Cher
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is available for public concerts and events. Cher can be booked for
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representing YOU, the buyer.
In fact, in most cases we can negotiate for
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Cher Biography
Cher has had three careers that place her indelibly in the
public consciousness, and two have been in association with her
then-husband, composer/producer/singer Salvatore Sonny Bono (February
16, 1935-January 8, 1998). She charted major hit records in the 1960s
and 1970s, working in idioms ranging from early- '60s girl group-style
ballads to Jackie Deshannon folk-influenced pop, to adult contemporary
pop in the manner of later Dusty Springfield. She also embarked on an
acting career, initially in the late 1960s in association with her work
as part of Sonny & Cher but later on her own, which led to a series
of increasingly polished and compelling performances in Silkwood, Mask
and Moonstruck, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in California in 1946; she was 17 when she
first met Salvatore Sonny Bono, a songwriter and protégé of producer
Phil Spector. Bono brought her to Spector, who used her as a backup
singer and produced one single by her, a novelty Beatles tribute record
called Ringo I Love You issued under the name Bonnie Jo Mason. It
disappeared without a trace, but the couple were undaunted -- they
emerged as a duo, initially called Caesar & Cleo, later that year,
and cut The Letter, Do You Wanna Dance and Love Is Strange.
Caesar & Cleo didn't trouble the chart compilers with any degree of
success, but late in 1964, Cher (then known as Cherilyn) was signed to
Liberty Records' Imperial imprint, and Bono came along as producer. A
Spector-ish version of Dream Baby managed to get airplay in Los
Angeles, becoming a local hit, and they suspected they were onto
something. That same month, Sonny & Cher, as they were now known,
signed to Reprise Records and released their first single, Baby Don't
Go. The song became a major local hit in Los Angeles, after which the
duo jumped from Reprise to the Atco label, a division of Atlantic
Records. In April 1965 their first single, Just You was released and
rose to number 20 on the charts. The duo was on its way, and Cher also
had Imperial Records after her for a second single. The couple had seen
the Byrds pioneer commercial folk-rock with Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine
Man, and had witnessed them performing another Dylan number, All I
Really Want to Do at a club in Los Angeles. The group intended to
issue their own recording of All I Really Want to Do, but Cher, with
Sonny producing, beat them to the punch with her own recording of the
song.
She pursued a dual career for the next two years, cutting solo
recordings under Sonny's guidance that regularly charted, and duets
with her husband for Atco. A month after All I Really Want to Do,
they released I Got You Babe, which was one of the biggest-selling
and most beloved pop/rock hits of the mid-'60s, and the couple's
signature tune across two eras of success. Cher's solo career ended up
slightly overshadowed by her work with Sonny & Cher, but at the
time she was fully competitive on her own terms -- her first LP reached
the Billboard Top 20 and was on the albums charts for six months. Bang
Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) was another hit, a million-seller that
made number three in America and England, and she made the Top Ten once
more with her 1967 single You Better Sit Down Kids. The latter song,
written by Bono (and which was also a hit for Glen Campbell), dealt
with divorce, an unusual subject for a 1960s pop record, and was one of
a series of releases on which Cher's music broached difficult areas --
others were I Feel Something's in the Air, which dealt with unwanted
pregnancy, and Mama (When My Dollies Have Babies), both written by
Bono.
Cher's solo career at Imperial, which had created some political
problems for the couple at Atlantic, ended with the lapsing of her
contract in 1967, and she moved to Atlantic. Ironically, it was this
move that contributed the unhappy reversal of the couple's fortunes at
the end of the decade.
By the end of the 1960s, Sonny & Cher were no longer selling
records. A series of commercial missteps, coupled with a change in
public taste, had sharply curtailed their sales, and a pair of movies
(Good Times, Chastity) had lost millions. Additionally, they were no
longer recording for Atlantic -- though they were still under contract
to them -- owing to the label's decision to take Cher's solo recordings
out of Sonny's hands and assign a new producer to her.
Coupled with the presentation of a bill from the Internal Revenue
Service for $200,000 in back taxes, these events left the couple in
dire financial straights at the end of the 1960s. They were forced to
play club dates, opening for artists like Pat Boone, and it was there
that their second career, and a second career for Cher, took shape. A
new contract with Decca Records in 1971, coupled with a chance at a
summer replacement gig on the CBS television network, brought them a
second chance at success.
The try-out on television was a success, as the couple proved to be as
funny as they were musically diverse. It took a little longer to find a
new formula for Cher's music -- her initial single on Decca's Kapp
label, Classified 1A, written by Bono, was a failure; a serious song
dealing with a girl's feelings for a boyfriend killed in Vietnam; it
was topical in all the wrong ways to become a pop chart success.
Producer Snuff Garrett was recruited to work with her, and he found a
series of songs that were perfect for Cher's maturing talent.
Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, a conscious attempt to emulate
Springfield's Son of a Preacher Man (which also recalled Cher's own
Bang Bang ) was released late in 1971 and became a number one hit and
a million-seller. To some listeners, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves was
the epitome of schlocky pop/rock, but the song's subject matter,
unusual tempo changes, and an incredibly memorable chorus-hook became a
vehicle for a transcendent performance by the singer, marking Cher's
maturation as an artist (the B-side, I Hate to Sleep Alone, written
by Peggy Clinger of the Clinger Sisters, curiously enough, managed to
recall Sonny's Spector-influenced productions from the Imperial years).
A follow-up album, featuring her covers of contemporary hits such as
Fire and Rain, sold well also, and her next single, The Way of
Love, a revival of a mid-'60s Kathy Kirby hit, solidified the image of
a new, more confident and powerful Cher. And the debut of the couple's
regular network variety series on CBS in January 1972 brought them back
to the center of American and international popular culture in a more
mature, wittier guise, and one that concentrated much more on Cher as a
personality.
Her 1960s music ran the gamut from Spector-style miniature teen-pop
symphonies to covers of contemporary adult pop ( It's Not Unusual ) and
folk-rock, all cut under Bono's guidance. Her voice wasn't very rich or
powerful, but it was expressive and surrounded by Bono's radiant
Spector creations, and she could put over an almost inappropriately
cheerful sounding version of The Bells of Rhymney or Blowin' in the
Wind. By contrast, her early- 1970s material, solo or with Sonny, had
a more adult point of view and personality. { Gypsies, Tramps and
Thieves } and the later number one solo hits Half-Breed and Dark
Lady were dramatic, highly intense performances, almost as much
acted as sung, and very different from her 1960s output.
In 1974, it was revealed that the couple's marriage was coming to an
end. Ironically, Cher came out of this split more secure than her
husband, despite his having guided her career for a decade and having
all of the real training in the entertainment business. She embarked on
an acting career, even as she continued to make headlines for her
romantic exploits, including an affair with (and two marriages to)
Gregg Allman. She became a far better actress than she was a singer,
first revealed in Mike Nichols' Silkwood (1983) and then in Peter
Bogdanovich's Mask (1985) and George Miller's The Witches of Eastwick
(1987). Her acting peers caught on to the worth of her work in time for
an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Norman
Jewison's 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck.
Since the mid-'70s, Cher has been known more for her acting than for
her music, although she has continued to record for numerous labels,
including Columbia, and in 1998 scored an international chart-topping
smash with the club-friendly single Believe. She is, by Garrett's
analysis, more of a stylist than a singer, and almost as much a
personality as an actress, almost a modern-day Helen Morgan (Showboat,
etc.) with better luck in life and career. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Written by Bruce Eder