Newest Child Star Jamie Knight, 9, Gets Rave Reviews

PHILADELPHIA - Jamie Knight climbed into the limo, plopped her "Dinosaurs" lunch box on her lap and pulled an arithmetic book out of her backpack. "I hate math," she said, "so I do it first."

The limousine rolled onto Broad Street, headed for New York City - and the Apollo Theater. The record companies would all be there. (Mom had called them.) And the French television reporter. (Mom, again.) And maybe that break that would bring Jamie one step closer to stardom.

Mom and Dad and Jamie expect nothing less.

Jamie Knight is 9 - in the fourth grade at Ellwood School in East Oak Lane. This fall, she released her first compact disc. Two months ago, she was named 1994 Junior Vocalist of the Year on Ed McMahon's television show, "Star Search." (It will air in February.) And she first sang at the legendary Apollo in October, when she met actor Wesley Snipes and jammed afterward at another Manhattan club with saxophonist Grover Washington Jr.

The Apollo liked Jamie so much they invited her back. So one day two weeks ago, Mom and Dad rented a limo, pulled Jamie and her brother, James, 6, from school after lunch, and headed north to New York.

Jamie's parents, and particularly her mother, have spent years preparing and promoting their daughter for a singing career. Darlene Knight, Jamie's mother, manager, publicist and vocal coach - known in the business as a "Momager" - is zealous and relentless in her quest for Jamie's success. "Do you know Michael Jordan?" she asked recently. "Now that he's retired, he might have time to help Jamie."

Mom will work any angle. She booked Jamie for a gig with Oprah Winfrey's prospective mother-in-law in Cape May, N.J., in February. "I figured what better way to get to Oprah than through her mother-in-law."

Wholesome image

Mom deliberately started Jamie as a jazz singer, doing classics such as "Take the A Train" and "Route 66" - because she thought it was good training and a sharp contrast to all those rappers with vulgar lyrics and hats on backward.

She works hard at promoting a ladylike, wholesome image - Jamie arrived at a gig over Labor Day in a white Rolls-Royce, and usually performs in beautiful dresses.

Darlene and her husband, James "Sugarman" Knight, were once professional vocalists. They have transferred their aspirations for themselves to their daughter. Yet, they say they are careful to preserve Jamie's childhood. She gets good grades and performs no more than once or twice a month.

"What Jamie's doing is something that is adding to her childhood," says Mom. "She has a lot of fun. It's magical, really. Every day is something new."

When Jamie won "Star Search," filmed in Orlando, home of DisneyWorld, her reaction was: "OK, I won, now I get to go to the park!"

Mom was a different story.

"My heart just fluttered," she recalled. "We had worked so hard. You would have thought I had just won the Miss America pageant. It gave me something I'd never had."

When Jamie came off stage, Mom picked her up and swung her around and hugged her.

"Put me down!" demanded Jamie. "Get a grip."

Her parents see Jamie's ascendancy as fate. "It's a seed planted through me and my father and his dad," says Darlene, whose father, Bill Collick, played jazz bass with Billy Paul. "And it's just time and her generation that she'll be the one to carry it out."

Scott Voss, casting director at "Star Search," says he thinks Jamie will be a star. "She's as good as Michael Jackson was when he was a kid," said Voss. "She's going to make it. She's one of the best singers I've ever seen at her age."

Mom and Dad see her one day signing with a major record label, acting in movies and on television, appearing on "Arsenio" and opening for big stars on concert tours.

So far, Jamie has won $5,000 on "Star Search." In the past she's worked for $750 to $1,000, but now her mother says "the sky's the limit." Right now, stresses Mom, the goal is exposure and experience - not money.

"I know it in my heart that Jamie's going to be an upcoming legend," says Mom. "Jamie is right at the tip of the mountain. She just needs a little push."

While stardom waits, homework doesn't.

Jamie finishes her math and pulls out her spelling book. And the limo rolls north.

Strutting her stuff

In New York, the limo stops at the Manhattan School of Music, where the family meets Eric Lewis, 19, of Camden, N.J., who studied in Philadelphia under Gerald Price, a jazz musician who also has worked with Jamie. Lewis is now a scholarship student at the Manhattan school with a bright future. He will play the keyboard for Jamie at the Apollo.

While the limo idles out front, Mom, Lewis and Jamie pop into a practice room to rehearse. Mom tells her daughter how to open the act.

"Remember to say," and then Mom vamps: "I'd like to thank the Apollo family for bringing me back!"

Then she adds, "Like you really mean it, with a big smile. Then say, `Hit it, boys,' and then strut. . . . Walk around like you're really grooving and you love it."

An hour later, they are on stage at the Apollo, running through a sound check. The Apollo - mecca of black entertainment for half a century; venue of Billie Holiday, James Brown, Nat King Cole and so many others - looks weary now, with peeling paint, worn carpet, dressing rooms that remind one of a cheap hotel.

This is amateur night, but Jamie will sing six songs as the special guest. During the sound check, she runs through her numbers like a politician on the stump, with sort of a robotic ease. If the power of the Apollo has affected her, it is not evident.

But what can one expect from a 9-year-old? Jamie may sing the blues, but she still believes in Santa. She did elementary school cheers in the dressing room to kill time before the show.

"Jamie hasn't had any real pain or anything yet," says Mom. "It'll come."

Show-biz family

James and Darlene Knight know about the trials of working in show business, and the setbacks and disappointments that come with growing up.

James, 42, sang in the '60s with the Philadelphia group the Epsilons and helped manage McFadden and Whitehead, who popularized the song "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now." He worked with Otis Redding and was supposed to be on the plane that crashed in Wisconsin in December 1967, killing Redding and six others. He is no stranger to the Apollo stage - "I used to live here."

Darlene, 34, is a former backup singer with McFadden and Whitehead, which is how she met her husband. "He told me he had duffel bags full of money," she recalled, "and I believed him." She eventually learned that the Philly-born and streetwise Mr. Knight had no duffel bags, but she married him anyway.

Soon after, James started working as a small contractor, and Darlene began doing investigating for a law firm. They kept a hand in the music business, running Sugarlene Records (which helped cut Jamie's album) and managing other acts as Knight-Collick Productions.

They also started a family - Jamie was born in 1984 and James three years later. And they decided to teach their children what they loved - music and entertainment.

"Since we liked it so well," said James, "we decided we'd put it into our babies, if they had it in them to be singers."

This is not something they imposed on Jamie, they stress.

"She has begged me to let her sing since the time she could talk," says her mother.

And even before.

"I used to place her hand on my throat when she was 5 months old," said Darlene. "Then I used to sing to her. At 7 months, she started gaga-ing this melody on enough pitch that you knew she was trying to sing it. It scared me."

Jamie agrees that "I used to nag constantly, `When am I going to get a chance to sing?' "

With a child's optimism, she has her future planned. "I'm going to sing half my life and then just stop," she said. "And then get married and do all that icky stuff."

Asked if she's a celebrity, she looks off into the sky and says, "I like that word."

At the Apollo

On stage at the Apollo, Jamie nails it. She struts and smiles and charms, and has this rowdy crowd - eager to boo the bad acts - raptly attentive. Lee Chamberlain, the limo driver who has spent the day with Jamie, can't believe his eyes and ears.

"I'm baffled," he says, as he watches her perform. "I'm amazed. I sat down and talked with her. She's 9 years old.

"She's a little woman up there."

Laura Haim, the French journalist who has done a documentary on child stars, is equally blown away.

"I saw a thousand kids," she said. "She has the final touch. She's amazing. . . . She's already thinking like a star, like an adult. For that reason, she will succeed."

After Jamie's performance, the family scoots over to Showman's Cafe a couple of blocks away. About 40 friends and relatives have chartered a bus from Philadelphia to watch Jamie perform, and now they're celebrating.

At Showman's, Jimmy "Preacher" Robins and his trio are playing jazz and blues. He invites Jamie to sing.

It is 11:30 p.m. and her fried shrimp has just arrived. Reluctantly, she takes the microphone and sings "Take the A Train." The crowd loves it.

An hour later, Preacher lets loose with a particularly rousing blues number. He gets so crazy, he plays the keyboard with his toes. Jamie is playing a pattycake-style game with another little girl at her table and barely notices.

Finally, around 1 a.m. - just as a bottle of $75 champagne arrives at their table - Mom and Dad decide it is time to head home.

Back in the limo, Jamie and James are asleep before the Lincoln Tunnel.

Mom and Dad stretch out in their seats. Mom is too tired to look at all the business cards she has collected, too experienced to believe all the baloney people peddled all night.

She will examine the cards, make the follow-up calls in the next few days. As badly as she wants success for her daughter, she's no misty-eyed yokel. She lost her naivete long ago.

"I believed he had a bag full of money, remember?"

The limo stops in front of the Knights' North Philadelphia home at about 4 a.m.

Jamie and James, still sound asleep, are carried off to bed.