Victoria Hart

A curious pattern recurs in rock every ten years or so, with clusters of performers suddenly drawing from the sounds of the 1930s and 1940s. The phenomenon surfaced with Harpers Bizarre and Spanky & Our Gang during the 1960s, continued through Bette Midler and Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band in the 1970s, reappeared with U.K. sensation Mari Wilson in the 1980s, and resurfaced via the Squirrel Nut Zippers in the 1990s. By the early 2000s the cycle brought the Puppini Sisters' fixation on the Andrews Sisters alongside Michael Bublé's overt borrowing of the young Frank Sinatra's phrasing. Into this wave stepped Victoria Hart, a jazz-pop vocalist who names Ella Fitzgerald as her chief inspiration. Born in California in 1988 and raised between England and France, she began delivering jazz and pop covers on a semi-professional basis while still in her mid-teens. A relaxed outdoor jazz concert near Cannes led to her discovery by British R&B producer Geoff Gurd, who placed the teenager under a long-term development agreement and took on the tasks of writing and producing her first album. Once Universal Music Group's revived Decca imprint in the United Kingdom added her to its roster, the label promoted an old-fashioned A Star Is Born narrative in which the unknown youngster had been spotted waitressing at the London restaurant "The Naked Turtle" and immediately chosen to sing at a gala tied to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Although Hart did hold a part-time job at that establishment and did appear at the event, recording of her Decca debut was already underway. The resulting album, Whatever Happened to Romance?, arrived in summer 2007.