New York ? When Norah Jones was 11, her mother took her to a big-band jazz concert at the University of North Texas campus near their home. The college boys were cute, but Jones was transfixed by the one woman on stage.

“She had this blond ponytail and she looked so cool up there with all those guys,” Jones recalled. “The music was really cool and it just seemed like an interesting world.”

Singer Norah Jones performs during Music Talks 2002 at the Akasaka Act Theatre in Tokyo. Jones' debut album, Come

Barely a dozen years later, Jones is the cool one.

She was drawn into that interesting world, and her debut disc, “Come Away With Me,” is attracting attention for its self-assured, sultry pop. She sounds a little like fellow Southerner Shelby Lynne if Lynne were aiming to please a jazz audience.

With little radio airplay but some rapturous reviews, her disc has sold more than 160,000 copies and made Billboard’s Top 40 albums, unusual for a release on the jazz-oriented Blue Note label.

“There’s been so much overproduced junk out there for so long that when something like this comes out that’s very pure, very direct and with a voice that will break your heart, people react to it,” said Bruce Lundvall, Blue Note’s president.

Captivating a producer

Jones listened to Bon Jovi and Nirvana growing up. But thanks to her mom’s extensive music collection, she was also exposed to Billie Holliday, Etta James, Ray Charles and Bill Evans.

“Music came naturally to me,” she said. “I knew that just from being in music classes my whole life; I would just sort of get it the first or second time. I’ve been very lucky.”

Jones started singing publicly at age 16 in the Dallas area, and studied jazz piano for two years at North Texas.

She always wanted to make it in New York City, however, and headed north after her sophomore year. Jones waitressed and took whatever gigs she could find, earning $10 an hour to sing over chattering patrons in dreary bars.

Armed with a three-song tape of her work, Jones made a contact with a Blue Note accountant who set up an appointment with Lundvall.

The story has become instant legend at Blue Note. Lundvall was wearily expecting another Diana Krall sound-alike, but was blown away by what he heard. After blurting out one question, asking Jones where she was from, “I said, ‘You’re going to be signed to Blue Note Records.”‘

Only once before, for singer Rachelle Ferrell a decade earlier, had he offered a contract to someone on the spot.

“I was just totally captivated by the voice,” he recalled. “It just drew you right in. My first impression was she didn’t sound like anyone else, she has this wonderfully seductive voice and she plays a great piano.”

Country-inspired jazz

Jones set to work recording her debut, but Lundvall rejected the first attempt. The music sounded too cluttered, and emphasized the guitar instead of Jones’ voice.

He sent Jones back into the studio, this time with veteran producer Arif Mardin. The result was a disc that left more room for the music to breathe, emphasizing the piano with a few other instrumental touches.

Meanwhile, Jones was moving beyond jazz in the music she and her band were writing and performing. Jazz inflections remained a part of her work, but it’s safe to assume few Blue Note artists ever cut a cover of Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart.”

“I started putting my own songs in and my songs didn’t sound like jazz songs,” she said. “They sounded like country songs.”

That was her Texas upbringing talking. Jones said label executives, thinking they had signed a jazz artist, were taken aback by her change in direction. Lundvall said it was the production of her first recordings, not the music itself, that he objected to.

While jazz purists might debate her change in direction, most listeners haven’t seemed to mind.

“It was really natural,” Jones said, “a really sort of organic evolution and that’s what makes the record good. I think my record is pretty innocent because I know the process we went through to make it … It was not calculated at all, because I had no idea what I was doing.”

She’s still comfortable with Blue Note because it insulates her from a pop music world she wants no part of.

“You don’t ever have to sell a million records to be successful in their book,” she said. “Sell 50,000 and you can make another record. They allowed me to have a nice, mellow record that doesn’t sound like a pop record.”

Feeling the pressure

Jones’ initial success has brought some unwanted attention to her family background. Her father is the Indian musician Ravi Shankar.

Jones spent 10 years having no contact with Shankar, but the two have made peace. Shankar has even recently seen his daughter perform.

“We sort of reconnected before all this happened,” she said. “Truth be told, I wouldn’t have wanted him to come see me in a little bar where everyone was talking. I’m over everything, I don’t resent him. I just don’t want him to be the focus of all my press.”

Some of the articles about her work prominent pieces in Time magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, for a start have been more unnerving.

She’s happy for the positive attention, but feels it comes with a certain pressure.

“I’m really young,” the 23-year-old singer said. “It’s my first time out. I was hoping my first time out, people would hear it, but they wouldn’t be watching me. I can make a mistake, and I’ll probably make many. It’s just nerve-wracking.”