Anita Kerr personified the polished “Nashville Sound” that reshaped country music across the mid-1950s and 1960s. Together with the Jordanaires, her vocal quartet stood as the era’s premier session ensemble; at their early-1960s height they reportedly appeared on roughly one-quarter of every release tracked inside Nashville studios. Throughout the second half of that decade she based herself in Los Angeles, extending her reach into pop, jazz, and easy-listening circles while also composing and producing. She later made her permanent home in Switzerland, where she ran a thriving studio and remained active into the 1980s; she stayed there until her death in 2022.
Born Anita Jean Grilli on 31 October 1927 in Memphis, Tennessee, she grew up with a mother who hosted a local radio program. Piano lessons began at age four, and in her early teens she assembled the Grilli Sisters, soon a regular presence on her mother’s broadcast. At fourteen she joined the station as staff pianist. In 1948 she departed Memphis for club work on piano; the next year she assembled the Anita Kerr Singers, completed by alto Dottie Dillard, tenor Gil Wright, and baritone Louis Nunley. Regional radio exposure led NBC to engage the group for Sunday Down South, with Kerr installed as chorus director.
The quartet joined Decca in 1951 and quickly established itself as a studio vocal team. Five years later it made its debut on the New York-based Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts and soon became a recurring act, dividing time between the show and recording sessions. By the mid-1950s Kerr had aligned with Chet Atkins, head of RCA’s country division and architect of the pop-leaning “Nashville Sound” that softened country’s harder edges with choral backings. The Singers contributed to hundreds of landmark sides by Jim Reeves, Roy Orbison, Floyd Cramer, Dottie West, Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold, Lorne Greene, and pop artists such as Perry Como and Brook Benton. Kerr also produced Skeeter Davis’s End of the World album, becoming one of the first women to helm a Nashville session.
After a 1964 European tour she relocated to California the following year to concentrate on independent production and songwriting. Two Singers albums, We Dig Mancini! and Southland Favorites, captured Grammys in the Vocal Group and Gospel categories. Later in the decade she collaborated with poet Rod McKuen on the mood-music trilogy The Sea, The Earth, and The Sky; for these projects the ensemble was billed as the San Sebastian Strings and Singers. The group also appeared weekly on The Smothers Brothers’ sketch-comedy series.
During the 1970s she produced numerous easy-listening albums and scored films. After moving to Switzerland with her second husband, Alex Grob, she assembled a new edition of the Singers that recorded extensively throughout the decade. She supplied arrangements for Hal Leonard Corporation and owned Montreux-based Mountain Studios before selling it to the band Queen. Output tapered in the 1980s, yet she composed and conducted her own entry, “Piano, Piano,” for Switzerland at the 1985 Eurovision Song Contest. She remained in Switzerland for the rest of her life and died on 10 October 2022 at a Geneva nursing home, aged ninety-four.
