HUNTSBERRY DISCOVERS POWER OF SILVER SCREEN

Three questions commonly asked by people who have seen Howard Huntsberry’s portrayal of soul singer Jackie Wilson in the movie “La Bamba”:

1--Can he really sing like Wilson?

2--Does he really look like Wilson?

3--Who the heck is this guy, anyway?

The answers:

1--Yes, even his speaking voice recalls the mellifluousness of Wilson’s bubbly lilt.

2--Kind of--all the makeup people had to do was shave his mustache and change his hair a bit for him to approximate the look of the late Wilson in his prime.

3--Huntsberry is a 33-year-old Los Angeles-area native who, as a teen-ager, sang with such name soul acts as Rufus Thomas and the Joe Tex Revue and, with the R&B; group the Klique, had a No. 1 R&B; hit with a remake of Wilson’s “Stop Doggin ‘Me Around” in 1984.

That people even bother to ask questions about someone who had what was a pretty minor role in the film--just one song (“Lonely Teardrops”) and one brief line for a total of about four minutes of screen time--is a tribute both to Huntsberry’s performance and to the power of the silver screen.

“It’s incredible that everybody’s attached to that small role,” Huntsberry said recently in his modest Rosemead apartment, which he anticipates decorating with a platinum copy of the “La Bamba” sound-track album soon. “I’ve gotten more publicity with this than the whole while with Klique.”

What there seems to be no question about, though, is that Huntsberry was born for the part, every bit as much as his co-stars Marshall Crenshaw and Brian Setzer were born to play Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, respectively.

“A lot of that type of performing I do anyway,” Huntsberry said of Wilson’s characteristic singing and dancing traits. The naturalness of the resemblance was instantly clear to the people behind the movie once Huntsberry’s manager dissuaded “La Bamba” executive musical producer Joel Sill from considering the better-known El De Barge and checking out his client first.

Now, as he launches his solo career with an album, “For You,” due in February, the singer is unconcerned about being stereotyped as the guy who does Jackie Wilson.

“Doing Jackie’s stuff has helped me so much that I definitely don’t mind,” he said. “To be compared to a person like that is incredible.”