Other News Ashley Dupré: from call girl to singer
By Ben Wasserman
Nov 20, 2008 - 7:01:09 AM
If you like the article, could you please do us a favor? Just tell Google News Services that you like foodconsumer.org included in Google News Services. Inclusion in googlenewsservices means many more people can read articles like this. Thanks.
------
Bad news always spreads faster and gets remembered longer
than one can imagine.
News media still
has not forgotten Ashley Dupré, a 23-year-old New Jersey girl who once worked
as a high end escort involved in the scandal that led to the resignation of
ex-New York's governor Eliot Spitzer.
What happened was on Feb 13, 2008. Receiving an assignment
as a call girl, Dupré traveled by Amtrak from New York's Pennsylvania Station
to Washington DC to meet with Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel.
Dupré was not aware of who she was serving at the time.
She told People Magazine that even when she was told by the FBI that the agency
was investigating one of her clients, she had no clue whatsoever which one
until she saw Spitzer announced his resignation on TV.
When interviewed with ABC News' Diane Sawyer this week, Dupré
said she was not responsible for Spitzer's downfall. "If it wasn't me, it
would have been someone else," she was quoted as saying. "I was doing
my job. I don't feel that I brought him down."
But she felt sorry for Spitzer's wife, Silda.
Dupré was cited by New York Post as saying
that if she could speak directly to Silda, she'd say, "I'm sorry for your
pain."
The high profile scandal has provided Dupré some career
opportunities.
She told ABC News that
she wanted to focus on her music career as she loves to be a singer.
She has been in the music business for some
time already.
Dupré began singing professionally when Jerry Cooper, a
musician she was living with, heard her singing the Aretha Franklin version of
the song "Respect" in the shower. "She had this huge voice for
such a little girl", Cooper told MTV, "and so I just kind of went in
and said 'Hey, come upstairs when you're done with this, and let's work on some
songs'". According to Dupré, she then toured and recorded with Cooper's
band, networking with people in the music industry. In 2005, she formed a
company named Pasche New York, an entertainment business intended to promote
her music career.
In the summer of 2006, she made an appearance in a music
video for the song "Pop Off", performed by rapper Mysterious.
Shortly after The New York Times published their profile
of Dupré, her single "Move Ya Body" set a record for how fast it
commanded the top price on the music-download site AmieStreet.com, reaching the
site's maximum of US$0.98 per download in five hours. Another single,
"What We Want", was played more than 3 million times on the Internet
after the scandal erupted. While some speculated that she may have earned as
much as US$300,000 - US$1.4 million from download sales of her singles on Amie
Street, others estimated her earnings at as low as US$13,720. Dupré's music
came to be featured in mash up YouTube videos, blending her tracks with those
of established artists.
Dupré reportedly is now being represented by music
manager Jerry Blair, who formerly worked for Mariah Carey, but record companies
seem to be waiting to make a deal until they see if Dupré's fame will last
longer than the current news cycle.
On July 7, 2008, E! reported that Dupré was engaged in talks about a proposed reality show with Handprint Entertainment, the same firm that managed the reality television careers of Nicole Richie and Pamela Anderson, and that she was considering a move from New York to Los Angeles. One of the concepts reportedly being considered was a dating program similar to A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. Dupré will reportedly be working with the production company Reveille Productions (responsible for the TV shows The Office and The Biggest Loser) to create a reality dating show based on the theme that everyone has skeletons in their closet.
(from Wikipedia)