[Vintage-Audio] Re Anita Kerr Singers Move

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Hi All,

What year did Anita Kerr leave the
RCA Nashville Studio B team for California and a 'perceived' better 
opportunity?

The unique sound of her "Anita Kerr Singers" with the super tight harmony 
can be heard on hundreds of albums by all sorts of Artists, Country music 
and not. Often times even the blind dude here, with his super trained ears, 
has great difficulty in distinguishing the two females and the two males in 
the quartet, as being more than one female and one male. What a blend!

Maybe I am mistaken here, but it seems that once she made the switch to 
Warner Bros., Columbia Records, she sort of faded into never neverland after 
a couple of years. Is this correct?

The unique sound of the "Anita Kerr Singers", (wasn't there an Anita Kerr 
Quartet also?), fits beautifully into any instrumental song. Either as 
background harmony or as foreground singers for a verse here and there 
during the song. However, the quartet audience, be it Southern Gospel, Black 
Gospel or whatever, is small, music sales wise. When Anita Kerr and her 
group were doing background vocals for various musical Artists at RCA 
Nashville the audience was multiplied by a factor of at least ten! When at 
Warner Bros. is was a novelty, in a good sort of way, and the public 
interest came from her past with RCA, peaked at Columbia and then simply 
died. Hers was a specialty sound and had to stay within a strong market in 
order to survive.

I do not want to call her a 'flash in the pan', or a one hit wonder', as she 
was certainly not! However, I think she saw Columbia as a big money and 
opportunity move and simply failed to realize that the special quality of 
her sound did not have the staying power on its own to sustain listener 
popularity over the longrun.

I have some of her latter work and the sound is, well, not what the original 
Anita Kerr Singers generated. Frankly, as much as I lover her work, I did 
not care for this at all. I believe this work was only released on CD, do 
not wish to name it here and prejudice anyone against possibly purchasing 
it. You might love it.

So when did she make the move, how long after she did make it did her 
popularity start to fade and what became of her? Then again, maybe she did 
not fade and I simply fell into a fog somewhere along Musical Alley!

Thanks!


Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
dfischer at usol.com
HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
http://www.w9wze.net
HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
hhrp.w9wze.net