Artist: Cheryl Dilcher
Cheryl Dilcher has one of the most incredible stories in show business. Frustrated that her slutty robot housewife schtick failed to click with fans and critics alike, the Allentown, PA native rearranged her hair, put on more makeup, donned an over-sized metallic bow-tie found at an estate sale in Scranton and ultimately hit it big as an eccentric gay pioneer in the German new-wave movement.
Disclaimer: The information above is false. It was just a silly joke I made up to get attention and because I couldn't find any info about Ms. Dilcher on the web. I didn't know what else to say! The truth is, Cheryl Dilcher was a talented, hard-working musician, songwriter, and performer from Allentown who released several neat-looking LPs in the 1970s (see some of them here, and find a review of her first LP here) and she even worked with George Harrison on his last LP for Columbia. You can read more about Cheryl Dilcher on a website I just found here. Sadly, Cheryl passed away back in 2005, though she still has good friends from the music industry and fans around the world who won't let some asshole in Seattle make demeaning jokes about her record covers without giving him a stern talking to. But you have to admit, she does kinda' look like Klaus Nomi as a mid-'70s Maybelline housewife in this particular photo.
36 comments:
This blurb is a joke, right? She was a very good woman and fine artist who passed away in 2005. She doesn't deserve your disrespectful crap. She was singing professionally before you were a zygote.
Yup, just a joke. Am sad to hear that Cheryl passed away.
What's a zygote?
Alex,
If you're still alive, it was a bad joke, exposing you as nothing more than a typical poseur,
As Harvey would say, Fuck you in the heart,
Paul
(who was a DJ before you were a zygote. LOOK IT UP YOU IMBECILE)
What's an imbecile?
I knew played with Cheryl on the road in the early 70s and later at A&M. I remember her with fondness and warmth. She was a talent who walk on the stage of a noisy club and it would go silent before she said a word. I remember George Harrison siting on the steps of the studio with her and asking her to play on his last album for Columbia. Alex you really shouldn't talk trash about a real talent with such disdain just to try to gain a little attention for yourself.
I regret and mourn her passing.
Thanks for your comment and the additional info about Cheryl Dilcher. Sorry if I sounded disrespectful. I actually like this single quite a bit—it's even on white vinyl!
If it's any consolation, nobody reads my blog anyhow.
I loved her music, although none of my friends knew who she was when I would talk about her or play her music back in the 70's. I still live just outside of Allentown. I have met several people with the last name of "Dilcher", and asked them if they were related to Cheryl. Much to my surprise, I met her uncle! I didn't know that she passed away, though. Very sad news.
Nice to find your blog. I've been wondering what happened to Cheryl for awhile now.
I knew Cheryl in PA around the time she was signed to A&M records. I later moved to California and visited her there. I'm going to tell you what happened as told to me by Cheryl.
When I got to her place in SoCal, she was getting ready to perform for the first time at the Whiskey A Go Go in Hollywood. She was painting (decorating) her boots to wear on stage. I helped her. She told me that A&M had signed her because they wanted a Joni Mitchell, but she wanted to be a Grace Slick, and they weren't happy about it and wouldn't like her new look.
She walked on that elevated stage that night and looked like rockers did 10 years later - and an Amazon. She was an imposing person, and had that aura that makes people look. The next day she told me that in order to fulfill her contract with A&M, she had to compose some soundtracks for a couple TV movies and some other grunt work of which I don't remember the details. She told me that her most incredible experience so far had been when she was invited to a Stevie Wonder session. She tried to quietly sneak out at one point and Stevie stopped playing and talked to her. She was in heaven about that experience.
Her contract was dropped because of the image/music problem she had with A&M. She went on the road. She later found out that her road manager was an A&M plant who was secretly recording her concerts. They wanted to make sure that if she ever "made it" they would have her songs to claim as their property (you know how artists had to sign away their publishing rights in order to be signed back then)
She was really shook up by that experience. After that, I never saw or heard of her again.
I'm sorry to hear about her passing in 2005. I hope she was able to find some peace. The worse thing, other than never making it, is to come so close and have it taken away.
She was big in St. Louis!
I'm from St. Louis and I loved her. She was amazing!
I'm from St. Louis too and I have a couple of pictures I took of Cheryl performing in '77 or '78 at Kiel Auditorium. Where could I post them for fans of Cheryl?
I live in Saint Louis and saw Cheryl twice at Mississppi Nights, s great club that no longer exists. I also grew up with a guy who was her producer at one time--Barry Cervantes. She was a great talent.
I met Cheryl in Hollywood in about 1981. We used to go out together. Nothing serious. She was an exotic princess to me. I was a former actor working as a Hollywood talent agent and worked with actors. I knew nothing about the music business. Nothing, though Cheryl seemed to think I could somehow be useful to her pretty well derailed career. When I heard of her distress with A.J
Cervantes'A&M records three albums, she was amazed to learn that I had in fact gone to grade school with A.J. in St. Louis. What a small world. At anyrate, I would see Cheryl on and off during the next 20 years. We'd ride on my motorcycle or go dancing. At least once we did both. She got religious towards the end. And broke. An occasional residual for sporatic airplay would time to time show up in her PO Box at Hollywood Post Office. Where Little Richard too picked up his mail driven in a chauffeured limosine. Would that Cheryl had had such a fine ride. What a voice!
That's awesome. I appreciate you sharing some of your Cheryl Dilcher reminiscences here.
It was 1976 riding a bus on Sunset Blvd, from downtown L.A. to Hollywood. A very pretty girl sat next to me (I was 19) she introduced
herself as Cheryl Dilcher and for an hour on the bus she told me stories of being on the road and touring.She had no ego or regrets and she was so cool for this honky cat. I wish I had got to know her better as my rock years took flight.
Today is Cheryl Dilcher Day. Every Aug 15th is Cheryl Dilcher Day for me and my husband. So this morning I looked up her name in Google, just to check if there was anything new. Unlikely, of course, but you'll never know. I found this blog and read the post and immediately thought what an utter BS. You must know I am from Germany and pretty familiar with its artists and musicians, at least with those who were known before I left my country in 2003.
I had spent the whole year of 2007 on multiply. Nobody here will remember or know it, but it was THE thing to be on before Facebook came up. A social medium based in Southeast Asia, where people would connect (much like it was on Facebook later), and there were music pages you could download from. YES! You could even search for artist names and tracks, a true paradise for all music collectors. Of course a nightmare to all record companies... And in the end it was EMI who filed charges against them in January of 2008, and it meant the downfall of multiply. After nobody could download mp3s anymore, we all went our ways.
Now to Cheryl Dilcher. I had never heard of her before. I know lots of artists, my record collection is impressive to most, and I have a vast knowledge of the genre "girl with guitar" singer/songwriter. Still, never heard of Cheryl Dilcher. One of my multiply friends was a Russian guy who had pretty much the same musical taste as I had. So I could almost blindly download his posts, as I knew I would very likely enjoy them. One day in the summer of 2007 he posted an album of an unknown woman, with the picture of the sleeve. It was her first album of 1970, she was sitting in a brook with her feet in the water. The title was "Special Album".
I downloaded it and was amazed! What a great artists! A new Melanie! I had found a new Melanie! (I know the original Melanie and I often refer to other girl singers with guitars as alternative or new Melanies) I played the songs to my husband when he came home that evening and he was blown away, too. We were instant fans! Now I had to find out more about her.
We live in rural Pennsylvania, and to my utter astonishment I found out she was from Allentown! Only 90 minutes from us!!! I knew she had moved away (I guess I ploughed through the whole internet, dug up lots of details) and was no longer there, but I found out the address of the apartment where she had been living while she was preparing for her first album recording. Some people who were playing with her had been writing about that, and so I had found it. Btw, in case anyone is still reading at this point: you will not guess who sang background on her first album!!! Another unknown ambitious singer at the time, her name was Bette Midler. I swear I am not making this up, Bette Midler really sang on the first LP, and we all know the way she took from there, and how much Cheryl wanted that for herself and never achieved it.
We decided to drive up to Allentown and visit the place she had lived. We found it! It was on Aug 15, 2007, my husband had taken a day off from work and we took that trip to walk on Cheryl Dilcher's path. We took pictures of each other in front of her apartment building (this was before "selfies" were known), we had printed out the cover and held it up while posing in front of her former door. I wanted to ask the neighbors whether they remembered her, but didn't dare to. The neighborhood is very "diverse" today and I doubted any of these people around would have even cared for this former inhabitant, a white girl with a guitar.
We actually found the brook as well! I mean, the brook where she was sitting in for the cover of the "Special Album". Right next to it is a kind of park with benches and sports areas where young people played some kind of ball games. We had our picnic there on one of the benches, more pictures were taken.
(due to character limitations I have to post my comment in two parts, to be continued in following comment)
part 2 of above comment (characters are limited here so I have to post in several parts)
On the way home my husband and I were spinning out ideas about how we would meet her. We HAD to meet her! We were her fans! We knew Melanie, so of course we would also find Cheryl Dilcher and get to know her as well. At that time we knew she had left PA for California, and we had all kinds of phantasies about how she would come "home" (to PA) for a concert in some club or so, and we would go there and tell her how fantastic she was, how much we loved her album. (There were 3 other albums as well, but they were just meh, it was the first album that really inspired us)
We went home, life went on, half a year later Multiply was killed by EMI, and I discovered Facebook. We were still thinking that ONE DAY Cheryl Dilcher had to come home and we would somehow know about it and then get the chance to meet her. Then, pretty exactly a year after first discovering her, I found out that she had already been dead when we heard the first song. I didn't even know how to tell my poor husband. Cheryl had passed away years before we ever knew she existed, years before we had ever heard her songs! I did tell him that night, and he too was devastated. How tragic! Such a talented person, her background singer becomes a big name in the business, and she never saw the light! Ended up broke and sick, died in her fifties (I believe she was 52, not certain).
This was in July 2008, and then we decided we would drive to Allentown again on the same day as we did the year before, on the 15th of August, and from now on every Aug 15th would be Cheryl Dilcher Day. We would play her record in the car while driving there, we would remember our phantasies about meeting her one day, we would hold up the memory of her, even though nobody else ever knew her or her songs. We gave the album to friends and relatives, tried to promote her, well knowing at the time she had passed and it wouldn't mean anything anymore, but we loved that album so much. I still think to this day that every Melanie fan should have a listen to the first Cheryl Dilcher album!
We did go to Allentown on every Aug 15th for a few years. Then somehow life got in the way, like something important at work and my husband couldn't take the day off (and such). We stopped driving up, but we still think of her. I started traveling the US last year as a house/pet sitter, so I am not at home so often anymore. Today I am in Reno, NV, caring for 6 cats while their owners are on a cruise, and it is the 15th of August today and I remember Cheryl Dilcher. Unfortunately I don't have my music archive with me, and her songs are currently not online. So I guess I won't hear her "Special Album" today. But I do think of her.
part 3 of comment, due to character limitations I had to post my comment in 3 parts:
To Alex, the owner of this blog, I hope you have learned from the responses to this post that it was totally inappropriate. You just made up something by looking at a cover. AND you made up something about some "gay German New Wave" stuff never expecting a real German would ever read your post. Maybe this is a lesson for you, whatever you write, someone might know about it, and then you are exposed.
I strongly recommend to look up her first album (Special Album) of 1970. The next one was coming 1973 and was okay-ish still, but the next two albums were just plain stupid. The picture you posted was from her final LP in 1977.
I was wrong! Her music is online! Just found the whole (first) album on youtube: https://youtu.be/OzkcWO9tAok
So I can honor her day today, I am listening to the album right now. I recommend you do it, too.
I love Cheryl. Many compare her to others but she was her own woman,singer and songwriter. She was big in St Louis and gets an occasional spin on the KSHE classics show on Sunday mornings. I think Butterfly was her best album. High and All Woman are the best tracks. I give the album a spin once or twice a month.Cheryl was definitely a hottie!😋
had the song "Together" in my head today and went online to hear her sing. Wanted more, looked her up and sadly saw she has passed. Read some of the above, I have not enough attention span for all. But, yes. St. Louis did love her, Mississippi Nights was a place none shall forget. Cannot comment on today's version of club life, but we were the first Club Kids. Mississippi Nights, the Gate, the Red Bull, Faces, Humphrey's, 5th House (I think), all places with music. And, more. Not certain how this message board works. Just wanted my chime in.
I love her music, especially Butterfly; anyone know where I can download? I no longer have vinyl :(
Apple Music
I'm sorry she passed away too soon. I knew her for a brief period in los Angeles. I was just thinking of her,for some reason...And found this..
I thought about Cheryl and knew her well, I saw this and remembered the good things she had done. She was very depressed about the music business and how it let her down we used to compare notes. She always helped me and others. So, I thought I would write something nice about her. A wonderful person!! Thanks for everything girl, RIP
The Vancouver band "No Sinner" (on Spotify) has done an amazing cover of "All Woman." My new favorite song!
I jammed with her during April 1978 . She came to Detroit . Our manager Ron geddish brought her in from Cali. Our band zipper, cancelled our club gigs to become her band. We were going to book with DMA and possibly tour with black oak arkansaa and Ted nugget. We had one gig booked with those bands at Ohio state unv. We played a couple bars getting show together and she seemed lost and split leaving us with no gigs and pissed off agents and managers. We worked on some new material. I was the closest person to her here in dtown. She was a good person but did not emotionally handle the music business. The biz is really brutal to anyone who has lived it and harder for females. I did not try to make out with her to further degrade her, and was chosen to keep an eye on her. I treated her with respect but was only 18 myself. I guess she thought it was not the right fit. I had no idea what she really needed. I am surprised I never thought to look her up after all these years. Sorry for typing one finger with iPad
Wow! That's a lot to take in. I bought her last album--I heard it on the local progressive rock station, KSAN. I don't think she did any Bay area gigs to follow up the album.
I met Cheryl in the late 70’s in Hollywood LA area. I was temporarily residing in Long Beach and hanging out doing lights for a group called “ OnStage 78”
My friend Kenny took me to Cheryl’s recording space ( I called her Butterfly Lady. We were both from Pennsylvania. We hit it off immediately and I ended up recording background vocals on an old 8 track recording device with an intimate group of musicians.
Cheryl was delicately beautiful and one in a million. She had just gotten a billboard on the strip and had me look at it and said,” Michele, never stop playing your music.
I’m thrilled she found Jesus before the end. We will meet again one day again
If anyone is interested in hearing more Cheryl Dilcher tunes and music just like it, come by my Facebook Page = RocKlassiX. I just posted "Who's the Captain. To the Author of this Blog; Joke or not you got Google's attention when I searched for Cheryl and after reading the comments at least I know a little bit of something more than I knew before... thanks.
I knew Cheryl well. We met on the road and I traveled playing backup for her for a while. We came to LA to do her first album. I take exception to the way she is described in the listing. Although Cheryl's business career was never very stable, her music was solid and a very personal expression. She did not alter her style to fit the market, she was inspired by Bowie. His boldness was a made her want to explore her own wild side. I think she sounded beautiful.
I just "inherited" a bunch of old albums from a girlfriend and was looking through them. I came upon a promotional copy of Cheryl's first album, "Special Songs". I will be cleaning and listening to it soon. Having never heard of her, I researched online and it brought me here. Sorry to learn of Cheryl's death at just 58 in 2005 and that she apparently struggled in her later years. I hope she enjoyed her life. I am also curious if she ever married, had children and what caused her to die so young. Thank you for this forum Alex -- I can take a joke.
I met Cheryl in 1980. My buddy and I were seniors in high school traveling from st Louis to Phoenix for a class project. Cheryl sat next to me. We didn’t talk much and I didn’t recognize her until we asked why she was visiting St. Louis. She said she just finished playing at Mississippi nights bar downtown. Well we knew her music from kshe and loved her songs but we were too young to get into the bar so we weren’t able to see the concert. I remember as very down to earth and a nice person. She didn’t care to eat the meat sandwich from the airline. Don’t know, maybe she was vegetarian. My buddy didn’t hesitate when she asked if he wanted it. Wish now i asked for an autograph but I don’t like to bother people. I thought for sure we would get a chance someday to see her perform. Never happened of course. I still love her music but, alas, no one I know ever heard of her.
Lol hysterical
My local band here in St Louis had 'Together' on our song list back in the 90's. Everyone loved it! Big fan of Cheryl's and sad to hear she's no longer with us
Absolutely loved her Butterfly album. I know all of the words so it's great to be able to hear her again on the internet! Although, being from St. Louis I regret not seeing her at Mississippi Nights back then...!
Road my motorcycle over Peaches Records to get her autograph When I walked in hardly anyone there 2 Guys were recording her on VCR being jerks When she signed my Butterfly album I was star struck Such a classy lady She signed It all my love keep on rocking Cherish It still She was warm up act at Keil auditorium White jump suit and 12 string acoustic solo She nailed it She was the forerunner of the group Heart
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