Looking for Respect

And now, from the same manager who brought the world the Spice Girls, it’s . . .

Spice Boy?

Well, no.

English rockabilly phenom Jimmy Ray, unlike the Spice Girls, is not a creation of manager Simon Fuller--and he seems perfectly content with the stage name he has adopted for himself. He repeats it often enough in his debut hit single, “Are You Jimmy Ray?”

Mixing acoustic guitars and hip-hop beats into a style that Ray calls “popabilly hip-hop,” the catchy Epic Records single has rocketed up the U.S. charts even before Ray has played a club date here.

The song’s infectious chorus--”Are you Johnnie Ray? Are you Stingray? Are you Fay Wray? Are you Jimmy Ray?”--practically begs the question:

Who is Jimmy Ray?

First and foremost, the 22-year-old Londoner is a guitar-playing, pompadour-wearing ‘50s throwback who has been struggling since he was 15 to get his music heard.

But he’s also the charismatic product of a working-class family who comes across as genuinely appreciative and almost dumbfounded by his sudden success.

“To be in America and have a Top 20 record, I can’t explain how good that feels,” he says, smiling broadly and frequently during an interview at a Sunset Strip hotel while in town to appear on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” “It’s incredible how people have been so welcoming.

“Back in England, it’s almost like I’m not even considered a songwriter or a singer because of the way I look”--which is like an Elvis impersonator. “It’s almost like I’m a clown. I’m at the opposite end of what everybody thinks is cool.”

The question is whether anyone will take the young singer seriously once they learn of his connection to Fuller, who concocted the commercially successful but artistically lightweight Spice Girls and guided them to stardom before he was fired last fall.

“If it was the Spice Boys, it would be a problem,” says Bob Merlis, senior vice president of worldwide corporate communications at Warner Bros. Records. “But as an individual guy, no. He’s tainted by management? I don’t buy that.”

Fuller declined to be interviewed, and Ray doesn’t see the management connection as an issue. In fact, Ray says he was flattered that Fuller was interested: “He was very heavily involved with the Spice Girls at the time, and I didn’t imagine he would have the time or the inclination to get involved with me.”

Others, however, see trouble ahead for the singer.

“Nobody will take this guy seriously as an artist,” snaps an executive at a rival label when asked about the Spice Girls link.

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And some say Ray only added to a potential credibility problem with his debut single.

“It’s a novelty record,” says Jeff Pollack, owner of the nation’s largest radio programming consulting firm. “I don’t think anybody would say that a record like that is going to launch a career. . . .

“This is a record that is going to disappear quickly, and an artist who’s going to disappear with it.”

Not so fast, says Michele Dix, vice president of music and talent programming at MTV. She loves the song and its stylish video, which shows the photogenic Ray in a trailer-park setting with hip-hop cheerleaders keeping time to the music.

“It’s refreshing,” Dix says of the song. “It was sort of an instantaneous hit, but that’s really the only similarity you can draw to the Spice Girls.”

Thanks in part to the extensive MTV exposure, Ray’s record is No. 16 this week on Billboard magazine’s singles chart. Its success pushed the singer’s debut album, “Jimmy Ray,” to No. 131.

And Epic is counting on Ray to be more than a one-hit wonder. Indeed, a label subsidiary signed Ray long before the singer had aligned himself with Fuller.

“We believe in Jimmy Ray,” says Ron Cerrito, vice president of marketing for Epic. “We think he’s an artist for the future. The way he’s taken hip-hop and rockabilly and melded it--we think it’s an interesting combination, and that he’s going to stick around.”

Born James Edwards, Ray fell in love with ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll and icons such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry while listening to his mother’s old 45s as a youngster. He joined a pop band at 15, then later joined forces with a techno whiz from Glasgow named Gypsy to form A/V, which fused rock and electronic dance music.

After they split two years ago, Ray says, “I kind of naturally went back to this more earthy, soul-based songwriting,” resulting in the songs on his debut album.

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Con Fitzpatrick, Ray’s co-writer on all but three of the album’s 10 tracks, came up with the concept for the hit single.

“I have to give full credit to Con for the line, ‘Are you Jimmy Ray?’ ” the singer says. The lyric, he explains, is sort of a rallying cry to the song’s listeners: “Are you interested in where I’m coming from with my music? If so, there’s plenty more where that comes from.”

Epic’s Cerrito believes.

“In my book,” the executive says, “if an artist grows up on influences and uses them to write, sing and produce a record, he automatically has credibility as an artist. Who’s to say he’s less credible than the next artist?

“He’s got a fun record and people enjoy listening to it. That’s all the credibility he needs.”