Gospel singer BeBe Winans is spreading his wings 
By Kelley L. Carter BeBe Winans has gone all Hollywood on us - but not in an over-the-top way.
He's got a cell phone filled with numbers of some of the biggest power players in the land, and a few of them are folks who have been pushing the singer beyond the R&B-tinged gospel for which he's best known. In fact, they're trying to get him involved in entertainment spheres outside music altogether.
Winans has an album due out Tuesday, and it's a break from the type of music he's most known for.
The album features more of an everyday kind of gospel sound and deals with all kinds of new topics for the singer: the struggles of his recent divorce, the love of a good friend, and the power of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.
Winans, who has won four Grammys, 10 Dove Awards, six Stellar Awards, two NAACP Awards and a Soul Train Award, is releasing the project, titled "Dreams", on his own TMG (The Movement Group) label. It's in a partnership with a division of Hidden Beach Recordings, which is home to neo-soul singer Jill Scott.
That's exciting news.
But it's Winans' acting bug and his new radio gig that almost outrank the buzz about the album.
Soon after the album drops, he'll be going to a studio to start taping the pilot episode for a new sitcom he'll star in. Two of his buddies - Tom (as in Hanks) and Denzel (as in Washington) - will co-produce the show, which Winans calls an "Archie Bunker-type" sitcom, set in 2005, that will feature an all-black cast.
And his radio show, which launched five months ago, is becoming one of the most-talked-about things in the gospel music community.
"I'm a big reacher. I reach for big things," Winans says. "Things I haven't even thought of, I reach for."
That's kind of how the acting thing started.
It's not like he really wanted to pursue acting. But how do you deny it when some of the most celebrated people in the biz tell you to go for it? He thought more about it after landing a bit part in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate last year.
"After I finished with the movie, I was asked to come back with the director, Jonathan Demme, to hang out. He said something to me, and I started laughing, and he asked why I was laughing. And I said, `It's the same thing Denzel said to me after directing my video.' He said: `You know what? You have the chops to do this. You ought to do some more movies and TV and pursue this.'
"I just let it go in one ear and out the other. Because, come on, it's Denzel," Winans says. "So after the director said that, he said, `Then you should take heed.' So I told him an idea, and he loved it. He took my phone number and called Tom Hanks and his partner, and before I knew it, I had a meeting with them. ... Long story short: It looks like I'm going to have my own television sitcom. And last year, when the Directors Guild honored Jonathan Demme, he told me at his table to get ready because he's going to put me in more of his movies."
As is commonplace in TV land, the pilot could turn into a series, and start airing this fall or midseason. Or it could not air at all, if networks don't bite.
Likely, Winans' friendships and the people behind the project will help him.
The show, he says, will take place in a suburb of New York - think of something like Long Island - where the characters will discuss racial topics.
"Nothing is etched in stone," Winans says, "But it has great, great possibilities."
The news of a possible TV sitcom for Winans came at one heck of a time.
He had just finished his new solo project, which essentially is his living, musical journal for the last six years. During that time, he was divorced from his wife.
"I enjoy the sun, don't get me wrong," he says. "But I have learned to enjoy the rain. You don't realize until you're older what a blessing it is to have a mother and father in the same home and giving examples to you. It's better for young people to be raised in a peaceful home, not one where the mother and father are fighting. They gave us such balance. They gave us the spiritual side of love, but the natural side as well. All of that gave me a very strong foundation. So that when the storms of life did blow - and they blew hard on occasions - I had the strength and foundation to stand."
Winans is hoping to tour with this album - he's thinking sometime in March - and is in talks with Gladys Knight, who is a good friend of the Winans family and whom Winans calls an incredible vocalist. In the meantime, he'll continue to do music and his syndicated radio show, aptly named "The BeBe Winans Radio Show," which is like a Tom Joyner program for gospel music lovers. In the five months it has been on the air, it has landed in 57 of the top 60 radio markets.
"He's a superstar host who is respected in the gospel format," says Gary Bernstein, president of SupeRadio Networks, the company that syndicates Winans' show. "He brings a real angle - he knows all of the artists, or he's produced all their records. He's able to get intimate, unique compelling content. He has Oprah Winfrey on next week because they're personal friends - and he's had every single major artist in gospel on the show.
"This kind of content has not been available in the gospel market before. He comes across as being conversational, funny and real. Listeners really react to it. He gets in the trenches. He's a superstar, yet he's humble enough to talk to everyone and listen to them. He's not a radio personality. He's an entertainer, yet he's become a really good radio personality."
The show has been doing so well it will expand to three hours in the coming month.
Success is great, Winans says, but he's staying grounded. If he didn't, he says, a whole mess of family would be right there to bring him back down.
"I'm still that same boy from Detroit, Michigan, Mumford High and Beaubien. I'm that same BeBe. It's wild. But I'm not ignorant enough to notice that my phone will ring and Sidney Poitier will call. After I talked to him, I just looked at the phone and was like: Wow, he just called. And then I got a call from Harry Belafonte. I never dreamed that I would have a real conversation with Barbra Streisand, but I do. My phone will ring, and it will be Oprah or it'll be Bill Clinton," Winans says. "Then it will ring, and it will be someone from the ghetto."
- Copyright © 2005 KRT News Service
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