After a decade away from music, Baker is cooking again
Inside the offices of her new record label, Blue Note, Anita Baker is getting the full VIP treatment. A celebrity makeup artist works delicately on her face, a photo shoot awaits and staff members attend to her every need – including that crucial designer dress.
But after spending the past decade toiling away as a doting housewife, attentive mother and dutiful daughter, the R&B chanteuse is finding that returning to the spotlight isn’t all that easy.
“I’m used to getting up at 7, getting breakfast, getting the kids off to school, and doing the mommy thing and the wife thing and the daughter thing,” says Baker, who just released her first album in 10 years, “My Everything.”
“This is pretty self-absorbed, and I’ve gotta kinda turn that faucet back on because that’s been turned off for quite a while.”
Baker, known for late ‘80s and early ‘90s hits such as “Sweet Love,” “Been So Long” and “No One in the World,” turned off the faucet herself when her career was still thriving.
Her 1994 Grammy-winning album, “Rhythm of Love,” sold almost 2 million copies and included hits such as “I Apologize.”
“After ‘Rhythm of Love,’ I went home to recharge, and life just started happening,” says Baker, hair shorn in her trademark short cut, looking almost the same as a decade ago.
“I didn’t want to be in a situation where other people were raising my sons. We just settled into a very normal, suburban lifestyle, with two kids, a cat and a bird and a mommy and a daddy.”
But in time, she would also have to attend to two ailing parents: first her father, who would die of bone cancer, and her mother, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. Taking care of them – not singing – became her top priority.
Her feelings were confirmed by a failed attempt to record an album. “It’s impossible to write and produce a record when your parents are dying. I really tried, I really really tried, but it just wouldn’t come,” she said.
It wasn’t until Baker’s mother died in 2002 that she decided to pick up the microphone again. She wasn’t looking to record an album, just to perform, to prevent grief from absorbing her.
“I was right out of my living room and on to the stage,” she says. “But the thing that I found out in doing that first show, even having 15 extra pounds and having mommy hair, was that with my audience, it ain’t about my body, and it wasn’t about my hair. It was about my music, and that’s what I learned that night, and I’ll take that with me for the rest of my career. “
Once she knew she had an audience, she began plotting her return to the recording studio. The result was “My Everything,” which debuted at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard albums chart.
“For years I thought that (singing) was all I could do, and it’s like ‘God, if I’m not singing, I’m worthless,’ ” Baker says.
“But I’ve come to find in the time that I spent way from the business I am valid outside of the business. I’m a good mother, I’m a good wife, I’m a good daughter … I’m a whole person.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Adam West (“Batman”) is 74. Actor David McCallum (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) is 71. Singer Bill Medley (the Righteous Brothers) is 64. Singer Freda Payne is 59. Actor Jeremy Irons is 56. Actress-model Twiggy is 55. TV personality Joan Lunden is 54. Singer-actor Rex Smith is 49. Country singer Trisha Yearwood is 40. Comedian Cheri Oteri (“Saturday Night Live”) is 39. News anchor Soledad O’Brien is 38. Comedian Jimmy Fallon (“Saturday Night Live”) is 30. Rapper Eamon is 21.