Music

The Dallas area has churned out lots of female pop stars, from LeAnn Rimes to Kelly Clarkson to the tabloid magnet Simpson sisters.

Emily Elbert would prefer not to be the next name on the list.

At 17, the Coppell High School senior has no shortage of talent. Her dusky voice sounds as if it belongs to a soul-jazz singer twice her age, and she wrote all the songs and co-produced Bright Side, her impressive debut CD.

The thing is, she'd rather be a musician than a star, thank you.

"Being on MTV is not really my goal," she says, "and I don't think I'm what they're looking for either."

While the music biz hunts for the flavor of next week, Ms. Elbert studies the timeless artists of yesteryear. She'll bend your ear about Buddy Guy's amazing guitar solo on "Red House," or the way Ella Fitzgerald made her voice sound like a horn section.

And while her peers plot the quickest route to stardom, she plans to study the next four years at Berklee College of Music, the prestigious Boston school that has trained the likes of Branford Marsalis, Diana Krall and Melissa Etheridge.

Jason Janik / Special to DMN

Emily Elbert

In August, she got a taste of Berklee by winning a scholarship to its five-week summer program: "It was the best experience of my life," she says. "Everybody's doing what they love – and that's the coolest thing to be around."

In a sense, she's been around it her whole life. Her father is Roland Elbert, a local keyboardist who plays on commercials and at private events. Her grandfather, Henry Roland Elbert, was a professional sax player.

At first, Ms. Elbert wasn't so sure about joining the family business. She took piano lessons at the urging of her folks but hated to practice. All she really wanted to do was listen to 'N Sync CDs and study tae kwon do, in which she earned a black belt.

That all changed in seventh grade, when she got an acoustic guitar and fell under the spell of John Mayer and Jack Johnson. Later, she graduated to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. And everything clicked when she immersed herself in world music and jazz – the former by way of Paul Simon's The Rhythm of the Saints, the latter via vocal jazz summer programs at the University of North Texas.

"Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson .... oh my gosh , there's so much going on there," she says. "I learned to approach jazz vocals like they were instrumentals, to listen to Stan Getz play and say, 'I want to sing like that.' "

Bright Side mixes jazz with soul and folk into a style she dubs "funky acoustic." Her dad played keyboards on the CD and his colleague Bob Gentry played bass and co-produced the sessions at his New Masters Studio in Tyler.

But this definitely isn't one of those albums where the adults do the heavy lifting and the kid just shows up and sings.

Ms. Elbert played the guitar parts and wrote the 11 tunes. "River," "Stars" and "Garden of the Sun" are from the Emerson-Thoreau school of writing, with lyrics inspired by nature, the cosmos and her favorite stomping grounds, Grapevine Springs Park in Coppell. But she doesn't want to come off as some teenage hippie-dippy.

"A lot of these songs sound like I'm surrounded by utopia and everything is great, but that's not always the case," she says, pointing to "Beautiful," a song about society's inability to solve problems.

She recently released the CD on her own label, and she hopes she can sell enough copies to pay her way into Berklee: She was awarded a $14,000 scholarship for each of the four years, but the school costs more than $30,000 a year, meaning she'll have to move a lot of discs to make up the difference.

That's a tall order for an obscure teen singer, but she's building momentum. Earlier this year, she won honorable mention in the Texas Music Project's "10 Under 20" contest, and Monday she performed live on Good Morning Texas. Friday night she opens for Smile Smile at Standard & Pours, and she's also lined up gigs at the White Elephant Saloon (Nov. 19) and Uncle Calvin's (Jan. 26).

"My age is a really odd crinkle in this whole thing," she says. "People will listen who wouldn't necessarily stop and listen if I were a middle-aged musician."

And the flip side? "Other people say because of my age, I don't know anything."

But at 17, she already knows some essential truths about music, such as the fact that TV talent shows aren't a smart career move for her.

"A lot of people say, 'Hey, you can sing – I think you should try out for American Idol!' And I appreciate that. But dial-in votes? That's not what I'm really interested in."

Instead, she dreams of modeling her career on the likes of Beck and Bob Dylan, two artists who "always did their own thing."

"You do have to make compromises sometimes," she says. "But if some [record label] says, 'Disregard all the music you've been listening to, this is the direction we want you to go in' ... I can't see myself making that sort of compromise. I'm having a blast figuring out my own direction, you know?"

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com