Cheryl Lynn
Cheryl Lynn ( born March 11, 1957 Cheryl Lynn Smith in Los Angeles, California) is an American disco and soul singer. It is above all for the disco classic Got to Be Real (1978 ) is known. The music database Allmusic appreciates its " captivating voice and great vocal range ."
Career
Cheryl Lynn began singing as a little girl in a church choir. An appearance on the game show The Gong Show helped the singer in 1976 to great attention. A commitment as " the Wicked Witch of the West" in the musical The Wiz joined in the same year. In 1977, she signed a recording contract with Columbia and the following year it is booked as a guest singer for the song Georgie Porgy of the band Toto.
In 1978 Lynn with the single Got to Be Real and their debut album, Cheryl Lynn at first breakthrough in American show business. For both works, she received a Gold award. Got to Be Real has established itself as beyond disco classics and is also found on countless compilations and soundtracks. The music channel VH1 chose the song at number 21 of the greatest dance songs of all time. In addition, the song was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In the pop charts their home they could not build on this success anyway - Got to Be Real remains her only top 40 hit. In the R & B charts to the end of the 1980s, however, it belongs to the fixed sizes with a total of 18 hits. Besides Got to Be Real Lynn succeeded there in early 1984, a further square one with Encore. Among her other top -10 success in the R & B charts include Shake It Up Tonight ( 1981), the duet If This World Were Mine by Luther Vandross (1982 ) and finally Every Time I Try to Say Goodbye (1989).
Vandross produced their 1982 LP Instant Love, three years later, she went with him on tour in the USA. Published in the same year LP It's Gonna Be Right, however, was the first of her career, which failed to make it into the top 200 of the United States. By the end of the decade, it appeared that further more or less successful plates - the title track of their 1989er LP Whatever it Takes was also their last hit in the U.S. R & B charts ( number 26 ).
Although Lynn was also active in the following decades in the music business, she published only sporadically plates. As a background singer, she worked among others for Richard Marx ( Rush Street and Paid Vacation albums ) and Luther Vandross ( Your Secret Love ). In early 1995 Lynn signed a contract with the Japanese independent label Avex Trax, which in the following years three remix albums, and finally a new studio CD, Good Times, published. This sold about 100,000 copies.
23 years after Lynn's biggest hit Got to Be Real, the song was honored in 2001 with platinum in the United States. Three years later, wrote the singer together with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the song Sweet Child of Life for the soundtrack to Shark Tale - Small fish. 2008 followed Lynn's performance at the concert evening David Foster & Friends, which was later published on the accompanying DVD.