Line of Least Resistance Is ‘Fun, Natural’ : Music: Harry Dean Stanton cringes at the label actor-turned-singer. “I was a singer before I was an actor,” he retorts.

Harry Dean Stanton gets mighty irate when critics who review his concerts refer to him as an “actor-turned-singer.”

“I’ve always been a singer,” said Stanton, who will perform Sunday night at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, accompanied by country-rock singer-guitarist Billy Swan and a three-piece band.

“I was a singer before I was an actor; I’ve been singing all my life,” he said. “The earliest memory I have of singing is when I was 6. I would get up on a stool and sing, but only when I was home alone--I was probably shy.”

Throughout an acting career that stretches back more than three decades and includes starring roles in countless movies--among them “Repo Man,” which made him a cult hero, and “Paris, Texas,” which established him as a legitimate movie star--Stanton has been singing on the side.

He sang at home, he sang in the car and he occasionally sang on the concert stage, called up by the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Carly Simon and David Lindley to do a song or two.

Only recently did he “go public with it,” Stanton said. After his rendition of “Cancion Mextaca,” sung in perfect Spanish, appeared on 1984’s “Paris, Texas” sound track album, Stanton began performing scattered solo concerts all over the country.

“I decided to become a professional singer for the same reason I wanted to be an actor: I have a natural talent for it, and that’s the line of least resistance,” he said. “It’s just that, prior to the sound track, I was rehearsing, and I don’t like a lot of people around when I rehearse.”

In 1987, Stanton made several West Coast club appearances with longtime songwriter-sessionaire Stephen Soles, and last year he spent six weeks on the road with The Call at the invitation of singer Michael Been, his co-star in the movie “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

“He played one of Jesus’ disciples, and I played St. Paul,” Stanton recalled. “One day when we had finished on the set, in Morocco, we just started singing together, and the tour was his idea.

“It went fine. We had good houses all the way around the country, and we got good reviews in New York, Los Angeles and everywhere else.”

Now Stanton is back on the West Coast, doing a handful of club dates to warm up for his upcoming two-week tour of Australia, which starts April 14.

His concert repertoire ranges from graceful Spanish ballads to songs written specifically for him by such tunesmiths as Paul Kennerly (Emmylou Harris’ husband). He also throws in a few covers, such as Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” which he sang at a Roy Orbison tribute last February at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles.

He’s been called a country singer, but he dislikes that label.

“When you mention country, people think of guys like Hank Snow, and I’m not into that hard-country stuff,” Stanton said. “A better description is folk-country-blues-rockabilly, or rockabilly-folk-country-blues or country-blues-folk-rockabilly--not necessarily in that order.”

Stanton’s dislike of labels is understandable, given the “character actor” description that’s haunted him since he broke into movies in the late 1950s.

“The term character actor has a stigma with it; it’s a prison,” Stanton said. “For one thing, character actors don’t have a sex life, and for another, they’re always a sidekick or some other disposable type of human being.”

Stanton, who says he’s 39 but who looks a lot older, was born and raised in Lexington, Ky. He grew up listening to country and black music, and sang in school choral groups and barbershop quartets. In the early 1950s, he moved to Hollywood and began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Since he went professional as a singer in 1984, Stanton has consistently gotten good reviews, with critics praising both his choice of songs and his clean, pure tenor--quite unlike what one would expect from the lived-in, stepped-on face familiar to moviegoers.

In 1987, a reviewer noted in The Times, “The old cliche of seeming to have lived the songs one sings has rarely been more appropriate. If he hadn’t already made a lucrative career out of acting, you could probably find (him) singing the good ol’ good ones in a low-rent Southwestern truck stop/cantina and doing quite well at it, thank you.”

Stanton said he plans to devote even more time to his singing career, eventually cutting an album and writing some songs of his own.

“Under the right conditions, acting and singing are both great,” he said. “But at this point, I’m leaning a little more toward singing because it’s more fun.

“It’s a different medium. It has to do with sound and harmony and the energy of musical instruments and vocals, too, and as a performing artist, I find it more satisfying.”