Military TV, Television - Military Times

When it comes to music, David Foster has the magic touch

Perched at the top of the music world, David Foster has some high-profile talent scouts. They include:

• Brian Mulroney, the Canadian prime minister. He was the first person to tell Foster about Michael Buble, the young French Canadian singer.

• Oprah Winfrey. She urged him to hear Charice, the Filipino powerhouse.

Foster — who has a new PBS special and a new book — doesn’t encourage such scouts.

“Most of the time, people don’t get it right,” he says. “They get caught up in the moment.”

A few, however, offer perfect advice. “It was (actress) Roma Downey — her husband, actually — who gave me ‘You Raise Me Up.’”

That was a big song, ideal for Josh Groban’s big voice. “I think that has become his signature song,” Foster says.

Big voices have become entwined in Foster’s career. He won consecutive record-of-the-year Grammys for producing Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

Foster managed to gather many of the best voices for his PBS special “Great Performances: Hitman: David Foster & Friends.” In one Las Vegas room were Groban, Buble, Andrea Bocelli, Peter Cetera, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Brian McKnight, Cheryl Lynn, Blake Shelton, Boz Skaggs and Michael Johns, plus sax player Kenny G and teen piano whiz William Joseph.

Celine Dion sings from a separate Vegas stage. And for the stars who weren’t there, others took over: Charice, age 16, sang Barbra Streisand; Katharine McPhee sang Whitney Houston.

Foster was an “American Idol” mentor when he first spotted McPhee. “She is absolutely beautiful,” he says. “She has a great feel for young music, but she has other styles, too.”

By the time he had met Charice, he’d heard raves from Winfrey and others. And no, Foster says he wasn’t thrown off to meet this tiny person. “If you had seen Celine when she was 18 or 19, you wouldn’t be surprised by anything.”

These are voices who can fill up rooms and albums.

That’s not a requirement for all music, Foster says. “I heard the latest Britney (Spears) single and I love it. She’s got a very distinctive voice.”

Still, he prefers to work with the mega-voices. His singers are male and female; his record-buyers are mainly female.

That’s an audience Foster understands. “I have spent my life with a lot of women,” he says.

He has six sisters and no brothers, five daughters and no sons. He’s also had three wives. From his Canadian boyhood in Vancouver to his current life in Malibu, he’s been surrounded by women.

Some of his daughters are getting their own attention. Sara co-starred in Owen Wilson’s “Big Bounce”; Amy is a Nashville songwriter whose “Home” has been a hit for both Buble and Shelton. “I didn’t even know she was writing with Michael until the song came out,” Foster says.

As for dealing with guys — well, the reality show “Princes of Malibu” showed the troubles he had with his then-stepsons Brody and Brandon Jenner.

That show was their idea, not his, Foster says. He went along for the ride.

“I’ll be 60 next year,” he says. “You’ve got to go in there and do new things.”

The PBS special, however, brings him back into his comfort zone. Big stage, big songs, big voices — that’s David Foster’s kind of world.