Jubilant Sykes. (Sound Bites).(Biography)

Jubilant Sykes is his real name. His mother always told him that she'd like him to grow into it. But a couple of years ago, an aunt told him the real story: when he was born, by C-section, the doctor found something wrong, "an abnormality," in his mother. "The doctor told my dad that, had they not taken me within the hour, my mother would have died." With the mother saved, the parents named their son after how they felt.

Sykes, forty-something and Santa Monica-born, is a singer who's difficult to categorize. He sings Mozart arias and Mahler songs, jazz and spirituals and contemporary classical music. The baritone's latest album from Sony Classical, Wait for Me, features music by Bruce Springsteen, Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan and Rodgers and Hammerstein. But don't call him a crossover artist. "I hate that word, because it sounds like you're crossing out of something to someplace else. I'm an American singer who has a classical background. I grew up wanting to be like Michael Jackson in the Jackson Five. Then my junior-high-school teacher played recordings of ...