Lady Tweaks the Blues

Though Peggy Scott-Adams scored three Top 40 hits as part of an R&B; duo in the late ‘60s, she is more likely these days to sing at funerals than in nightclubs.

The 48-year-old wife of mortician and former Compton city councilman Robert Adams Sr. long ago abandoned her dream of regaining a place in the pop music spotlight, instead focusing on her marriage and helping her husband run his business.

But Scott-Adams’ nearly three decades in obscurity since such hits as “Lover’s Holiday” and “Soulshake” with former partner Jo Jo Benson have ended with the coast-to-coast commotion created by “Bill,” a song from an album she quietly released last fall on tiny Miss Butch Records.

A bluesy lament penned by veteran L.A. songwriter Jimmy Lewis, “Bill” adds a twist to an age-old topic: This cheating husband is leaving his wife--for another man. And the tale is causing an uproar wherever it’s played.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Cliff Winston, program director at KJLH-FM (102.3) in Los Angeles, which has received about 1,000 calls since it started playing the song on Tuesday.

Says the singer with a laugh, noting that her phone has suddenly started ringing with calls from radio stations and newspapers from across the United States and Europe: “ ‘Bill’ is just about to drive me crazy. Never in our wildest imagination did I ever, ever expect anything like this. This is absolutely a phenomenon.”

Mardi Gras Records in New Orleans, which distributes the Lewis-owned Miss Butch Records, expected Scott-Adams’ album, “Help Yourself,” to sell fewer than 10,000 copies, but the company has shipped about 130,000, including 20,000 just this week. (“Bill” is not yet available as a single.)

“We’re barely keeping up with the demand,” says Mardi Gras President Warren Hildebrand, who hired an L.A. publicist to handle the media requests. “We’re rushing to get them out.”

The success of “Bill” also has focused attention on the 58-year-old Lewis, whose songwriting credits include two Top 20 R&B; hits for Ray Charles, “If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck” in 1969 and “If You Were Mine” in 1970.

“I didn’t sit down to write a song called ‘Bill,’ or about that subject,” Lewis says. “The words just came out of my mouth: ‘Love another guy.’ I swear, I don’t know why I said it. It sounded really good, but with that kind of song, you’ve got to be really careful about how you write it because you don’t want to offend anyone. You’re walking a thin line.”

At first, Scott-Adams was reluctant to record “Bill.”

“I didn’t know if I wanted to be attached to something of this nature,” says the singer, who recorded a pair of duets with Ray Charles in the early ‘90s. “But after we went into the studio and I saw how it was going to be tastefully done and with such sensitivity, I was very proud of the project.”

She’ll start a tour of the South and the Midwest early next month.

“I’m back in it 100%,” she says enthusiastically. “When I recorded the album, I thought I’d keep it kind of low-key, but I’m going to do whatever they ask me to do. I’m back in entertainment.”

Labor of Love: As a South African, Jumbo VanRenen was a little overwhelmed when he was asked to compile the soundtrack for a documentary on Nelson Mandela.

His assignment: Collect songs that would make up a comprehensive history of South African music while conjuring more than seven decades in the life of one of the century’s most celebrated political prisoners and the struggle against apartheid.

“It was pretty daunting at the start,” VanRenen says from London, where he is head of A&R; for Mango Records, a subsidiary of Island Records. “But once I got going, it was a pleasure. It’s a real joy to check into every angle of your country’s culture.”

Despite the subject matter of the film, an Island Pictures release directed by Jo Menell and Angus Gibson and scheduled for a March 21 premiere in Los Angeles and New York, the eclectic music is neither somber nor heavy-handed.

Released this week by Mango Records, the album ranges from traditional folk songs and the South African president’s pop and jazz favorites from the ‘50s to the protest anthems that publicized his plight in the ‘80s, including the Specials’ international ska hit “Nelson Mandela.”

It is probably the most high-profile collection of the country’s music since Paul Simon’s Grammy-winning 1986 album “Graceland.”

“I hope that it gives people a better understanding of the wide range of music in South Africa and, at the same time, let’s them have fun and enjoy themselves,” VanRenen says. “It’s not all serious political rhetoric. This is music for drinking and having a party, as well as the serious side of things.”