Cynthia Strother, the singer and songwriter who teamed along with her youthful sister Kay as The Bell Sisters, a well-liked teenage act that discovered in a single day success within the Nineteen Fifties with their very first music, “Bermuda,” has died. She was 88.
Strother died Friday of coronary heart failure at a hospice facility in Las Vegas, her nephew Rex Strother advised The Hollywood Reporter.
The Bell Sisters, who recorded for RCA from 1951-55, carried out usually on radio exhibits hosted by the likes of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and on such tv applications as The Johnny Carson Present, The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Mickey Mouse Membership.
The pair additionally appeared within the 1953 big-screen musicals Cruisin’ Down the River, starring Dick Haymes, and These Redheads From Seattle, starring Rhonda Fleming.
The eldest of seven youngsters — their dad, Gene, was an electrician for an aviation firm — Cynthia Sue Strother was born on Oct. 4, 1935, in Harlan County, Kentucky, and raised along with her household in Seal Seashore, California.
She wrote “Bermuda” in 1951 on the piano when she was 16 and nonetheless attending Huntington Excessive College and Kay was 11.
“I like Spanish music finest and was beating out Spanish tempo on the piano,” she advised Newsweek in 1952. “I simply received the concept and went by with it, till it was completed. Then all of us received collectively to jot down the phrases. We received Indian concepts and a Spanish bullfighter thought. Then any person mentioned, ‘Bermuda,’ and we favored that.”
The Bell Sisters — Cynthia (proper) and Kay — in 1952 as seen of their first publicity picture.
Courtesy of Rex Strother
Adopting their mom Edith’s maiden identify of Bell for his or her act, the women carried out in October 1951 on an area KNXT-TV present referred to as “Peter Potter’s Seek for a Track.” One of many judges of the night’s beginner compositions was a music writer, who instantly acknowledged the tune’s potential.
The women have been rushed right into a Hollywood studio to demo the music for orchestra chief Henri Rene, the West Coast A&R man for RCA-Victor, and “Bermuda” was rapidly launched in March 1952, finally rising to No. 7 on the Billboard singles chart. It could promote greater than 1 million copies.
“I attempted to not affect their pure fashion in any means,” Rene advised Downbeat journal. “I advised them to sing simply the way in which they sing for enjoyable round the home. In the event that they go over as large as we predict they are going to, it will likely be as a result of freshness and ease of their method.”
Watch the sisters carry out “Bermuda” on The Dinah Shore Present right here.
The sisters additionally had hits with “Wheel of Fortune,” which made it to No. 10, and “Hambone,” which was recorded with actor-singer Phil Harris and charted as excessive as No. 19.
They’d open for Nat King Cole in Los Angeles, carry out everywhere in the nation and even tour Korea with different Hollywood performers and the USO — all when college wasn’t in session, in fact.
In Paramount’s These Redheads From Seattle, the women sang “Take Again Your Gold,” and Cynthia portrayed the love curiosity of Man Mitchell’s character.
“I used to be taking part in a nurse, and he was supposed to come back in the place I used to be rolling bandages and we had some dialogue after which we have been alleged to kiss. Effectively, despite the fact that I used to be 17, I don’t suppose I’d ever kissed a boy earlier than, and what’s extra, there was speak his spouse was going to be on the set,” she recalled in a put up on The Bell Sisters’ web site.
“I imply, it was dangerous sufficient we by no means had any performing classes — Kay and I have been simply winging it, principally. I used to be so flustered as a result of I needed to kiss Man and I had no expertise, and his spouse was going to be watching. Effectively, it will need to have actually confirmed within the footage, as a result of in spite of everything the concern and embarrassment of getting by it, they didn’t even use the scene within the film.”
From left: Cynthia Strother, Rhonda Fleming and Teresa Brewer in 1953’s ‘These Redheads From Seattle’
Courtesy Everett Assortment
The sisters have been wonderful acapella singers and welcomed at army hospitals and bases, the place they incessantly needed to carry out and not using a band.
“Bermuda” continued to generate royalties for Cynthia over the many years, along with her music heard in Allison Anders’ Grace of My Coronary heart (1996).
After she left present enterprise, she taught swimming to handicapped kids and adults.
Along with Kay, survivors embrace her different sisters, Sharon, Judy, Paula and Alice; her sons, Seth, Kristoffer and Keven; and quite a few grandchildren. Her husband, Seth, whom she married in 1957, died in 2006; her brother, Rex, died in 2019; and her daughter, Anastasia, died in 2022.
