- Cherry Laine
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Cherry Laine Birth name Florence MILLS Born January 4, 1943 Origin Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica Years active 1970s - present Labels CBS Records later CHILLY Cherry Laine (Jamaica) is female disco star. Her father was a clergyman, her mother a nurse. At the age of six she is said to have been singing in her father’s church choir accompanied by her mother playing the organ. The family moved to England. The mother wanted her daughter to become a nurse and a midwife, but Cherry’s plans were totally different. She would often go to studios and stages in London in preparation for the career of a singer. After the deaths of her parents, she moved to West Germany. She started her career there with the help of her producer and composer Bernt Moehrle, who composed the hits for her. Her first single was Everybody Knows It, but the big breakthrough came with 1977’s Night In Chicago, which became a popular hit throughout Europe. The next hit came in 1978 entitled Catch the Cat. This song became so successful in Spain that it had 8 different remix versions in Spanish and it reached a double gold record. Naturally, her first album was not to be waited for too long either and it came out in 1979 with the title I’m Hot. The album features, among many others, Michael Cretu and Kurt Hauenstein from Supermax. Surprisingly, the first single hit, Everybody Knows It was not included in the album, unlike the above mentioned Catch the Cat, The Sea-Fare Folk and Speed Freak Sam that became very popular.
The Sea-Fare Folk includes a quotation of the well-known Shanty, [[What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?| Cherry’s single of 1979’s Danny’s Disco was also often played by several radio stations as well as in music clubs. However, her career was also badly affected by the decline of disco music. The contract with Bernt Moehrle expired and her husband Karl Heinz Merkel took over. Her later singles did not sell well anymore, that is why no more albums were recorded. In 1986 she released Jungle Lover Boy to come back to pop music. The song was popular in discos but this was not enough to put her back to the charts. Cherry disappeared from the world of pop. According to some internet sources, she participated in the albums of the band Chilly, who were also a Baby from Bernt Möhrle; after then in the 1980s she joined the less known formation Pappy’ion. [3] In 1993 her three most popular hits Catch The Cat, Night In Chicago and The Seafare Folk were released on a maxi CD in the Golden-Dance-Classics series, which makes the greatest hits of disco music that are real rarities of today available for the fans longing for her songs.
Contents
Albums
1979 I’m Hot
Austrian Chart List Results
Catch the Cat: 10 weeks beginning 15 November 1978. Highest position: 9. place
The Sea-Fare Folk: 8 weeks beginning15 July 1979. Highest position: 13. place
Notes
1. Cherry is often mistaken for the black singer Cheryl Lynn, who was the star of American disco music approximately at the same time with Cherry in Europe.
2. According to several Russian web pages dealing with Eurodisco—e.g.[1]—Cherry Laine is identical with Sofia Ejango, the Camerun born singer of the band Chilly. This information seems to be backed by the fact that Ejango joined Chilly in 1979, after the biggest solo successes of Cherry Laine. But this is absolutely nonsense!!! Cherry Laine did sometimes backing vocals for Chilly in the studio, because she had the same producer as Chilly at this time. But fact is Cherry and Sophia are two different persons, with each others own career. Only forward purt people assert that Chery Laine and Sophia Ejango is one person. Sophia passed away a few years ago, God bless her, but Cherry is absolutely alive.
3. No precise data on this is available for the author of this entry. On web pages on disco music, however, one can find a 1980’s record of Pappy’ion performing the song 1001 Nights (Ali Baba) and Cherry Laine is mentioned as a co-writer of the song.
References
External links
About Cherry on the web page of Bernt Moehrle
Cherry’s short interviews on herself
Video: Night In Chicago
Video: Catch the Cat
Categories:- Jamaican musicians
- Living people
- 1943 births
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