‘Dirty Dancing’ Steps Around the Competition : Sound-Track Album Slips Into Billboard’s Top Spot, Ahead of Springsteen and Jackson

They’re calling it the upset of the year in pop music.

While everyone from label executives to rank-and-file fans was watching to see which of the industry’s reigning superstars--Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen--would be No. 1 on this week’s pop album chart, the “Dirty Dancing” sound track sneaked past them both, according to Billboard magazine.

The coup is doubly surprising because the album, unlike such major-label sound tracks as “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun,” is a low-budget project with no blockbuster names.

Five of the 12 tracks on the LP are “oldies” readily available on other compilations, and only two of the eight artists who recorded songs especially for the album even have their own record contracts. The sound track’s total budget was under $200,000, which is less than major labels normally spend for the debut LP by a beginning band.

“The degree of the success is a surprise,” Rick Dobbis, RCA executive vice president, said by phone from his New York office.

Bob Buziak, president of the record company, added in a separate phone interview that the success--”especially nice considering the competition”--has surpassed the company’s most optimistic projections.

“To us, a successful album would have been 300,000 to 500,000 units,” he said. “And we sold 1 million albums in five weeks, even before the single took off (in late September). We’re up to 1.7 million now. This is probably going to be our best-selling album of the year.”

So how did “Dirty Dancing” push Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love” and Jackson’s “Bad” to Nos. 2 and 3, respectively?

Two factors are intertwined: the success of the film itself--a low-budget drama starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey that became a sizable sleeper hit (estimated U.S. box-office gross to date: $40 million) and the enormous radio acceptance of “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life,” the sentimental duet by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes that is the film’s theme song.

As recently as three months ago, however, the project was in deep trouble. RCA’s marketing plan counted on the film drawing attention to the sound track. With the film’s original release scheduled for July 24, RCA shipped the “The Time of My Life” single to record stores and radio stations in late June.

So, RCA executives had a few anxious weeks when Vestron Pictures delayed the film’s release date by nearly a month (to avoid a summer glut of youth-oriented films).

“We were working this single with no picture opening, and we were nearly stillborn,” said Dobbis. “The Medley-Warnes duet is a lovely record, but you’ve got to give programmers a reason to play a record by an unknown artist or an artist who isn’t coming off a hit--and you’ve got to give them a real good reason to play a ballad by two people who haven’t had hit records in several years.

“Without the movie, we couldn’t convince programmers it was a hit. This record was thought by many people to be dead on the vine, but then the movie opened and the record was able to come back.”

“The Time of My Life” finally entered Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart Sept. 26 and rose swiftly, breaking into the Top 20 on Oct. 24. The duet is currently No. 3.

By reaching the top of the album chart, “Dirty Dancing” becomes the 10th sound track to achieve that status in the past 10 years. The others: “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Flashdance,” “Footloose,” “Purple Rain,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun” and “La Bamba.”

Still, it’s hard to predict the fortunes of a sound track album. Last year’s “Ruthless People” sound track featured the cream of the CBS roster--Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Billy Joel--and still fell short of the Top 10.

RCA’s Dobbis never considered the “Dirty Dancing” sound track to be a sure thing. It could have been a so-so hit like “Vision Quest” or a complete miss like “Over the Top,” he said. “There’s no way to know that. But the music is central to the picture, and the picture works. ‘Vision Quest’ didn’t work as a picture. And in ‘Over the Top,’ the music was just window dressing.”

Jimmy Ienner, executive producer of the “Dirty Dancing” sound track and a consultant to Vestron Pictures, believes it’s important to give sound track collections a distinctive edge.

“I’ve looked at sound tracks over the last couple of years, and I’ve seen that the formula has become very mundane,” Ienner said by phone from Vestron’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn. “You put this song with this name and it either works or it doesn’t work. I decided this needs something different . . . a new twist.”

Whereas “The Big Chill” and “Stand By Me” feature old songs, and “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Footloose” feature new songs, Ienner intermingled old and new songs on one sound track.

“We’re dealing with 31 years of music in this sound track--from 1956 to the present--and we decided the songs all belong with each other, not segmented,” he said.

The oldies on the album include the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” (from 1963), Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby” (1962) and the Five Satins’ venerable “In the Still of the Night” (1956). The new tracks--in addition to the Medley/Warnes duet--are by Eric Carmen, Merry Clayton, the Blow Monkeys, Tom Johnston, Zappa Costa and film star Patrick Swayze.

With the hope of keeping consumer interest alive, RCA has released a second single--Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes,” which is No. 67 in just its second week on the chart. And, the company--expanding the marketing plan far beyond anything envisioned in June--has decided to release third and fourth singles from the album: Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind” and Clayton’s “Yes.”

“If you are going to have a No. 1 album, this is the time to have it,” Dobbis said, referring to the brisk Christmas buying season. “Between now and January, we are going to sell a lot of albums. We have a chance to keep this project healthy and alive into the spring.”