O.C. Singers Hit Just the Note for Coke : Music: Group takes sudden leap from church to national exposure with television commercial.

Kelly Jackson decided to keep it a secret. Rather than spoil the surprise, he would let his mother, who lives in Kansas City, see the Coke commercial herself.

“So she called,” Jackson said, “and she asked me, ‘Were you on television?’ and I was like, ‘Well, yeah, I was.’ And she said, ‘Were you drinking a Coke?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I was.’ And she was just so happy.”

A lot of people are grinning over Jackson’s good fortune, especially the three other young Orange County singers who harmonize by his side in the 30-second spot.

They are all members of New Horizon, a gospel and R&B; group based at Good Samaritan Seventh-day Adventist Church, where most of them worship. Their average audience numbers about 250, the size of Good Samaritan’s Saturday morning congregation.

Now that the singers are prominently featured in a national Coca-Cola ad, however, their voices may be heard by 23.1 million people at a time. According to Nielsen Media Research, that is about the number of weekly viewers tuned to the popular NBC-TV prime-time series “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” during which the ad has aired.

“I still can’t believe that we’ve done it,” Jackson said recently. “It still really hasn’t hit me; I don’t think it has hit any of us yet.”

Indeed, it’s a lot to come to grips with. These clean-cut men, in their late teens and early 20s, lead fairly normal, routine lives. While they dream of becoming professional singers, they work, they go to school, they have girlfriends, they rehearse, they regularly go to church. Two are Marines, stationed at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

In Hollywood, promises come as cheap as samples at the supermarket. But since the Coke ad premiered a few weeks ago, the singers--there are actually five members in the group--have met with an A&M; Records Inc. executive who scouts new talent. There is talk that they may sing on the soundtrack of a new movie featuring pop stars Boyz II Men, and audition for “Sister Act II,” a sequel to the hit film with Whoopi Goldberg. Today, they have an interview at Virgin Records, another recording industry giant.

How will they handle the enormous exposure suddenly thrust their way? Will it mean the beginning of a lucrative recording career? Or merely a sweet memory of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure represented by a yellowed pay stub stuck in a photo album?

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“Mouthful,” the name of New Horizon’s Coke ad, begins as the camera seamlessly pans up the side of an inner-city tenement, through a curtained window and into a modest apartment. The camera then passes a kitchen and turns a corner into a living room to find the young men singing a cappella . It comes to rest on lead singer Jackson, guzzling Coke from a can.

Even before the men come into view, their soulful voices are heard singing the word always , as in “Always Coca-Cola,” Coke’s new campaign motto.

“It’s like (viewers) are finding out where the singing is coming from,” said Sharon Kimbrough, who produced the ad for Chicago-based Burrell Communications Group. Burrell, one of the country’s largest African-American-owned marketing and communications firms, has been creating and producing Coke ads targeting African-Americans for about 20 years.

“Mouthful,” shot on March 2 in downtown Los Angeles, was directed by David Kellogg, who has done music videos and a 1991 movie with rap artist Vanilla Ice. It is one of eight ads, designed to appeal to black teens, that Burrell produced for the “Always” campaign, officials with Burrell and the Coca-Cola Co. said.

Some Coke ads have featured famous types, and archrival Pepsi-Cola’s current campaign stars singer Ray Charles.

But Burrell art director Stanley Yorker, who wrote “Mouthful,” said all eight spots feature unknowns, so that Coke--and not a big-name celebrity--is the star of the show. (When several of the new campaign’s ads were unveiled in February, Coca-Cola President and Chief Operating Officer Donald R. Keough said that was precisely the idea behind the approach.)

Burrell executives consulted with representatives from Creative Artists Agency, the powerful Hollywood talent broker that is responsible for 24 of Coke’s 26 new spots, a Coke spokeswoman said. CAA, hired by Coca-Cola in 1991, is said to have broad authority over every facet of advertising for the Coca-Cola Classic brand in the United States and Coca-Cola abroad.

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New Horizon’s members include Jackson, 22, a Marine corporal; Jamal Gosin, 19, a Rancho Santiago College freshman who does clerical work for a temporary employment agency; Robert Brown Jr., 20, who attends Orange Coast College and works for a courier service; Jason Hibbert, 21, a Marine lance corporal, and James Cephas, 22, who works as a word processor.

Jackson joined the group almost by accident. When Cephas was unable to make it to film the commercial, Hibbert said he knew of a fellow Marine who might work as a replacement.

“I knocked on his door and said, ‘Kelly, you’ve got to come with us, dude. We’re going to be in a Coke ad,’ ” Hibbert explained. As it turned out, Jackson sounded so good he became the group’s lead singer. Ever since, New Horizon has been a quintet.

Nattily dressed at Saturday’s Good Samaritan service, the singers performed two heartfelt songs--delivering one with a be-bop beat--then sat down with a reporter and discussed their big break.

Brown, the group’s bass, has had the most training of the bunch--mostly from singing in school choirs--and he and Cephas play keyboard. Their backgrounds vary: Brown still lives in the house in which he grew up and went to the same private school from kindergarten through 12th grade. Gosin, whose family moved around “like nomads” when he was a child, won’t go into detail but said, “You name a problem and it probably affected my house one way or another.”

Excluding Jackson, a Baptist, members of the group met at Good Samaritan church and have been singing together on and off for about six years at their church and others, at rest homes or for the homeless, at malls, a few nightspots, and once at Knott’s Berry Farm.

In February, after hearing New Horizon sing at a benefit basketball game, a friend gave their name to McKinley Alexander, owner of Show Biz Entertainment, a small, year-old Hollywood talent agency. Alexander arranged for the group to try out for the ad with about two dozen other groups.

Busy all day, “we didn’t get there until like 8 p.m.,” Hibbert said, “and right as we got there, the last group was coming out. But we auditioned and they liked us.”

One agonizing week later, the singers finally heard they had made it to “call backs,” or the second round of auditions, and again drove up to Los Angeles, arriving late once more. This time, things didn’t go so smoothly.

“We jacked up!” Hibbert said. “We messed up. Everything fell apart. We were so mad after we sang, we just walked out the door and left. We got in the car, and we were like halfway to the freeway when we said, wait a minute. We have to go back. Even if we don’t get the commercial, we have to at least let them know that we’re better than what they just heard.

“So we went back,” Hibbert continued, “and they were done with the auditions, but we asked if we could do it again, and they said, ‘Sure!’ And we did, and we sounded a lot better. The next day, they called us and said, ‘OK, you guys got the commercial.’ ”

The group was elated, stunned and “thankful” to God, Brown said.

“All along we had been praying about it,” he said. “Even after we messed up, we thought, let’s just thank the Lord that we at least tried. And when we went back, we prayed, ‘Lord, let us just do better than before. And when the (casting agent) told us we made it, she said, ‘That’s a miracle.’ ”

“Her exact words were ‘the Lord was looking out for you guys,’ ” Hibbert interjected. “She said nobody ever, ever comes back like that to an audition.”

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New Horizon aced the tryout because its members looked like “average, real people,” said Burrell’s producer Kimbrough.

“There were a lot of more glitzy, showy people auditioning,” she said, “but we didn’t want a show biz kind of look. Their style was nice and laid-back and it just worked. They had a smooth, more soothing sound.”

“Mouthful” has something of a precedent in “Street Song,” a 1970s Burrell Coke ad featuring a cappella singers that became “kind of a Coke classic,” Kimbrough said. However, New Horizon is the first unknown singing group to appear in a Burrell Coke ad because “Street Song’s” actors didn’t sing, they lip-synced, she said.

The ad is slated to air in 30- and 15-second versions during network, syndicated and cable TV shows, she said, at least through October.

“They did a fantastic job,” Kimbrough said. “We were very pleased not just with their performance but with their cooperative attitude.”

Filming the ad was a blast, the singers said, even if it meant several trips to the commode or “watered-down” Coke dribbling down their shirts as they held a guzzling pose. Seventh-day Adventists are advised against drinking caffeinated beverages, but it’s not an absolute rule.

“I think I drank more Coke that day than I ever did in my life,” said Jackson, the Baptist.

So far, the four singers who appeared in the commercial have each received about $3,000. Each could additionally earn “from $10,000 to about $50,000” in residuals, Kimbrough said, depending on such variables as the number of times the commercial airs.

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The possibility of fame and of lucre like that concerns some of those closest to New Horizon.

Rose Gosin, Jamal’s mother, is pleased for her son but glad he is studying business.

“You need to have some kind of contingency built into your career goals,” said Gosin, an accountant at Xerox Corp. in Santa Ana.

J. Anthony Boger, Good Samaritan’s pastor, said he is “a little scared” the singers will lose sight of their priorities: spiritual things above all.

During the 90-minute service Saturday, Boger prayed for the young men, kneeling along with the congregation in the simply adorned church. As the lights were dimmed and his voice grew louder and swelled with emotion, he beseeched God for their success and protection.

“The world has a lot of lures out there,” Boger said, asking God to keep them safe “from the trials which Satan will put before them!”

The aspiring singers say they aren’t worried about going astray.

So far, their lives have not changed “at all”--except to have become busier, what with answering congratulatory calls, driving to various Hollywood executives’ offices and practicing more than ever.

“A couple of days ago, we didn’t finish rehearsing until 4:30 in the morning,” said Brown, who clocks in for work delivering packages at 6 a.m. “I didn’t go to sleep that night, I drove straight to work. And it was tough. I almost hit that center divider a few times” because of drowsiness.

Said Hibbert: “I know that all these things that have happened have really been because of our faith. We believe that He would guide us the way He wants us to go, so whatever we end up with, we just have to trust Him. If this went no further, we’d still be happy. Even if we hadn’t gotten this commercial, we were happy just singing in the malls. We just went with the flow. We just love to sing.”

Jackson says he is confident that if the group hits it big, his feet will stay on the ground. He recalled the phone conversation he had with his surprised mother.

“She said, ‘Don’t let it get to your head,’ ” Jackson said, “and she’s constantly saying to be yourself and to strive to be better, and to strive to make others around you better. . . . She broke it down to me like that. And I went, ‘OK. I love you.’ ”