THE NEW BELLE OF R&B; MUSIC

Last year at this time fans and critics were raving about R&B;/jazz singer Anita Baker. With that golden, do-everything voice--high, strong, far-ranging and packed with emotion--she was hailed as Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday all rolled into one tiny package. Some even predicted there wouldn’t be another one like her in a decade.

How time flies.

A year later, another R&B;/jazz singer, Regina Belle, is getting similar raves. Her first album, “All By Myself” (on Columbia), has sold an impressive 300,000 copies, generating considerable interest in the 24-year-old singer from Englewood, N.J. The debate among music fans about who’s better--Belle or Baker--continues.

Belle, who claimed she’s not sick of being compared to Baker, offered her own comparisons recently in her West Hollywood hotel room while waiting for a driver to pick her up to take her to a TV taping:

“She (Baker) sings R&B; with jazzy inflections, like I do,” said Belle. “But Anita has a different vocal timbre. My timbre is a lot brighter than hers. I sing with my mouth more open, which gives me a brighter sound. She sings with her mouth more closed, which gives a darker tone to her songs.

“I can do a lot of things with my voice. I can change timbre. I can sing soft or loud, I can scream or do whatever. I’m not restricted. But you can’t tell what I can really do by listening to the album. That shows only a quarter of what I can do.”

One of the things Belle can do is sound like Baker. On parts of several songs on the album you’d swear it was Baker singing. But, undoubtedly, that’s somewhat due to the guidance of Michael J. Powell, who co-produced the album with Nick Martinelli. Powell is well-acquainted with Baker’s style. He produced “Rapture,” her smash hit album.

Belle can do something else that’s much more remarkable--sound like the great pop-jazz singer Billie Holiday. Belle’s single, “So Many Tears,” echoes Holiday’s stark, aching sound.

“I can get sort of the same feel she could get in a song,” Belle agreed. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s an exaggeration of my vocal timbre. That’s how I get the presence of Billie.

“This song is to get people to remember her and to introduce her to kids who don’t know about her. I can remember long ago listening to Billie sing the blues one night when I was really down. She creeps into your soul. She can move you. She can send shivers up your spine. Billie has always given me inspiration. I can’t be as good as she was but maybe I can move people that same way.”

For a long time, Belle--serious, feisty, and very intelligent--wanted to be a jazz singer. She grew up on a diet of R&B;, blues and jazz but settled on jazz in college (Rutgers University) about the same time she really got serious about singing, a favorite pastime since her childhood.

In college she pursued jazz singing but got sidetracked into pop in 1985 when a friend recommended her for a job as backup vocalist with the Manhattans, the R&B; vocal group. That exposure led to the Columbia Records contract--and a pop career.

Recalling her days as a jazz purist, Belle noted, “I wasn’t going to sing anything but jazz, but that was just a phase, I guess. Jazz seemed to be the music. Nothing else would do. But I realized artists like Prince, James Brown and Michael Jackson have made great contributions to music and they’re not jazz artists.”

Though her style is littered with even more jazz inflections than Baker’s, Belle insisted she’s made the transition to pop singing. “I can be more versatile singing other kinds of music,” she said. “But I still like singing jazz. It’s still special to me. It’s my roots. I learned how to really feel music through jazz. I guess my heart is still in jazz.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for Tom Waits’ Nov. 7-9 engagement at the Wiltern Theatre, and also for Holly Near’s Nov. 4 date at the same hall. . . . Oingo Boingo has added a second show--Oct. 30--at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre. . . . Tickets will be available Sunday for an added midnight concert by the Whispers on Oct. 30. . . . Coming to the Palace: Dead or Alive (Oct.27-28), Ry Cooder (an early show Oct. 29, a benefit for No Oil Inc.), Terence Trent D’Arby (a late show Oct. 29) and the Fixx (Oct. 30). A country package featuring Randy Travis, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn is due Oct. 24 at the Anaheim Convention Center.