Music: The Sherrill Sound

(2 of 2)

At the Houston session, when a take went well, Sherrill quoted the Bible: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." But when the drummer spoiled a quiet ending by descending with a crash, Sherrill swore: "Goddam!" He then signaled a halt and went to his office to telephone his wife. "We'll be dubbing tonight," he told her. "Dave Houston can sing better than that. I'm going to get him a double Scotch and some food, then strip his voice out of there, put some headphones on him and record that song the way it ought to be."

The son of a Baptist evangelist from Alabama, Sherrill grew up touring the South with his parents, playing piano at the "tent meetin's" and other functions where his father preached. He traces the beginning of his career as a professional musician to earning $10 for playing at a funeral at the age of ten. Although he had no formal musical training, by his teens he could play half a dozen instruments. After finishing high school, he took up the life of an itinerant rock musician, playing mostly piano and saxophone with bands in Tennessee and Alabama and sleeping in his car or under bridges. In 1961, he and a musician friend set up their own small recording studio in Nashville. A year later, he joined Columbia/Epic, where he is now a vice president.

A slight man with reddish brown hair, Sherrill at 36 has an old-young face lit with intelligence and sudden flashes of humor, but worn by the anxiety that comes from having to live by one's wits too early. He eschews the blaring cowboy suits and diamond stickpins of Music City, lives quietly with his wife and eleven-year-old daughter in a spacious, antique-furnished $100,000 home overlooking Nashville.

He holds to the fundamentalist faith of his father, but does not attend church because he cannot find one that teaches a literal enough interpretation of the Scriptures. His personal taste in music runs to classical. In fact, one of his early productions was a recording of Brahms' Lullaby that caused his daughter some confusion. When she heard the melody at school, she loyally insisted, despite her teacher's objection: "My Daddy wrote that song, and we've got the record at home to prove it."