on singing.
“He put the songs in really difficult keys for me to play as a pianist. I’m a jazz piano player; I’m not a pop piano player,” says Krall, 50. “I felt it was appropriate for me to focus on the singing for a change. It was nice for me not to worry about that.”
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Until “Wallflower,” named for the Bob Dylan song she covers, Krall had stuck to jazz almost exclusively throughout her 20-year recording career. She learned to play piano as a little girl, taking classical lessons at 4 and playing in a jazz band in high school. Her father, a stride pianist, maintained a huge collection of LPs, 78s, 45s and wax cylinders, and she sampled it regularly, learning to play each of his numerous Fats Waller records.
“I grew up in a family of people who played music all the time. My uncle is a record collector as well; they’d go buy the latest records and play them on their lunchtime, then go back to work. Those were the days,” Krall says. “I listened to things in my dad’s collection that I discovered on my own and some things I listened to on the radio. So that’s where it all came from — just radio and vinyl.”
Krall discusses her musical background as a dichotomy: jazz came from her father, pop from the radio. After studying at the Berklee College of Music, then singing and leading combos in Los Angeles, Toronto and New York City, she emphasized her Fats Waller side early on. Jazz record executives realized Krall’s piano talent, matched with her husky voice and cover-girl looks, could make her an unusual kind of pop star. Her first few albums covered Nat King Cole and Christmas standards. She took off with 1999’s multiplatinum, Grammy-winning “When I Look in Your Eyes.”
By phone, Krall is amiable and chatty, and she is adept at steering the conversation to talking points. In almost every interview since “Wallflower” came out, she has emphasized her rich pop background in addition to her better-known jazz career, and she tends to devote several minutes to saluting her live band, including drummer Karriem Riggins and mandolinist Stuart Duncan, for allowing her a “huge repertoire.” Says Krall: “I can do what I want to do. They can play anything. It’s kind of scary.”
Toward the end of the conversation, though, Krall drifts into a more informal mode and talks more warmly and personally. She mentions her father’s death in December and her recovery from pneumonia, which delayed the “Wallflower” release and forced her to cancel a tour.
During that period, she was unable to sing, and she focused on hanging out in her home region, British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, rocker Elvis Costello, and their two 8-year-old boys, who’ve spent this summer fishing.
“I’m working out, and I’m like 100 times better than I was. But, yeah, I’ve never had an experience like that before,” she says. “And that, on top of losing my dad, it’s been a very tough year. … I’m fortunate that I have so many things, musically, that remind me of my father. I find that comforting, and I’m not running away from it.
“But I’m looking forward with joy,” she continues. “You can’t move forward unless you acknowledge the joy and sorrows of life. It sounds grandiose, but it’s really true.”
Steve Knopper is a freelancer.
When: 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Ravinia, Lake-Cook and Green Bay roads, Highland Park
Tickets: $38-$95; 847-266-5100 or www.ravinia.org