So much for the timeworn strategy of posting plaintive, beseeching flyers on East Bay Express news racks:
Oakland teen band PopLyfe — whose members are scions of Tony Toni Toné singer D’Wayne Wiggins and jazz drummer Ranzel Merritt, and students at Oakland School of the Arts — feel just short of the $1 million grand prize on NBC’s nationally televised song-and-dance competition, America’s Got Talent. Instead, the prize went to West Virginia-born singer Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr., whose hard-luck biography probably elicited as many votes as his growly, endearing rendition of “Under My Skin.” (He apparently spent several years washing cars at a West Virginia dealership before perfecting the American Songbook.)
