POP BEAT: Angelou . . . Calypso Singer? : Here’s Maya Angelou . . . Calypso Singer?

The world knows Maya Angelou as President Clinton’s favorite poet and the award-winning author of the autobiographical novel “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

But Scamp Records wants us to know her as the calypso singer whose 1957 album, “Miss Calypso,” was reissued this week by the tiny, New York-based label.

It’s tempting, after seeing the album cover, to dismiss the collection as a spoof--maybe something from Spy magazine. It pictures the future literary giant, then 27, dancing barefoot around a bonfire in a low-cut red dress, her right leg exposed to mid-thigh.

Chuck Foster of Long Beach almost couldn’t believe his eyes when he found a $3.95 copy of the old vinyl album two years ago in a used-record bin at Rhino Records in Westwood.

“Immediately, it was like, ‘Maya Angelou? How could this be?’ ” recalls Foster, whose rave review of the album in the Beat, an L.A.-based world-music magazine, sparked Scamp’s interest in reissuing the collection. “This was a side of her I didn’t know about.”

Few others did either--Angelou barely touches on it in her autobiographical works--but it’s no gag.

Before turning to poetry and prose, Angelou was a nightclub performer hoping to capitalize on the calypso-mania that swept America after the release of Harry Belafonte’s wildly successful “Banana Boat (Day-O)” in 1957.

The original liner notes for the “Miss Calypso” album reveal that Angelou performed in such clubs as the Village Vanguard in New York, the Purple Onion in San Francisco and the Keyboard in Beverly Hills.

“Miss Angelou . . . set the crowd on its ears for a solid 20 minutes with her jazz calypso,” wrote Variety’s Stef in a review of a Chicago show. “Her sizzling act is a unique creation in the jazz world when everything progressive is expected to be on the cool side.”

Ashley Warren, project manager for Scamp, says the reissue is not meant to be a novelty.

“The musical content is quite good, and her voice is captivating,” he says. “It’s not a kitschy record. It’s not a record you can snicker to, although the cover photo is a little funny. . . .

“If this was a record that could be construed as a parody, I wouldn’t have been interested because I’m very mindful of what her fans might expect. I respect Ms. Angelou’s body of work.”

Warren acknowledges, however, that a degree of camp was involved in an earlier celebrity reissue from Scamp--an album of calypso songs by tough-guy actor Robert Mitchum. “Calypso Is Like So . . . ,” recorded by Mitchum in 1957, was Scamp’s inaugural release last November.

It too features an amusing cover, showing a relaxed Mitchum looking mischievously into the camera, a glass of rum in his hand and a woman at his side.

The Mitchum reissue, Warren concedes, was a “fun record,” delivered with a wink and a smile.

Warren, though, believed enough in the Angelou album to even ask her for comments to use in the liner notes. But the author declined, saying she was too busy.

Is she upset by the reissue?

“She shouldn’t be,” Warren says. “If anything, it may [cause some to ask], ‘Why did she stop singing?’ ”

Foster’s review in the Beat called Angelou’s album “as fresh as the day it was recorded and entirely captivating.” Foster lobbied for the disc to be reissued “so the contemporary world-music audience can get a taste of what the gone cats of bygone days must have grooved to before Maya Angelou put down her microphone and picked up her pen.”

Scamp, a division of Caroline Records, bought the rights to “Miss Calypso” from Liberty Records (for a figure between $10,000 and $25,000, Warren says) and located the master tapes. Warren couldn’t find the original cover art, however, so a picture of Foster’s own copy was shot.

Scamp’s overall mission, Warren says, is to release “vintage cool” records, which he defines as “older releases that have an interesting cachet or an interesting story around them.”

Mitchum was “flattered and delighted” to have his album reissued, says his agent, Jack Gilardi. “He got a kick out of it.”

Foster, meanwhile, continues to search the used-record bins. One gem he’d love to uncover is the calypso album that was said to have been recorded in the 1950s by Louis Eugene Wolcott, who went by the stage names Calypso Louie and the Charmer. Wolcott changed his name to Louis Farrakhan when he joined the Nation of Islam in 1955.

“Everybody’s looking for that one,” Foster says. “Everybody knows it exists, and I hope someone finds it and does the same thing they did with the Mitchum and Maya Angelou albums. But would anybody have the nerve?”

Not Scamp.

Says Warren: “We might get firebombed if we put that out.”