Politics Mixes With Music to Help Save the Children : Telethon: New Jack Swing and the New World Order join forces for a child-immunization drive at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Bell Biv DeVoe. Gorbachev Schevardnadze Shultz?

New Jack Swing met the New World Order at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Wednesday for the taping of a mini-telethon to raise money for a child-immunization campaign headed by two former Soviet stalwarts and an ex-United States Secretary of State.

Boston-based funk group Bell Biv DeVoe’s lively two-song performance was one of the most entertaining segments of an evening as notable for its range of musical acts as for its selection of ideologies.

Among those participating were Bonnie Raitt, David Crosby, Wynonna Judd, Clint Black, Expose and, on videotape, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose Gorbachev Foundation/USA is spearheading the effort to vaccinate children in the United States and the former Soviet Union nations.

Eduard A. Schevardnadze, president of the now independent nation of Georgia, former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and pop star Joel are the effort’s co-chairs.

Who would have thought 10 or 20 years ago that a red-white-and-blue country star like Clint Black would ever be part of a show also featuring the onetime head of the communist world? Black certainly didn’t.

“When I was growing up I thought like everyone else I guess that (the Soviets) were the mortal enemy to the end of time,” Black said backstage before the taping of the two-hour special, which airs on KCAL Channel 9 on Sunday at 9 p.m. and repeats on July 5 at 8 a.m.

But then Black probably never pictured himself on a show with an act like Bell Biv DeVoe, which performed the new songs “Lovely,” an ode to an underage girl, and “Ghetto Bootie,” a celebration of ample female derrieres.

What brought these people together was clear:

“To help save children,” said Raitt, who performed the slinky “Something to Talk About” and the sentimental ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

“Anything to help children,” said Ringo Starr, who drummed for the New Maroons, an aggregate featuring bassist Don Was, keyboardist Benmont Tench and guitarist Mark Goldenberg behind impressive young singer Jonelle Mosser.

“We’re here to show our love for the children,” said BBD’s Michael Bivens, though he added a particularly capitalist twist: “And to promote our album.”

Whatever it took, the musical and political mixes clicked and the appeals for cash--live from the likes of actors Mike Farrell, Kathy Bates and Mimi Rogers and on tape from rapper LL Cool J, popster Phil Collins and others--keyed more on reason than the pity-and-guilt routine usually tapped for such fund-raisers.

Not that Jerry Lewis has anything to worry about. There were no magic Jerry-and-Dean or Jerry-and-Frank moments in the show, and no sense of triumphant hype as in such pop benefits as Live Aid or Farm Aid.

But with people’s attention spans becoming ever shorter, the crisp, varied, generally maudlin-free production makes for a winning alternative to the sprawling epics that the term telethon usually brings to mind.