Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ben E. King, 77, Readies for Long Tour/Tom Kenny Talks Rabbit Role in New Winnie the Pooh Film

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ben E. King, who released his first studio album in 12 years, "Heart & Soul," last year, will be heading off to Europe in a couple of weeks for a continental concert trek. And after that, the legendary singer, who gave us jukebox classics including "Stand By Me" and "This Magic Moment," will firm up plans for a U.S. tour.

"I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't done a long tour in a long time," he tells us. "I think you have to get yourself in the right frame of mind for it. You have to remind yourself, OK, Ben E., you have to eat well, sleep well. All the party days, you know, are over now. You have to be sensitive at your age,'" says the 77-year-old with a laugh.

To say that King has seen a lot of changes in the record business since he got his first hit in 1959 ("There Goes My Baby" with the Drifters) is a vast understatement. Today, "The record industry is in the strangest world I've ever seen it in, not barring the fact that the record stores are all gone. If you want to sell records, you have to do it at places like Starbucks and Target. The good thing is, we know that the music is still alive."

King's latest contribution to the record world is a collection of standards (on his own CanAm label) including "When I Fall in Love" and "My Funny Valentine." He notes, "You make sure you do things that aren't going to embarrass yourself and the industry. Make sure you don't do things that should be left to the 18-year-olds, you know? After being out there for a certain amount of time, you have a certain slot, and you belong there. I learned from watching cats like Duke Ellington and Billy Eckstine — if you stay there with dignity and class, you'll be OK."

Choosing the tunes out of the great American songbook wasn't easy. "We really did have an overload. We kind of narrowed it down to ones we thought weren't overdone," he says. And then, he did fresh treatments of the songs.

"When you surround yourself with great musicians, things happen, you know? Someone will say, 'Why don't you try this or that? Why don't you try it in another key?'"

For instance, on "The Touch of Your Lips," King explains, "We were thinking about doing it very ballad-y, slowing it down.

Then we thought, 'No, let's not go that way,' and we tried a little up-tempo. All those little things came together."

ANOTHER RABBIT HEARD FROM: Tom Kenny aka the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants says he's been having a lot of fun voicing the role of Rabbit in Disney's new, classic-style Winnie the Pooh movie that comes out July 15.

Rabbit is such a bossy, anal-retentive type, he couldn't be much further from the screwball SpongeBob.

"Yes, he's very much a fussbudget and stresses out about everything. He's the closest thing the Hundred Acre Wood has to a Squidward," Kenny points out, referring to "SpongeBob SquarePants'" resident long-suffering octopus, Squidward Tentacles (Rodger Bumpass).

Kenny has been dividing his time the last few days between working on the next "Transformers" movie and the animated "Spider-Man." He'll be heard in a new SpongeBob special — "Legends of Bikini Bottom" — on Nickelodeon Jan. 28.

REALITY GAVE THEM A ROLE: Bravo is plotting "What If..." a reality show about women who reconnect with men from their pasts in hopes of making things work out the second time (or third or fourth time) around. And good luck with that. Actually, the show is from Reveille productions, which gave us "The Office," "The Biggest Loser" and "Tabitha's Salon Takeover" among other shows (founder Ben Silverman used to be the head honcho of NBC-Universal, you may recall), so maybe they can find success with warmed-over romances. At least, maybe they can do better than most human beings.

SOMETHING SCARY: Casting of subsidiary roles is under way for "Meeting Evil," the Chris Fisher chiller based on a novel by Thomas Berger, in which Luke Wilson will play an everyday suburbanite recently fired from his real estate office job, whose life gets turned upside down when he unsuspectingly asks whether he can help out a stranger with car trouble. That stranger — Samuel L. Jackson — turns out to be a hit man who forces Wilson's character into a murder spree. They will be shooting in New Orleans, which is turning into a bit an ever-busier film locale what with local tax incentives — and local color, of course.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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