Anita Kerr Singers

Anita Kerr was the vocal embodiment of the "Nashville Sound" which dominated country music throughout the mid 1950's and 1960's. Along with the Jordanaires, her group the Anita Kerr Singers was the seminal backing vocal unit of the era, and it is estimated that at their early-Sixties peak, they graced fully one quarter of all of the records coming out of Nashville's studios.

She formed the Anita Kerr Singers, which also featured alto Dottie Dillard, tenor Gil Wright and baritone Louis Nunley. After gaining some fame on regional radio, NBC hired the Singers for the program Sunday Down South, with Kerr brought aboard as Chorus Director. In 1951, the group signed to Decca Records, and began their career as a studio backing unit. Five years later, the Singers made their first appearance on the New York-based Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts television program, and quickly became featured players, splitting their time between the broadcast and theirsession work.

In the mid 1950's, Anita Kerr joined forces with Chet Atkins, then the head of RCA Records' country division and the creator of the pop-centric "Nashville Sound," which employed vocal choruses as a means of smoothing over country music's rougher edges. The Anita Kerr Singers appeared on literally hundreds of the era's most prominent recordings, including releases from Jim Reeves, Roy Orbison, Floyd Cramer, Dottie West, Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold and Lorne Greene; even pop singers like Perry Como and Brook Benton enlisted Kerr's talents. She also produced Skeeter Davis' End of the World album, making Kerr one of the very first women to oversee a Nashville recording. After touring Europe in 1964, she moved to California the next year to focus her energies on freelance production and song writing, even as two of the Singers' LPs, We Dig Mancini and Southland Favorites, were winning Grammy awards (in the Vocal Group and Gospel categories, respectively).

In the later years of the decade, Kerr teamed with poet Rod McKuen for a series of mood-music records, titled The Sea, The Earth and The Sky, for which the Singers were renamed the San Sebastian Strings and Singers. At the same time, the group was featured weekly on the Smothers Brothers' sketch comedy program. By the 1970's, Kerr produced a number of easy listening records before moving to her second husband Alex Grob's native Switzerland to compose music for films. Eventually, she returned to Memphis.

Discography

From Nashville... The Hits of Anita Kerr

Sometimes a quartet, sometimes an octet, the former Anita Jean Grilli's groups had possibly even more to do with reshaping country music from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s than Elvis and the Jordanaires. The direction in which she took country music is very clear on "From Nashville:" pop and light classics, not country. Still, these 12 bright, smooth, upbeat hits, accompanied by saxophones and massed violins are powerful and fine. Songs like "Hey, Joe," "My Last Date (With You)," "Singing the Blues," "You Don't Know Me," "The Old Master Painter," "Night Train to Memphis," "Bye, Bye Love" "Four Walls" and "Oh Lonesome Me" opened up the possibility of scoring major pop hits for country singers, and Anita was in on the ground floor of a fast-growing recording industry in Nashville. More than a period piece, "From Nashville" is country and pop music history in the making.

All You Need Is Love

The faux-psychedelic graphics on the cover of this collection said it all—it was the aftermath of the Summer of Love in San Francisco, popular music was changing quickly, and Anita Kerr, having moved to LA after 17 years in Nashville, had this take on it. She had assembled a new group of Singers, the previous group not wanting to leave Nashville, and was rearranging pop hits like the Beatles' title tune, Bert Bacharach's "The Look of Love," Aretha's era-defining anthem "Natural Woman," The Mamas and the Papas' delightful "Salt on Her Tail," Frankie Valli's late-blooming hit "I Make a Fool of Myself, the BeeGees' "Holiday," The Young Rascals' "How Can I Be Sure" and The Association's "Never My Love." There's one fairly rare original by Anita on this orchestrally-accompanied collection, "Stay." The best of these 12 songs are interesting because they are romantic, sweet-harmonied, heavy-on-the-violins-and-horns takes on a new wave of popular music that was generally not about romance, sweet harmonies, violins and horns.

Sounds

This accompanied pop classic of "Sounds" (dig the new sounds, baby) from Anita and her often-changing group of singers from the late 60s features a more saccharine, innocent take on that turbulent era. For the first time in her career, Anita selects songs that had not been hits, the only two immediately hummable songs being "Swinging on a Star" and "The Beat Goes On," a hit for Sonny & Cher in 1966. 12 songs that are generally new to our ears, polished with sweet vocals and strings: "Happiness," "Wine in the Wind," "Say You Do," "Long Live Our Love," "I Would Love You," "The Two of Us," "I've Got Love Going for Me" and "They Always Ask Me"…these are romantic songs to slow dance and fall in love to, that would fit right in on Lawrence Welk's or Andy Williams' show, the kind of songs sung by Anita and her Singers to appreciative audiences from 4 generations.

Anita Kerr: Broadway Charts Package

My Favorite Things (Sound of Music) - Rodgers / Hammerstein
What I Did For Love (Chorus Line) - Hamlisch
Singing In The Rain - Freed
One (Chorus Line) - Hamlisch
Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun) - Irving Berlin

SATB

A collection of classic Broadway songs arranged in Anita's inimitable style. Accompanied SATB

9237 SHEET MUSIC $6.95

Anita Kerr: Christmas Charts Package

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas (Meredith Wilson)
White Christmas (Irving Berlin)
We Need A Little Christmas (Jerry Herman)

SATB

Anita always enjoyed Christmas and her singers were busy at that time of year. Here are three of her accompanied arrangements that will give both your ensemble and audience the holiday cheer.

9236 SHEET MUSIC $4.95

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