I was blown away

When Bruce Lundvall got a message that a woman in accounts was looking for him his first thought was that he had another royalty payment problem to smooth over. The boss of Blue Note records, a jazz label owned by EMI and operating out of New York's Flatiron district, phoned her back immediately. But Shell White, an accounts executive based a few blocks north, didn't want to talk numbers. She wanted Lundvall to meet Norah, a young singer she and her jazz musician husband had heard singing to brunchers in a local cafe.

It was the sort of request he had received dozens of times before, but Lundvall suggested she drop by anyway. In doing so he unwittingly set in train a sequence of events that in just two years have turned an unknown 21-year-old waitress into one of the most critically-acclaimed musical acts in the world.

Five days after White's first call, a wide-eyed Norah Jones was sitting nervously in Lundvall's office, gazing in awe at walls covered in signed photos of music legends such as Duke Ellington and Ray Charles while a crackly three-song demo played in the background.

"I was blown away, totally blown away," recalls Lundvall. "Sat in front of me was this very shy little girl in glasses, fresh out of university, who had the most extraordinary voice. I said to her, 'We gotta get you an attorney, because I'm going to sign you to Blue Note records right now'. She didn't know what to say."

On Sunday night Jones was again lost for words, as her debut album picked up a remarkable five Grammys - the musical equivalent of the Oscars - in front of almost 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden. The awards, including album of the year, best new artist and best female pop vocal performance were for Come Away With Me, a soulful, smokey album that has led critics to draw comparisons with Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.

Released last February, only days after she hung up her waitress apron for the last time, it has already sold almost 8m copies worldwide. One million of those sales have come in the UK and with it a Brit award for best international newcomer. "We knew she had tremendous appeal but this is a kind of success we never dreamed of," says Lundvall.

A 42-year veteran of the industry, he has worked with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Miles Davis, but Jones is on a different scale. In a year, he says, she has sold more records than any other artist in Blue Note's history. "After so much electronic, teeny music and hip-hop the public was hungry for something different. Norah had a signature sound that was just that."

The afternoon after the Grammys ceremony, the phones at Blue Note were ringing non stop. As an increasingly harassed PA fielded calls from newspapers chasing interviews with the sleep-deprived Man Behind Norah, Lundvall tried to gather his thoughts. "Is this really happening? Tell me it's real," he laughs as he slumps into the leather chair behind his desk.

Then Carlos Santana, the guitar legend and an old friend, is put through. "Carlos has written a song for Norah and wants to perform with her. He thinks she is incredible," Lundvall says after the call.

The impact of Jones' awards on EMI's fragile finances is likely to be significant. Grammy awards spark hundreds of thousands of new sales, and EMI executives believe the album could end up shifting 11m copies - their biggest success since the Beatles 1 compilation album of two years ago. A DVD of her performing recently in New Orleans is due to be released within the next fortnight.

A further boost to the money men is Jones's abhorrence of flashy videos or heavy marketing. "When sales of the record passed the 1m mark she came to me and asked if we could stop selling it," says Lundvall. "She didn't want people burning out on it and becoming bored. I had to persuade her that there were millions of people out there who wanted to pay to hear music that she had produced totally on her own terms."

She also refused point blank to allow the EMI marketing department to release a remixed version of her hit Don't Know Why to radio stations. "It was an up-tempo thing with some of the lyrics repeated and the minute she heard it she said she didn't want anything to do with it," Lundvall says.

Instead she just wants to concentrate on the music in her genes. The product of a nine-year relationship between Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, and the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, she grew up listening to artists ranging from George Jones to Maria Callas. As a young girl she and her mother moved to Texas and she later studied piano and theory at the University of North Texas. By the time she arrived at Blue Note, Jones had more than 1,000 hours of classical piano lessons behind her.

Her relationship with her father is understood to be frosty at best, but she has recently spoken about a "reconciliation". However there was no mention of Shankar in her acceptance speech at the Grammys.

Lundvall believes Jones's success is founded on lineage as much as dedication. "There are people that are good and there are people that are very good. Then there are people who have a magic you can't even describe. Norah is one of those."

The proud father: Ravi Shankar on Norah's success

I love Norah's music. It is different to the music I perform, but at the same time from childhood I have been very much at home with jazz and country and western and all sorts of pop music. She has something very special in her voice that gets you immediately.

As a baby, she would listen to me practising my music. We gave her piano lessons from a young age. It was obvious that she was tremendously talented. It is the talent in you that is initially important - what style of music you learn comes according to the environment where you're brought up. I'm sure she would have been a great musician in whatever style she adopted. Knowing how popular she has become within less than a year, we were sure that Norah would get a Grammy. But to get five? It was absolutely fantastic.

I have never had the opportunity to give her music lessons myself. Up until she was about eight and a half I saw her all the time, and then her mother moved away with her and I didn't see her again for almost seven years. From the time that she turned 18, however, we have been meeting regularly. She comes to my place in California or India.

The only thing is that, by the time I met her again as an adult, she was already into western music. She had classical piano skills, but was more into jazz piano. There was no question of her doing anything Indian. I might hope that one day she will learn more about Indian music, but it may not be possible. She is so deeply into the music which has brought her such fame and success, that there is no need for her get into anything else. But for fun she might try out some fusion - it's such a big trend now, to combine different types of music.

It was such a thrilling experience to watch the ceremony on television in Delhi. I've not been able to speak to Norah yet, but I have sent her an email and left her a message. There is no rift between us. There have been stories to that effect, but the truth is just that I lost her for nearly 10 years - I couldn't find her when her mother moved away, and Sue didn't want me to be in touch with her. But we are the best of friends now. She is an adoring big sister to [my younger daughter] Anoushka. She is my daughter and I love her.

· Ravi Shankar was talking to Emma Brockes