Biography
Born Cheryl Norton in Los Angeles in 1958, Cherrelle rose as one of the flagship acts on Clarence Avant’s Tabu imprint and benefited early from the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. After her family set up a summer home in Detroit, she crossed paths with bassist and singer Michael Henderson, who featured her on the closing track “One to One” from his 1978 album In the Night-Time; she later joined Henderson and Luther Vandross on tour.
A demo she cut soon reached Tabu founder Clarence Avant, who signed her through her father, an attorney. She adopted the stage name Cherrelle after a bank supervisor repeatedly shouted, “Cher-relle, you’re late!” Paired with Jam and Lewis—former members of the Time already scoring hits for Tabu’s S.O.S. Band—she quickly accumulated a string of charting singles and albums. Her 1984 debut Fragile yielded the Top Ten R&B single “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On,” later covered by Robert Palmer, and “Fragile…Handle with Care,” which reached the R&B Top 40.
The 1985 follow-up High Priority, again guided chiefly by Jam and Lewis with additional writing and production from her partner Randy Ran, included the number-two R&B duet “Saturday Love” with labelmate Alexander O’Neal. For her third album the producers adopted a loose concept format akin to O’Neal’s Hearsay, tracing the arc of a failed romance. The opening single, another Cherrelle–O’Neal duet titled “Never Knew Love Like This,” held the number-two R&B position for two weeks in early 1988. Later that year the lounge-tinged, jazz-piano-driven “Everything I Miss at Home” climbed to number one R&B, while the title track peaked at number four.
That same year Cherrelle guested on her cousin Pebbles’ Top Twenty R&B hit “Always” and issued The Woman I Am, her first project without Jam and Lewis. The set, her final charting album, drew on production from Narada Michael Walden, Heatwave’s Derek Bramble, and others; among its three charting singles, “Tears of Joy” performed best, reaching number 23 R&B. She subsequently appeared on O’Neal’s Love Makes No Sense and Lovers Again, rejoined Pebbles for Straight from My Heart, and waited until 1999 to release her independently issued fifth album, the covers-heavy The Right Time. Throughout the 2000s and into the early 2010s she maintained a busy touring schedule, frequently sharing bills with O’Neal, and saw her Tabu catalog receive expanded reissues in 2013.
A demo she cut soon reached Tabu founder Clarence Avant, who signed her through her father, an attorney. She adopted the stage name Cherrelle after a bank supervisor repeatedly shouted, “Cher-relle, you’re late!” Paired with Jam and Lewis—former members of the Time already scoring hits for Tabu’s S.O.S. Band—she quickly accumulated a string of charting singles and albums. Her 1984 debut Fragile yielded the Top Ten R&B single “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On,” later covered by Robert Palmer, and “Fragile…Handle with Care,” which reached the R&B Top 40.
The 1985 follow-up High Priority, again guided chiefly by Jam and Lewis with additional writing and production from her partner Randy Ran, included the number-two R&B duet “Saturday Love” with labelmate Alexander O’Neal. For her third album the producers adopted a loose concept format akin to O’Neal’s Hearsay, tracing the arc of a failed romance. The opening single, another Cherrelle–O’Neal duet titled “Never Knew Love Like This,” held the number-two R&B position for two weeks in early 1988. Later that year the lounge-tinged, jazz-piano-driven “Everything I Miss at Home” climbed to number one R&B, while the title track peaked at number four.
That same year Cherrelle guested on her cousin Pebbles’ Top Twenty R&B hit “Always” and issued The Woman I Am, her first project without Jam and Lewis. The set, her final charting album, drew on production from Narada Michael Walden, Heatwave’s Derek Bramble, and others; among its three charting singles, “Tears of Joy” performed best, reaching number 23 R&B. She subsequently appeared on O’Neal’s Love Makes No Sense and Lovers Again, rejoined Pebbles for Straight from My Heart, and waited until 1999 to release her independently issued fifth album, the covers-heavy The Right Time. Throughout the 2000s and into the early 2010s she maintained a busy touring schedule, frequently sharing bills with O’Neal, and saw her Tabu catalog receive expanded reissues in 2013.
Albums
