Do Ya Think I'm Sixty? Rod Stewart's last Great American Songbook album debuted at No.(Interview)

Byline: Jim Windolf

Earlier this year Rod Stewart vowed his next album of standards would be his last. But as he was putting the finishing touches on Thanks for the Memory ... The Great American Songbook Volume IV, he decided to leave himself some wiggle room, saying, "I would hate not to be able to do another one."

Stewart's first three easygoing collections of songs written by the likes of the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Hoagy Carmichael, and Frank Loesser have all gone multi-platinum; the third volume debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in 2004, giving him his first No. 1 album since Blondes Have More Fun, in 1978. Volume III also won him a Grammy, after 14 hard-luck nominations. "I must admit my kids were more pleased than I was," he says. "I was under the impression I was doing all right without it."

The new album, out this October from Clive Davis's J Records, departs only slightly from the formula, with two rhythm-and-blues classics included among the Tin Pan Alley warhorses. Those songs will ease Stewart's undergarment-tossing fans into what may be his next project. "I think what we're going to do for the next album is The Great American Soul Book," he says. At press time Stewart was awaiting word from a possible duet partner on one of Volume IV's R&B tracks, Sam Cooke's "You Send Me." "It's supposed to have Christina Aguilera on it, but she hasn't done it thus far, so I'm keeping me fingers crossed," Stewart says ...