Joss Stone (born Jocelyn Eve Stoker on 11 April 1987) is an English soul and R&B singer-songwriter and actress. Stone emerged to fame in late 2003 with her multi-platinum debut album, The Soul Sessions, which made the 2004 Mercury Prize shortlist. Her second album, the equally multi-platinum Mind, Body & Soul, topped the UK Albums Chart for one week and spawned the top ten hit "You Had Me", Stone's most successful single on the UK Singles Chart to date. Both album and single each received one nomination at the 2005 Grammy Awards, while Stone herself was nominated for Best New Artist. Stone's latest album, Introducing Joss Stone, released in March 2007, has achieved gold status by the RIAA.

Throughout her career, Stone has sold over ten million albums worldwide, and has won two BRIT Awards and one Grammy Award. She also made her acting debut in late 2006 with the fantasy adventure film Eragon, as the witch Angela, and she will make her television debut portraying Anne of Cleves in the Showtime series The Tudors in 2009.

Early life

Stone was born at Buckland Hospital in Dover, Kent, and spent her teenage years in Ashill, a small village in Devon. She is the third of four children born to Richard and Wendy Stoker. Her father owns a fruit and nut import/export business; her mother, who used to manage holiday cottages, worked as Stone's manager until October 2004. Stone made her first public appearance at the Uffculme Comprehensive School—which she attended—in Uffculme, Devon, with a cover of Jackie Wilson's 1957 song "Reet Petite". Because of her dyslexia, Stone left school at age sixteen with only three GCSE qualifications. "It wasn't that I was stupid. I'm just a little bit dyslexic and I wasn't very academic. I'm more artistic", she says.

Stone grew up listening to a wide variety of music including 1960s and 1970s American R&B and soul music performed by such artists as Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin; as a result, she developed a soulful style of singing like her idols. "My first CD that I owned was Aretha Franklin: Greatest Hits. And I saw the advert on TV and it was just like little clips of her songs. I had no idea who she was—I was only like 10 so. I said, 'Oh yeah, that looks really good', so I wrote it down and I said to my mum, 'Can I have that for Christmas?' So she told my friend Dennis, who always gets me good music anyway, and he got that for me. So that was one of my first albums that I loved." She would later tell MTV News: "I kind of clicked into soul music more than anything else because of the vocals. You've got to have good vocals to sing soul music and I always liked it ever since I was little."

Music career

In 2001, at the age of fourteen, Stone auditioned for the BBC Television talent show Star for a Night in London singing Franklin's 1968 Goffin-King hit "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and Whitney Houston's 1998 "It's Not Right but It's Okay". After passing her audition, she sang Donna Summer's 1979 "On the Radio" for the broadcast, and eventually won the contest. Stone then performed on a charity show, where she drew the attention of the Boilerhouse Boys, composed of London-based producers Andy Dean and Ben Wolfe, who contacted S-Curve Records founder and chief executive officer Steve Greenberg in December 2001 telling him that "they had just heard the greatest singer they'd ever heard from their country." In early 2002, Greenberg flew Stone to New York City for an audition, in which she sang to backing tracks of classic soul songs: Otis Redding's 1968 "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay", Gladys Knight & the Pips' 1973 "Midnight Train to Georgia", and Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"; Greenberg instantly signed her to his label. Since then, she has appeared onstage with artists such as James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, Tom Jones, Robbie Williams, Melissa Etheridge, Rob Thomas, Rod Stewart, and Blondie. Stone is well-known for her trademark barefoot performances.