THE PERSUASIONS : BREAKIN’ UP IS HARDLY DUE . . .

The Persuasions, certainly the foremost exponents of doo-wop a cappella music these past 24 years, have fallen into reluctant retreat--just as doo-wop and a cappella singing have come back in vogue.

Indeed, with a cappella groups like the Bobs and the Nylons cutting record deals to sing music that is often very Persuasions-like in arrangement, the five Persuasions--durable champions of the form--are without record label, management, booking agent or promotion.

About the only thing they don’t mind being without are back-up musicians. True to their motto, they “still ain’t got no band.”

“When we hear people say, ‘Hey, the band’s breakin’ up,’ and all those rumors goin’ around now,” said lead Persuasion Jerry Lawson, “we say, ‘Well, that means you goin’ to take your instruments and go, right?’ Well, the Persuasions don’t have instruments, so we can’t break up!”

Lawson’s enthusiasm would seem unfounded, given present circumstances. The group, which fell together on the stoops of Bedford-Stuyvesant long ago, is down to four members for touring and has played only a few benefit concerts in the last six months.

They were to have headlined the bill with the Bobs at the Beverly Theatre this month, but chose instead to honor a commitment to a friend and perform a benefit Monday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center for the JamCenter, a downtown improvisational theater company.

The Persuasions are not shrewd businessmen; they’re nice guys--and nice guys don’t necessarily wind up on the charts.

Yet Lawson, now 42, remains unshakable in his commitment.

“Breakin’ up ain’t even in the books, man. There’s no way ,” he said by phone from his mother’s home in Florida. “Jimmy Hayes, myself, Toubo Rhoad, Jayotis Washington--right now we’re thicker than thieves.

“We used to kid around about being like the Mills Brothers one day. When we sat in that car that night 24 years ago and said we were going to be together forever, we meant it. So long as one of us is living, there’ll be a Persuasion.”

Missing from the current lineup is the free-floating falsetto of Joe Russell, who joins the group on records and is now thinking of rejoining permanently.

Add Russell’s tones to the others, and the Persuasions become one startling voice. They have sculpted original harmonies and percolating rhythms on 11 albums since 1968 (on almost as many labels) and retain a solid grass-roots following. (Capitol and MCA recently reissued two of their strongest LP’s, “We Came to Play” and “Street Corner Symphony.”)

They have Persuasioned everything from Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” to Sam Cooke’s “Good Times” to Curtis Mayfield’s “Man Oh Man.” The recording of “Papa Oom Mow Mow” heard in “E.T.” was theirs.

A cappella, Lawson will tell anyone, is no novelty. The Persuasions do not, as the Bobs do, sing “nu wave a cappella.” And they are not a nostalgia act. This is, as Lawson said, “serious business.” How does he feel about the success of new a cappella groups, some of whom actually copy Persuasions arrangements with nary a nod?

“It makes me feel good, really,” he said. “If they can go out and make a living--a better living than we can, it’s all right with me.

“See, they got it by trying to do something that we did, and that just makes me feel good. I don’t care how they do it, they never gonna sound like Jimmy, Jay, Toubo, and Jerry--or even Joe.”

Though they’re without a label, the next album is finished, Lawson said, “in our heads,” and come management, record company, booking agent--or not, the Persuasions will endure.

“The group comes from God,” said Lawson. “There ain’t no band. We just like the birds. They wake up in the morning singing; so does the Persuasions. Jesus Christ had to persuade people to follow him. So do the Persuasions.”