As a vocalist, arranger, composer, band leader and producer, Anita Kerr, who has died aged 94, enjoyed a remarkably successful and wide-ranging career. In the 1950s and 60s she sang harmony with her quartet, the Anita Kerr Singers, on thousands of country music sessions – helping to create the “Nashville sound” with her lush vocal arrangements – and became an easy-listening superstar when the group was signed to RCA.
Critics, though, rarely paid her much attention, often labelling her music as “kitsch” while deploring the fact that the Anita Kerr Singers’ 1965 album We Dig Mancini beat the Beatles’ Help! for that year’s best vocal group performance Grammy award. Not that such criticisms concerned Kerr, whose talent and determination meant that she succeeded in landing top arranging and orchestrating jobs in Nashville and Hollywood that had previously been given to men.
