Ivory power: for this prodigal son of Ma Bell, the words of the profits are written in the sounds of solace.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: AT&T veteran Dave Combs builds record company Combs Music

Dave Combs is playing his flip side - rocking the house with the kind of music his fans never hear on his albums. His round, bespectacled face shows no strain, but his frantic fingers stab and slide along the keyboard of his black grand piano as he belts out "Count Me In," a snappy 1960s hit by Gary Lewis and the Playboys. "You didn't think he had it in him, did you?" says his wife and business partner, Linda.

Well, toe-tapping tunes aren't exactly Combs' trademark. He built his tiny Winston-Salem record company, Combs Music, with album titles like Discover Tranquility and Quiet Escapes. The instrumentals, which he composes, are laced with sweeping piano refrains and synthesized strings. In other words, elevator music.

His fans love it. Old women write him letters about how his music helps them sleep. Teachers send thank-you notes for mellow melodies that help control their little monsters. Nurses recount how the soothing songs help patients through tough times. On and on, 15 scrapbooks full, and more letters in boxes under the house. About 32,000 letters in all.

For Combs, 50, the letters are welcome praise. "It's a confirmation to me that I made the right decision to do what I did. I'm always touched when my music touches other people."

Now in its 11th year, Combs Music sells its 10 albums (each comes in cassette and compact disc) nationwide in more than 600 gift shops - 68 in North Carolina, including at the Mint Museum in Charlotte and North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. "His music is very soothing and comforting, and it lends itself to being nice background music for shopping, but people notice it," says Jane Crawford, owner of America! gift shops in the Washington, D.C., area, the first to sell his music. Combs has no pretensions about his niche - he pitches his CDs to companies to use as telephone-hold music.

When he started the business in 1986, he could count his fellow New Age artists on one hand. Now the field is so cluttered - "everyone from John Tesh on down," he says - that competition for easy-listening dollars is intense. New Age accounts for 0.7% of music sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. "It's small in the overall market, but it's certainly solid," says John Ganoe, an association vice president.

Combs won't reveal his sales - only that he sold less than $1 million in 1996, typically to women over 35. But he makes enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in an upscale...