Imelda May - A fairytale of new rock

At 36, this striking Dubliner is finally enjoying the spoils of a singing career that began two decades ago. Her second album, Mayhem, went straight to No 1 in Ireland on release at the start of this month. It now sits in the Irish Top 5 alongside its predecessor, Love Tattoo, which is still selling in buckets two years after it first appeared. This is despite her retro rockabilly sound - a hip-shaking cocktail of country and rock'n'roll that was last truly mainstream when Elvis was doing it.

Her breakthrough should be replicated over here when Mayhem is released early next month. The title track, a riot of twanging guitar, horns, upright bass and sassy "doo doo doop"s, is on Radio 2's A-list. There'll be comparisons to Amy Winehouse for May's polished, powerful take on a vintage sound but the real touchstone is Oklahoma's Wanda Jackson, who had power to spare when she became the first and only Queen of Rockabilly (and Elvis's girlfriend) in the mid-1950s.

I first caught May live in April when she and her band backed Jackson, now 72, at a tiny gig at the Luminaire in London. "I was so excited I thought I was going to spontaneously combust," May says.

Dreams like that are now coming true for her at an alarming rate. A particularly satisfying moment came in June last year when she sold out two nights at Dublin's 1,500-capacity Vicar Street venue - a building where she once cleaned the toilets. "I always did shift work so I could swap with people if gigs came up," she explains. "I worked as a waitress, in a petrol station, in a launderette, cleaning. I was a face-painter and I worked in a nursing home. I've always been a grafter."

At an early age she was introduced by her older brother to the sound of rockabilly greats Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran - those Mad Men dresses and the sculpted hair are not an affectation appropriated now she's a star. And though she was a jobbing singer for many years, only starting her own band (including her guitarist husband Darrel Higham) to play her self-penned songs in 2007, she managed to work strictly in the classic styles she loves.

"I used to sing with a great rhythm and blues pianist called Mike Sanchez, I did backing vocals for the rockabilly singer Paul Ansell, I've been in a swing band, and sang all the soul classics in a band back in Ireland," she says. "I had the best musical education you can have."

If you think all this proudly backwards-looking, synthesizer-hating music is the kind of thing Michael Parkinson and Jools Holland might appreciate, you'd be right.Parky provided her first break as a headline act in 2007 when he booked her to play a private party for his family at his Berkshire pub, The Royal Oak. Jamie Cullum, Katherine Jenkins and James Morrison have also appeared on that tiny stage.

Subsequently booked for a single support slot with the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, she learned that Holland had visited the merchandise stand and paid for two of her CDs. "I didn't want to give him one myself. I'm not pushy in that way. Then he booked us for a whole tour and played us on his radio show." When singer Natalie Cole fell ill in September 2008, May found herself a last-minute addition to the line-up on Holland's Later TV show.

Then there was the duet with admirer Jeff Beck at this year's Grammys ceremony, and she tells me she's just been offered the ultimate opportunity for an Irishwoman: an invitation to sing Fairytale of New York with Shane MacGowan at a New Year's Eve party.

"It's all happened naturally, just bumping into people along the way," she says. But sticking to her vintage guns has helped too. Pity the record company man who approached May in the 1990s when she had just started out and promised the rockin', rollin' teenager she could be a new chirpy pop puppet like Sonia. Now who remembers her?

• Mayhem is released by Decca on 4 October.