Soul from the heart

Nikka Costa now stresses the simple over the serious

Nikka Costa says that recording her latest album, ''Pebble to a Pearl,'' live-to-tape in two weeks ''gives a life to the songs that isn't there when you do track by track by track.''

"I've gone from Frank Sinatra to Amy Winehouse," says Nikka Costa with a laugh.

The diminutive soul singer is talking about the names that have dominated discussions of her always-on-the-verge musical career.

In 2001, when Costa released "Everybody Got Their Something," there was lots of chatter about the fact that the Chairman of the Board had been her godfather. Costa's late father Don was Sinatra's arranger and worked with other big names like Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett.

Seven years later, Costa has a devoted fan base thanks to her vibrant performances, but never quite fulfilled predictions of becoming the next big thing. Now it's the blue-eyed soul sisters like Winehouse who work similar territory. So as she promotes the just-released disc "Pebble to a Pearl," Costa finds herself answering questions about her British counterparts.

Instead of rancor, she accentuates the positive.

"I'm glad that those girls have had success because it's proof that the ears of audiences and even radio and the industry are open to what I've been doing all along," Costa says by phone from a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., tour stop. "It just makes me more hopeful that I won't be this weird outsider."

For a minute she adopts a business-like male voice: "Well she's never going to get on the radio because nobody listens to this kind of music. It's like, hang on a minute, there have been some artists recently that have really broken into the mainstream. People do enjoy this kind of music. But I certainly am not trying to ride on any coattails."

In many ways, Costa was ahead of the curve with the decidedly vintage sounds of "Everybody" and its funky 2005 follow-up "Can'tneverdidnothing."

"Pebble" treads a similar path musically, but with a few notable twists. First, it was recorded in true throwback style, live-to-tape in two weeks.

"What that way of recording does is it gives a life to the songs that isn't there when you do track by track by track and you just build on a thing," says Costa of her band, which included husband/producer Justin Stanley, and such stalwart soul cats as drummer James Gadson (Stevie Wonder, Al Green) and guitarist Chris Bruce (George Clinton, Bettye LaVette).

"The songs that have stood the test of time were all recorded in this way - like 'Let's get in a room and knock it out.' "

Costa points out that on her album - as on classic albums like Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" - there are mistakes that come from recording live. "There's a human element," she says. "Not everything is perfected and computerized, and I think that it leaves you with a warmer feeling."

The other wrinkle was the liberation of Costa's own mind. Battle-scarred from "we don't hear a single" tussles with her previous label, Costa reached the hard-won epiphany that it's impossible to please everyone and decided to simply please herself.

Hence, "Pebble" is lighter in places. She slips effortlessly into girl-group playfulness on opener "Stuck to You" and lets humor seep through the grooves much more. The breezy reggae number "Damn I Said It First" comically takes on the "oops" moment of saying "I love you" a little too early. Musically, "Love to Love You Less" is a classic rainy-day blues, but Costa peppers the tune with laughs as she laments not only loving the wrong man but tattooing his name on your body.

"It was really just about being simple and not trying to be this serious artist in every single way, in every single moment of every single song," she says. "You can labor over songs for weeks and months. 'Oh is that word right? Is that rhyme right? Is that beat right?' Ah, just go for the feeling."

Now that she's gone where she wanted to go, Costa refuses to indulge in too much talk about how she was a precursor to Winehouse and the others.

"You know what? We're all copping from somebody," she says matter of factly. "There was a million people before me, there was a million people before them."

Some of her forerunners recorded for Stax Records, including Costa heroes like Otis Redding, who is name-checked in "Stuck to You." After completing the album Costa found herself in the enviable position of being courted by the legendary label, which relaunched last year.

"The record she made was really aurally and philosophically in keeping with that roots-funk Stax tradition," says Robert Smith, senior vice president of strategic marketing for the Concord Music Group, of which Stax is a part. "She stayed honest to who she is as an artist and fortunately for her and for us I think the coincidence of timing is perfect."

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.