Born 99 Years Ago Today in Memphis, the Multifaceted ”Nashville Sound” Architect Who Backed Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, and Jim Reeves

October 13, 2026, 4:30am

On this day (October 13) in 1927, Anita Kerr was born in Memphis, Tennessee. As the lead soprano and brains behind the Anita Kerr Singers, she left her stamp on the lush “Nashville sound” that permeated country music in the 1960s, lending background vocals to songs like Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely”, Jim Reeves’ “He’ll Have to Go”, and Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry”.

Kerr died on October 10, 2022 — just three days shy of her 95th birthday — at a nursing home in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, we’re honoring her extraordinary contributions to country and pop music on what would have been her 99th birthday.

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Anita Kerr’s Early Musical Beginnings

Anita Kerr was born Anita Jean Grilli to a family of Italian immigrants who ran a Memphis grocery store. Her mother, Sofia, was a contralto who passed up an opportunity to study classical music in New York to raise her family.

However, Sofia Grilli insisted on making music a part of her children’s upbringing, and Anita began taking piano lessons alongside her two older brothers at age four.

They soon abandoned the instrument, but Anita stuck with it. By her fourth-grade year at St. Thomas Catholic School, she was playing pipe organ and preparing vocal arrangements for the church masses.

At 15, Anita landed an after-school gig as a staff pianist for a Memphis radio program.

The Move to Nashville

In 1947, she married her first husband, Al Kerr. They moved to Nashville the following year after he took a job as a DJ at a local radio station.

Furthering her own musical career, she organized the Anita Kerr Singers along with alto Dottie Dillard, tenor Gil Wright, and baritone Louis Nunley. After some success on regional radio, WSM — home of the Grand Ole Opry — hired the singers for their program Sunday Down South.

Her Big Break

Signing with Decca Records in the early 1950s, the Anita Kerr Singers featured on Red Foley’s 1950 crossover hit “Our Lady of Fatima.”

The group’s career kicked into overdrive after winning a 1956 contest on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts national program. They became regulars, splitting their time between New York City and Nashville.

The singers contributed backup vocals to Patsy Cline’s self-titled 1957 debut album. At their early-1960s peak, the Anita Kerr Singers featured on roughly a quarter of all Nashville recordings.

That’s also them you hear crooning the “dum-dum-dum, dooby-doo-wah” on Roy Orbison’s breakout 1962 hit “Only the Lonely”.

“Gradually we grew to 12 to 18 sessions per week, and I was writing as many arrangements for these sessions as was physically possible,” Kerr wrote on her official website. “Loving every minute of it, mind you. Tired at times, but happy.”

A Career Pivot

Starting in 1961, Anita Kerr worked as Chet Atkins’ recording assistant at RCA Victor. She did musical and vocal arrangements and production work for artists including Eddy Arnold, Hank Snow and Willie Nelson.

She also produced Skeeter Davis’ 1963 album End of the World, making Kerr one of the very first women to oversee a Nashville recording.

However, Kerr resigned that same year, having grown tired of receiving little credit for her work. Two years later, she divorced Kerr and remarried Swiss businessman Alex Grob.

In 1965, they moved to Los Angeles, where Anita branched out into pop, jazz, and easy listening. She assembled a new edition of the Anita Kerr Singers and conducted the music for poet Rod McKuen’s instrumental/spoken-word 1969 album The Sea.

In 1970, Kerr moved with her husband to his native Switzerland, where she continued to write, record and conduct. The couple opened Mountain Studios in 1975, which they would later sell to the rock band Queen.

Anita Kerr lived in Switzerland until her death on October 10, 2022, at age 94.

Featured image by Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images