Anatomy of a Hit

It costs close to $500,000 to record and market an album by a new artist these days, so the last thing an executive wants to hear when he tells friends about a new signing is a wisecrack.

But that’s exactly what Ed Eckstine, general manager of Wing Records, has heard since he announced the signing of Vanessa Williams--who was forced to give up her Miss America crown four years ago when nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.

“I would always wait 30 seconds for the ‘Vanessa the Undressa’ jokes,” said Eckstine, sitting at his desk at PolyGram Records headquarters in Burbank. “Or I’d hear, ‘Is (Penthouse publisher) Bob Guccione going to do the album cover?’ or ‘Are you going to have your listening party in a penthouse?’ ”

Being the punch line of a thousand jokes isn’t exactly the ticket to credibility and legitimacy, even by the somewhat liberal standards of the music business. Williams could easily have gone the way of other instant celebrities who were the object of media firestorms and then dropped from sight.

Yet Eckstine--the son of jazz singer Billy Eckstine--is having the last laugh.

Williams’ first single, “The Right Stuff,” has cracked the Top 5 on both the dance and black music charts, and is moving up the pop charts. Her debut album, also titled “The Right Stuff,” is also off to a good start.

This makes Williams one of the most surprising success stories of the year in the music industry, but it didn’t happen overnight. The 25-year-old performer--and her advisers--worked for four years to live down her notoriety and to establish a bid for her to be taken seriously. The former beauty queen’s tabloids-to-hitmaker saga is a telling case study in the reconstruction of a shattered career.

Lisa Canning, music director of KDAY-AM, which has been playing Williams’ single, said that listeners have been surprised by the record’s soulful punch.

“They call in and say, ‘Is that the Vanessa Williams?’ They’re surprised that it’s so hip and street.”

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Ramon Hervey, who is both Williams’ husband and manager, has been asked one question more than any other since his wife signed a record contract: Can she really sing?

“If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me that, she wouldn’t have had to record at all. You could just start collecting the money,” he said, sitting in his office in West Hollywood.

Hervey first met his future bride under less-than-ideal circumstances--the morning after the story about the nude photos broke--Friday, July 20, 1984. The bombshell prompted Miss America pageant officials to hold a press conference in which they called for Williams’ resignation. She was given 72 hours to respond.

Hervey, a veteran music industry publicist, had contacted Williams’ manager, Dennis Dowdell, a few months before to inquire about handling Williams’ publicity after her reign ended. That Friday, he got a phone call from Dowdell asking for help in handling the media onslaught.

The dapper, soft-spoken Hervey, 37, immediately set up a press conference in New York for the following Monday and took a red-eye flight there to meet his new client. Williams’ controlled performance at that press conference, many believe, was the first step in the long road back.

The second step, Hervey said, was to lay low and wait for the controversy to blow over. “All scandals reach a point of media saturation,” he said. “You let them run their course. Don’t do a book, don’t go on talk shows, don’t give it more fuel.”

Instead, Williams concentrated on piling up some acting and TV credits. She was also prominently featured as a background vocalist on two cuts on a 1986 album by R & B/funk star George Clinton. One of those songs, “Do Fries Go With That Shake?,” was a Top 10 R&B; hit.

“That kind of turned people’s heads,” Hervey said, “because George is known for being so funky, and people’s image of Vanessa was that she would probably do Broadway tunes because that’s the beauty-queen syndrome.” Hervey, who also manages gospel star Andrae Crouch, started managing Williams in early 1986, after “four or five” major managers turned her down. His top priority: securing a record contract. He went that route--instead of focusing on film, TV or stage--because he felt that pop is more open to black females than the rival fields and that a recording artist has more control.

Williams--who married Hervey in January, 1987--met with executives from 10 record companies before finally landing a deal with Wing, a new PolyGram label specializing in new and developing acts.

“It was promises, promises and nothing ever happened,” Williams said bluntly, speaking by phone from New Orleans--the latest stop on a 20-city promotional tour. “I knew it was going to be hard, but I knew I’d get there eventually. I don’t like being written off before being able to have a chance. I’m a fighter--I always try to prove that I’ve got what it takes.”

Williams and Hervey decided to cut an R & B-oriented album--as opposed to a pop/adult contemporary album in the vein of Whitney Houston--in part because black media had been most supportive of Williams during the scandal. As a result, they figured black radio would be the path of least resistance in launching her recording career.

Williams--who sang the Barbra Streisand hit, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” at the Miss America pageant--said she thought the sassy nature of her new hit caught people by surprise. “Everyone expected me to come out with show tunes or with a saccharine-sweet ballad. I wanted to show people that I did have soul and that I could sing. I wanted to come out slammin’.”

Eckstine, who was a top aide to producer Quincy Jones for 11 years, acknowledged that the top brass at PolyGram didn’t initially share his enthusiasm about Williams.

“When I told (label president) Dick Asher that I wanted to sign Vanessa, he looked at me like I was crazy. But he never said no. It reminded me of your dad a little bit: ‘Yeah, go ahead, just don’t wreck the car and don’t spend too much money.’ ”

Eckstine and Hervey also faced resistance from most top songwriters and producers, who they looked to for material for the album.

“The big names either didn’t have time . . . or the songs they sent would be ones that had been hashed over and passed on by other artists,” said Eckstine.

“It soon became glaringly apparent that in order for this thing to fly, it would be on the shoulders of a younger, underexposed creative element. By and large, it was a crew of guys from South-Central L.A.--a couple of whom were taking the bus to get to the office.”

Hervey is happy with the response of the R & B and dance communities to Williams’ record. Now he’s turning his attention to the task of crossing the record over to the broader pop market.

“I don’t think we’ve completely turned the corner,” he said, “but we’re plodding along and making good progress. Doing a credible album is a major accomplishment for a person who has been through what she’s been through. We could have ended up like Michael Spinks. It could be out and gone in a week.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for INXS with Ziggy Marley at the Pacific Amphitheatre on Sept. 20. . . . Tickets go on sale Sunday for Peter, Paul and Mary on Sept. 17-18 and George Benson Sept. 25-26, both at the Universal Amphitheatre. . . . Erasure headlines the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Aug. 7.