COMPANY TOWN : Club’s Foundation Is a Blues Project : Music: House of Blues founder wants exclusive room to fund effort for racial harmony.

At a recent Sunday afternoon gospel session at the House of Blues, 30 young voices rose in high-pitched unison: “Money ain’t everythiiiiiiiing!”

While Brent Jones & the TP Mob energized an overflow crowd of 300, House of Blues’ founder Isaac Tigrett waited to meet with an investor in the rapidly growing chain of music clubs, whose third branch is a $9-million extravaganza on the Sunset Strip. Later, in the plush privacy of the club’s Foundation Room, Tigrett clarifies the gospel singers’ sentiment: Money ain’t everything. But it helps.

In a bid to woo sponsors for the fledgling blues-education foundation that is his pet project, Tigrett and House of Blues investor Dan Aykroyd today will send out 500 solicitations, mostly to prominent members of the entertainment industry. The partners’ bait for luring minimum $2,200 cash donations is a membership to the Foundation Room, a private third-floor club, which includes a posh 70-seat dining room run by highly regarded L.A. chef Ken Frank, an exotically decorated lounge and a candle-lit shrine to Buddha.

“I opened this place to the public, thinking: ‘Let them all get their beak wet. Let them all see where they won’t be able to go (unless they sponsor the Foundation),’ ” Tigrett says of the private club.

In this case, the “public” is a steady stream of celebrities and high-profile executives. Visitors since the club’s May opening include Madonna, Kevin Costner, Cher, Bob Dylan, Sylvester Stallone, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner, CAA Chairman Michael S. Ovitz and billionaire financier Marvin Davis.

Whether he can sell Hollywood on his vision of racial harmony through music education for kids is the biggest challenge for Tigrett, an enigmatic and shrewd businessman who made millions of dollars as co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe.

“My master, (the Indian swami) Sai Baba, put me up to this whole thing,” Tigrett said of his decision to come to Los Angeles after building successful House of Blues branches in Cambridge, Mass., and New Orleans. Tigrett’s goals for the Los Angeles foundation are formidable, not to mention cosmic: “We want to be the beacon of light in a sea of darkness,” he says.

While some will surely gravitate toward that light, simply based on the perceived cachet, the early response is mixed. In a town like Los Angeles, where the place to be seen changes monthly, it’s tough for any club to attract and hold a loyal following.

“The House of Blues is considered a great place to go, but the private club is considered the height of ridiculousness,” says one studio executive. “The added value is very little, but the added cost (for access to the club) is quite high.”

Others have griped about the Foundation Room’s showing elitist tendencies. “I hear the whole thing is a really pretentious experience,” says Jeff Gold, a senior vice president at Warner Bros. Records. “No matter where the money goes, (the club) seems to be designed around the concept of exclusivity.” Has Gold visited the club? “No, I haven’t been invited,” he says.

Regardless of criticism, Tigrett says he has no intention of compromising his vision of the foundation just to please the fickle public. “If people want to join a hip place because we’re hip and we’re ‘in,’ tell them to save their money and join a country club,” he says.

Tigrett plans to launch the first program in 90 days, which will consist of bringing schoolchildren to the House of Blues for a four-hour session on the “history of American music, starting in Africa.”

Director of Public Awareness Nigel Shanley, who says his tongue-in-cheek title was invented by Aykroyd, says of Tigrett: “Isaac doesn’t care if there are only five people in this room.

“This is a holy room,” he adds, waving an arm around a space outfitted in a rich Indian scheme featuring sequined cloth wall coverings and carved-wood remnants from a maharajah’s palace. One intimate den is presided over by a statue of the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesha. “The whole place is holy for him.”

Indeed, it’s clear why Tigrett, a Memphis, Tenn., native, is not easily understood by L.A. residents. The extremely guarded businessman has been a follower of India’s Sai Baba for nearly two decades, and has spent much of his time in London.

“Nobody really knows what he is about,” says John Branca, a prominent music lawyer whose clients include the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Aerosmith, the latter of which are House of Blues investors. Branca, who says he might consider becoming a Foundation sponsor, says that “as a VIP room, it may be the best in the city.”

The Foundation Room could also be a clever way for Tigrett to forge relationships with wealthy would-be investors in H.O.B. Entertainment Inc., the company that controls the House of Blues. The company’s immediate plans include opening a House of Blues and an accompanying foundation in New York by 1995. Plans for a Paris branch are also under way. The company’s biggest investor is the Cambridge-based Aenas Group Inc., an investment arm of Harvard University, which has injected at least $10 million.

Others among the company’s disparate group of 40 investors include British financier Sir James Goldsmith, actor Jim Belushi and musician Isaac Hayes.

Tigrett has few Los Angeles investors, and the company likes to push the strange notion that it will not get sucked into the materialistic ways of the city. “We tell all the staff people: Forget you’re in L.A.,” says the South African-born Shanley, who comes from Boston via New Orleans.