(Click for larger view)

For a total unknown to come out of nowhere and win a Tony was, to say the least, unusual. Where, we asked, had he been all his life? "Studying. Learning," Smalls said quickly. "Since I was 3 years old, my life has been music. When the other kids were out playing ball, Charlie was practicing. Can you believe I still don't know how to play baseball?" he laughed. We wondered if three wasn't a little young to begin, even for a genius. "Maybe. My mother had studied music. She didn't want me to be a musician because they didn't make enough money -- so she locked the piano practically as soon as I could walk." Smalls laughed. "It didn't work. I was a hellion even then. I found a hammer and broke the lock, and from that time on, she couldn't drag me away from that piano. Finally," he went on, "she told me, 'Okay, if that's really what you want' -- so I started music lessons. I went on to 14 years at Julliard, and I loved every day of it."

Somehow, we hazarded, his music didn't strike us as the work of a scholarly shut-in. "That music -- may be you'd call it 'sophisticated funk' -- is a combination of all the music I ever knew. I wrote it all from my heart. The lyrics -- they're my life story -- I became the characters to create the characters. I used everything that happened to me on my way here. And believe me, some of it

Up on the roof of a 12-story cooperative apartment house on West 105th Street between West End Avenue and Broadway are four clusters of huge aluminum plates and, most days, an anxious army of tenants and technicians. The plates, angled south to catch the sun's warmest rays and hooked up to an elaborate maze of pipes, pumps, and valves, are the most visible signs of an energy consciousness-raising experiment that makes the 67 year-old building one of the largest in the city try heating its water with solar power. If all goes well, the co-op will save 10 to 15 percent of its fuel bill next year- $4,500 to $7,000 - while managing to supply hot water to the beauty salon and six shops that rent space facing Broadway. The shiny solar collectors will also satisfy the tenants' own needs for hot water in their kitchens and in the basement laundry room. Like hundreds of other pre-World War II buildings in New York City, the co-op was heating its water inefficiently, especially during the summer. The sponsors of Sun Day - the celebration of solar energy that will be held next week - point to such solar experiments as proof that comparatively efficient solar energy is leaving the gimmick stage and becoming a recognized tool in saving energy. The Sun Day organizers have great hopes, as do the tenants in the building, with its spacious living spaces and grand views of the Upper West Side. So does Consumer Action Now, which provided technical assistance in drawing the plans and seeking grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Final tests of the solar system will be completed soon, and guided tours of the building will be given during the Sun Day observance next week. So far, preliminary tests have shown that the plumbing beneath the system will have to be modified a bit to handle extra heat, since solar collectors are catching more heat than expected. "I'm nervous because we're not sure what the payback will be," said Arthur Weinstein, treasurer of the co-op's board of directors, who volunteered the building for the experiment. Mr. Weinstein, a lawyer who specializes in co-op problems, said his building may become a model for inner-city housing that could be converted to solar energy and made profitable again. He added, however, that the Government has not introduced enough incentives to make solar equipment an attractive alternative to builders and designers. Solar supporters claim this has restricted solar equipment to fewer than 40,000 buildings in the United States; in Japan, more than two million buildings have solar systems, and in Israel 20 percent of all homes harness sun power.

With the West End Avenue co-op, some 3,467 other solar projects around the country shared a $6-million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development last year. In New York City, other solar projects are under way in the South Bronx and on the Bedford-Stuyvesant. And last year, Alexander Walling, who owns a five story brownstone on the Upper West Side, installed what may have been the first solar heating system on the roof of a privately owned apartment building in New York City. But the $118,000 grant to convert the West End Avenue building did not mean that task of changing to solar power would be an easy project. Richard Napoli, who helped design the system, said tenants originally hoped their large building would provide some economy of scale-and thus some relief from