Anita Baker is back

Family illnesses pushed the R&B singer off the stage for a decade, but now she has returned to the studio and is expected to release an album this year.

NEW YORK - After 10 years in virtual musical seclusion due to family turmoil, Anita Baker is returning to the spotlight.

The Grammy-winning R&B singer has signed a deal with Blue Note Records to produce at least two albums, and she expects to release her first project before the end of the year.

"I'm so excited," the singer said Wednesday. "I do see that there is a demand for what I do, and my fans are still there."

With a deep, sensuous voice that recalled Sarah Vaughan and a classic soul sound, Baker became one of R&B's premier artists in the late 1980s and early '90s with hits including Sweet Love, Rapture and Giving You the Best That I Got.

But she dropped off the music scene nearly a decade ago after releasing the album Rhythm of Love in 1994. At the time, Baker, who is married, had two young sons (now 10 and 11 years old), a mother with Alzheimer's disease and a father dying of bone cancer.

"I couldn't focus on the music at all. I tried, but each time I tried, that door was closed to me," she said. "My parents were dying, and I couldn't write."

So she took a break to take care of her family in Detroit, where she lives. Baker never considered hiring anyone to take care of her family so she could continue her career.

"She took care of me. She didn't hand me off to someone else," Baker said of her mother. "I'm really happy in retrospect that I did it that way, because she breathed her last in my arms."

Baker's father died in 1998; her mother died in 2000. After her mother's death, she felt she could pursue her career again.

"It was almost like I was given permission when she passed," Baker said.

Baker began touring, but she doubted whether people would buy CDs of her smooth, adult R&B in today's marketplace.

"For the past five years I had been channel surfing, and all you see is MTV and kids. The demographics became very, very young. I figured I was a relic and my time has passed. And I figured I had something to offer in the jazz arena," Baker said.

But when she contacted Bruce Lundvall, head of Blue Note Records, about recording a jazz album, he told her he'd be interested in an R&B album from her as well.

"She is one of the great artists, no question about it," Lundvall said. "There's not another voice out there like hers. It's instantly recognizable."

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