Vintage songs for a young singer

David Foster is up to his old tricks again. No need to wonder anymore why Michael Bublé is left rehashing Spider-Man and has not yet done his second album. His producer, the sure-hit Foster has been busy elsewhere. Foster, the man, who these past years, introduced the world to the music of The Corrs, Josh Groban and Bublé, has a new discovery. The girl is Renee Olstead, a 14-year-old actress who sings with all the passion of the jazz singers of old.

The multi-Grammy winning Foster’s past works include the unforgettable score for St. Elmo’s Fire, producing the gigantic seller I’ll Always Love You for Whitney Houston and composing moving hit songs like What Matters Most and My Grown-up Christmas List. Incredibly he has also proven to be a major factor in shaping today’s music tastes, hitting the jackpot with one new artist after another. For The Corrs he combined traditional Irish airs with pop music devices. He gave classical singing a hip, teen-aged face with Groban. Then he worked on Bublé, who though also young, took his influences from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the other swingers of old.

Now there is Olstead who derives her influences from Ella, Rosie, Sarah and other jazz singers from the past. The girl comes from Texas and had no formal music training. She learned the ropes by singing along with the radio and later performing in local productions. She was soon discovered for the movies and appeared in films like The Insider with Russell Crowe and End of Days with Arnold Schwarzenegger. She is also in 13 Going on 30 with Jennifer Garner. On television she is seen regularly in the comedy Still Standing.

The interesting thing about her is that while she was gaining importance as an actress, she still found time to sing with a local jazz and swing band at famous Hollywood clubs like The Madison and The Derby. Unfortunately, there came a time when she was forced to choose between singing and acting. Given the work she had been doing, the acting got the priority. Then fortunately, she decided to record a CD as a souvenir for her stint with the band. It is not said how, but this CD came to the attention of Foster who knows a singing star when he hears one even if she was a 13-year-old kid with the style of a 30-year-old lounge diva from the ’50s.

You can hear Renee in the self-titled album released recently on Foster’s own 143 label for Warner Music’s Reprise. Renee gets a new song from Foster and his wife Linda Thompson, A Love That Will Last and one from Barry Manilow, Meet Me, Midnight. The mood of both though are as torchy as the classics in the rest of the tracks. These are Summertime, Taking a Chance on Love, On a Slow Boat to China, What a Difference a Day Makes, Is You or Is You Ain’t My Baby, Someone to Watch Over Me, Sunday Kind of Love, Sentimental Journey and the fairly recent Midnight at the Oasis. Peter Cincotti, whom you should check up if you like Bublé and the new Michael Bolton recordings, joins Renee in Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up is Hard to Do.

Renee sounds gorgeous in every cut. But while she carries the whole thing off with amazing style, this album is still gutsy work for an artist her age. Take note that what most aspiring singers among kids in her age group want most of all is to scream their lungs out and get tarted up like Britney and Christina. Renee goes against the grain in her debut where her sweet tones explore the nuances of classics lifted from the great American songbook. Will the fans like her just as well?

Leaving Britney and her ilk aside, it is also inevitable that Renee will be compared to the very talented Norah Jones, another pretty young artist who earned her success by staying out of the box. They both sound mellow but remember that Jones is a songwriter who interprets her own work while Renee puts her own style on old material. In this regard I see her beside Joss Stone, the British teen-ager who sings soul and channels the likes of Aretha and Etta.

The best thing about Renee’s arrival though is that the album can arouse interest in the old songs among teen-agers. There is more to music than Usher or Alicia Keys. They can also listen to songs by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Frank Loesser, Les Brown and others that, as Renee has discovered, can be more emotionally rewarding.