SHAI : R&B; Students’ Homework Pays Off

When it comes to pop Cinderella stories, it’s hard to top the tale of Shai.

A little over a year ago, there wasn’t even a real group. Now the R&B; vocal quartet has followed the surprise Top 5 single “If I Ever Fall in Love” with an instant Top 10 album of the same name.

“Singing was just a hobby,” says Shai’s Marc Gay. “None of us ever had any major singing experience. We were just college students having fun.”

Gay has just graduated from Howard University in Washington, but the other Shai members--Garfield Bright, Carl Martin and Darnell Van Rensalier--are still students there. Loosely formed in 1990 and working sporadically in campus-area gigs, the four singers, now in their early 20s, didn’t come together seriously until after a talent contest late in 1991. They decided they were ready for a record deal, but label executives turned them down.

Here’s where the Cinderella part comes in.

The group put together a demo of the dreamy ballad “If I Ever Fall in Love” for $400 and got it to a Washington radio station last fall in hopes that it might be used in a demo-tape contest for new artists.

“We would have been happy to get it played once,” Gay says. “But they liked it so much that they started playing it regularly--as if it were a polished record by some established artist instead of a demo by some college kids. We found out by hearing our song by accident on the car radio.”

Other stations picked up on the single, giving Shai a hit even before it had a record deal. The quartet signed in September with Gasoline Alley/MCA Records and wound up writing and producing its debut album, which came out at the end of last year.

If you happen to confuse the group’s sleek, street-corner harmonies with those of Boyz II Men, Jodeci or Color Me Badd, the members of Shai won’t be offended.

“We were listening to records by those groups when we were creating our sound,” Gay says. “They inspired us. We learned from them. If they hadn’t paved the way for this sound, we’d be still singing on campus somewhere.”