R&B; Crooner Perry Aims for the Heart : The ‘male Patti LaBelle’ earns a spot on the charts with emotional ballads after years of backup session work.

“I’m a volcano, man--a real volcano,” gushed R&B; singer Phil Perry, sitting at a corner table of a Hollywood restaurant one afternoon early this week.

“When I sing I erupt with emotion--all over the place.” He said it with such intensity that he looked ready to erupt right there.

R&B; fans have become well aware in recent months of these eruptions, which have earned him a flattering nickname--the male Patti LaBelle.

Basically a balladeer with a style brimming with jazz and gospel influences, Perry is a leader--many say the leader--of the renaissance of black crooners that includes Keith Washington, Will Downing and Gene Rice. “The Heart of the Man,” his solo debut album on Capitol, is an R&B; chart fixture.

But you can understand the LaBelle reference best when you see Perry live. He’s appearing Thursday at the Strand in Redondo Beach and Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, sharing the bill jazz-oriented sax player Dave Koz.

Portly and with thinning hair, Perry, at 39, is getting a late shot at stardom. And he’s the first to tell you he doesn’t have heartthrob looks. “You don’t have to be slim and handsome,” he said. “I sing to women. They want to be touched in the heart. That’s where I zap them.”

Growing up in East St. Louis, Perry fell in love with crooning as a youngster, partly because of his mother’s passion for crooners. “I heard those guys on records all the time,” he recalled. “I liked their sound and how they made women feel. I was thinking then that I’d like to do that when I grow up.”

Though Perry is just now finding an R&B; audience, he’s long had a solid reputation in the music business through his session work for such artists as Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart and George Benson. It’s the same path that Luther Vandross--one of Perry’s vocal heroes--followed.

Perry even had a name in jazz circles, thanks to 10 years as a vocalist with guitarist Lee Ritenour. His only public foray in his own right came in the early ‘80s as half of the R&B; duo Perry & Sanlin, which recorded for Capitol Records.

“We couldn’t sell any records back then and the deal went sour,” he explained.

But a decade later, Capitol came calling again. “They wanted me to sing ballads the way I wanted to sing them,” he said. “How could I refuse? When you’re pushing 40, you don’t get a lot of chances. It was the offer I had been waiting all those years for.”

Skidding to the Top: It’s been surprise after surprise since Billboard magazine introduced its new pop album chart tabulation system last month. This week the surprise is the fact that rock group Skid Row’s second album, “Slave to the Grind,” entered the chart at No. 1. It’s the first time an album has done that since Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in 1987.

Billboard’s Geoff Mayfield said that the pattern of high debuts can be expected to continue with the new system, which electronically tracks sales at point of purchase rather than relying on the old system’s store clerk reports. But he said Skid Row, whose 1989 debut album sold more than 3 million copies and built a strong, enthusiastic fan base, would have gotten off to a hot start this time in any case.

“For one thing, the band is on this high-profile tour with Guns N’ Roses, which doesn’t have an album out yet,” Mayfield said. “So kids are buying the Skid Row album (since there’s no Guns N’ Roses album yet). Another big factor is that Skid Row has a video (“Monkey Business”) in heavy rotation on MTV. Also, it’s summertime. Rock always sells very well in the summertime.”

Meanwhile, last week’s surprise, rap group N.W.A’s controversial “Niggaz4Life,” which hit No. 1 in its second week on the chart, fell to No. 3 this week. That had been predicted, given that the rough nature of the group’s material keeps it from getting much radio exposure.