Music City’s Cherry Sisters
Making it in Music City
In its heyday, before it became the “It City,” Nashville was a bustling destination for artists who were both already stars and those arriving with guitars and dreams in hand.
The draw to Music City, much to the consternation of the tony, well-heeled of the city, was the investment of a largely blue-collar crowd in state-of-the-art recording studios and their willingness to give creative producers and production engineers a lot of room to create what would become Nashville’s “sound.”
What these technicians needed to make the business model work were musicians – really talented musicians – who would show up on time, never need breaks, take direction without a lot of pushback, and who would book sometimes three and four studio gigs in a day (or often all-night) series of sessions.
What the stars needed were backup vocalists who could seamlessly blend with whoever the star might be and who could sound like they’d been singing backups for that special star for years.
Studio Stars
Often, the stars never actually met their musicians and backup vocalists. Time was money in the recording industry. The idea of tracks enabled intricate scheduling of talent and maximized everyone’s time. It enabled backup vocalists to record for several artists in a day and to earn a living moving from studio to studio location.
But amid this, there were some clear favorites. These were very few men and women who learned to make their voices blend with virtually any star, who took direction, who were always on time or early, and who were actual musicians, able to read music and lay down tracks quickly.
And inevitably, in the small world of studio stars, there would be a gig where the three most sought-after backup vocalists would be booked together in a single session.
Cherry Sisters – No Joke
It was here that Diane Vanette, Sheri Huffman and Lisa Silver would finally meet. The producer that day dubbed them the Cherry Sisters, mostly as a joke. And there it started.
That day began a friendship that lasted 50 years, a trio of backup girls who hit the road with shows across the country and a nearly launched path to their own stardom.
Cherry Sisters Music City is their own legend in the history of Nashville studio elite. There is nobody who has listened to the hits of anyone from the 1970s and 1980s who hasn’t heard their voices.
As Music City became less a recording destination and more of a tourist attraction, these three artists continued to work, reinvent themselves and their careers, find love, raise families and continue to leave their mark in music.
Lisa Silver continued in the music industry after the Cherry Sisters. Discover where she found her musical home and where she continues to work in music today at LisaSilverSong.com.
