Cherie Adams, who grew up in Johnston, brings her solo CD to a show Sunday in Smithfield.

Cassandre McKinley sings Saturday at Chan’s in Woonsocket.

When Cassandre McKinley was picking songs for her debut album, she decided to steer away from the standards every jazz singer does. She was going through a divorce, and she returned to the music she’d loved as a child — the music of Marvin Gaye.

It inspired her.

“I had really thought for years that I wanted to do something that was completely different, out of the realm of typical jazz vocals.” And a jazz album of Gaye songs fit the bill.

The result is Til Tomorrow, a collection of songs written and originally performed by Gaye, done in a small-band jazz setting, with McKinley’s cool-water vocals at the center.

The album begins with a fairly straightforward rendition of “Trouble Man,” and some of the versions on Til Tomorrow don’t stray far from the originals. That includes “I Won’t Cry Anymore,” which recalls the original Gaye put on the Romantically Yours album, one of several instances of his love of singing jazz.

In other cases, however, the covers are fairly radical reinterpretations. “I Wish It Would Rain,” for example, is reborn here as an acoustic-guitar-based blues, while the acoustic takes center stage in McKinley’s version of “Let’s Get It On.” “I Want You” and “After the Dance” are sinuous ballads in McKinley’s hands, while Gaye’s versions were masterpieces of brooding early-’70s soul.

SOME SONGS work better than others, but it’s extremely refreshing to hear a collection of songs that’s both tried-and-true yet not the same old run though “Autumn Leaves,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” blah blah blah.

“That music is highly successful,” McKinley says of the standards. “It’s why [singers and musicians] keep following that same pattern, because people want to listen to that.

“But I really want to make people leave a show, or listen to the album, and say, ‘I really didn’t expect to feel this much emotion.’ … I love that people walk away from a show and they’re just exhausted. Because it’s an experience — it’s not just background music for friends and wine and hors d’ouevres. …

“I thought if they really really love it, that’s great; but if they really hate it, as long as they’re passionate and they really hate it, then I’m good. Because I just wanted people to have passion toward the project.”

Asked about the process of rearranging the Gaye material, McKinley says that it was too instinctive to call a process. The idea was to “pinpoint exactly where it was coming from that made me feel moved by that particular choice. In that, I think you find your own rhythm and you find your own voice. …

“It was a subconscious process, if it was a process. I don’t remember a lot about how it came around; I remember feeling good when it came together.”

TRUE TO HER expectation, McKinley says, not everyone is thrilled with her choices.

“I’ve experienced some very racist people who think, ‘Well, you’re white, you grew up in Boston with a clean background; how could you possibly choose this artist to focus on?’ And some people say, ‘Hey, it’s just music.’ …

“I made the album with the assumption that people were going to probably say, ‘This isn’t really jazz; Marvin Gaye can’t be jazz,’ and whatnot. And they can put it wherever they want to put it, but I really wanted to make that music. …

“Soul music in general is a genre that I really feel connected to — and jazz as well. And I like to connect the two.”

Reminded that historically that’s not supposed to be a radical concept, McKinley agrees. “It’s sort of strange how people dissect this genre of jazz. It shouldn’t be so radical that someone would combine jazz with soul.”

McKinley’s shows contain most of the tracks from the album, placed basically in the same order as on the record. “It’s a show as a sort of storytelling. … It’s an overall theme about thinking about where you’ve been and where you’re going.”

The order of the show and the record, McKinley says, reflects her personal situation at the time of the record’s creation.

“You’re just sort of in limbo, and you’re thinking, ‘This is what I’ve done, and this is how I feel about that, and this is where I want to go, but this is where I’m heading.’ I think the show does that.”

Cassandre McKinley sings at Chan’s, 267 Main St., Woonsocket, Saturday night at 8. Tickets are $12; call (401) 765-1900.