The first thing that gets you is the voice, immediately the voice. It is smooth and sensual, sexy even, and so very self-assured. On ‘Traditional’, the infectious lead track from his second album, it becomes clear that Peter Grant is not only a man out of time, but that he might just be something of a future master. It is a patently ridiculous thing to suggest, of course, of a man just 20 years old, but Grant prompts within the listener much the same reaction they had upon first hearing, say, Jamie Cullum, or even his own personal hero Harry Connick Jr. It's that good. He's already comfortably established himself, his debut album ‘New Vintage’ having debuted at number eight last year, sold over 100,000 copies -  but now he is ready for the next stage. He has been preparing for this all his life, after all.

"I've been singing since the age of six," he says, "and it's been a proper obsession ever since. I started out doing all the horribly cute stuff - Penny Arcade, Two Little Boys, stuff like that - but by the time I was eight, I was spending all my money on old vinyl by people like Buddy Greco, Frank Sinatra and Mel Torme, and poring over them endlessly. While my friends were busy messing about in the playground, I was listening to these records in my front room, then standing next to the family piano and belting them out myself for three, four hours a day."

His attention to detail has paid off, and rather grandly too, for Grant is now fully the real deal. His second album is a mixture of songs old and new, but it's the new ones that will really come to define him. Take the aforementioned ‘Traditional’, which, for a jazz number, is anything but, its lyrical thrust slyly suggesting "The most you expect is a sex in a text/Non-stop hip-hop, all-night love shops", in a manner that takes the genre by the horns and brings it abruptly into 2007, so very youthful and alive. As Grant will tell you himself, this is "a really contemporary record. There are some great grooves here, and a lot of natural funk. What I've tried to do with this album is cross the classic sound of easy listening and jazz with a much younger edge."

Anything but a revivalist of a heavily plundered scene, Peter Grant is instead breathing new life into it. Good man.

He was born in Newcastle in May 1987, and brought up in Leeds. His father, was something of a singer himself in his formative years, a tenor in awe of Mario Lanza whose own dreams of superstardom had to be content with the local club scene, where he became something of a minor legend. His son was in thrall to him, too, and from the age of six would begin to accompany him to every gig he played, often clambering up on stage to sing right alongside him.

"We’d wear the same clothes and perform side-by-side," he says, beaming with pride. "It was a fantastic education for me." But while his father was very much in the pop operatic mould, Grant himself was moving more towards an all-consuming love of jazz. By 13, he was playing the working men's club circuit himself, wowing hard-to-please audiences with a precocious sophistication that quickly convinced everyone that he was not merely a good mimic, but something so much more.    

"Because I'd practise so much, I really would consume every last drop of them, the music, the lyrics, the atmosphere, everything," he says, "and I have to say they taught me an awful lot about love and life. It was funny, here I was, a kid of eight years old, and I was listening to songs made for the midlife crisis! Obviously, I didn't understand everything that they were talking about, but what I did understand, very quickly, was the passion, and the real feeling they had. That's what counts, I think."

It's rather fortunate he had music, because Grant was never much fond of school."I would purposefully get myself into trouble so that I could be sent to detention. They always stuck me in the music room, you see, and that was where I felt most comfortable."  By 17, he had already made a name for himself on the local live circuit and beyond. Three years ago, he inked a major label deal with Universal, and his first album, 2005's’ ‘New Vintage’, was a collection of swing standards - Joanna, Walk Away, Didn't We, The Girl From Ipanema - that he imbued with a vitality all his own, and with classic, timeless ballads.

Tony Hatch, the songwriter of Joanna, called Grant's version "simply outstanding." Jimmy Webb, the author of Didn't We, suggested that, "it's so refreshing to encounter a young performer with style, passion and the sense of what makes up the perfect arrangement." And Don Black, writer of Walk Away, said, "Peter has come across like a much-needed breath of fresh air. He doesn't just sing songs, he lives them."

"That, for me, was a start," he says, "the first step in what I fully intend to be a thousand such steps in this business."

And so now comes the new album, in which, if anything, his voice has come on even more. ‘You’re Worth It’, one of the new tracks here, shuffles with a predatory menace and concerns what one man will do to get, and keep, his girl, while his treatment of Nancy Wilson's ‘How Glad I Am’ is absolutely beguiling. And in between the grooves and funk comes, at its climax, a new track, ‘September Song’, which Grant delivers with the poise and understatement of someone who understands that, sometimes, less is more.

"Singing songs just feels so incredibly natural to me," he says. "It's what I love the most. I'm a huge fan of Harry Connick Jr, the man is a legend and, for me, the most talented guy in the music. He does everything: sings, plays, writes, conducts, arranges... the lot. That's what I myself am aiming for."

Though he has yet to commit any of his own songwriting efforts to disc, he has every intention of doing so in the future because, as his music knowledge develops, so too will his style. "I write songs all the time, but they tend to be rather dark," he admits. "Unsurprisingly really, because I'm mostly influenced by people like Nick Drake, Fiona Apple and Jeff Buckley." Now he is laughing. "That's not to say I'm quite as depressed or depressive as they are, but I like to really dig deep in my own songs, and I plan for it to become an increasing part of what I do."

Which will, of course, do the breadth of his appeal no harm at all. Right now, Peter Grant sings songs that cross generations, and he delivers them with a face that cannot help but make him a pin-up, whether he likes it or not. His future development shall be fascinating to witness.

"I feel it's a great time for music like this right now," he says in conclusion. "Look at Jamie Cullum, Michael Buble, Amy Winehouse. Jazz for me is everything, it's my whole life, and like those artists, I want to help make it fresh and relevant, exciting and new."

He’s on the right path.