Grammys Give Cole a Big Boost : * Album sales: Her ‘Unforgettable’ vaults to No. 2 after winning seven awards, but the Grammy telecast fails to stimulate retail volume.

The seven Grammy Awards for Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” were credited Wednesday with catapulting the album from No. 16 to No. 2 on the nation’s pop album chart.

But predictions by record retail chains that the Grammy telecast on Feb. 25 would stimulate sales across the board didn’t materialize. Total record sales actually dropped from about 10.9 million units two weeks ago to 10.5 million last week at retail outlets.

“Sales were pretty much flat for us last week,” Angie Diehl Jacobs, director of marketing for the 92-outlet, Los Angeles-based Music Plus chain said Wednesday. “But we did see increases for Cole and Raitt and Mark Cohn--they nearly tripled. My guess would be that the reason these artists sold more was because the show attracts older middle-of-the-road music buyers. It pushed the borderline buyer into the store.”

Sales for Cole’s album--a nostalgic collection of standards made famous by her late father, Nat King Cole--more than doubled last week, jumping from 41,000 to 93,500 units. The album, a surprise best-seller when released in June, had already sold more than 3 million copies, but was on its way down the charts prior to the Grammys.

Other Grammy-winning albums whose sales also increased sharply after the telecast: Bonnie Raitt’s “Luck of the Draw,” which will move from No. 12 to No. 4 on the chart to be published Saturday by Billboard magazine; R.E.M.’s “Out of Time,” which leaps from No. 41 to No. 17, and “Mark Cohn,” which jumps from No. 78 to No. 38.

“The day after the telecast we got quite a buzz on Cole, R.E.M. and Bonnie Raitt,” said Stan Goman, senior vice president of retail operations at the 73-store, Sacramento-based Tower Records chain. “I think there is more mileage left on all these records.”

But retailers this week said they don’t expect the same dramatic breakthrough that was seen in 1990 when Raitt’s Grammy-winning “Nick of Time” album revitalized the veteran singer’s career.

The album, which had chalked up only 500,000 units in sales during 11 months preceding the ceremony, leaped from No. 40 to No. 1 and sold a quick million copies in the three months following the telecast.

The reason the same kind of sales push isn’t likely, observers say, is that the Cole, Raitt and R.E.M. albums are already multimillion sellers, meaning that most “active” music buyers who would be likely to purchase them have already done so.

Raitt’s “Luck of the Draw”--which has already sold more than 3 million copies--streaked from 50,000 to 83,000 last week, while R.E.M.’s introspective “Out of Time” album, which has hovered in the Top 50 since its release last February, increased last week from 23,000 to 41,000 units.