Ava Cherry

Ava Cherry is an American singer and model.

Cherry was born in 1953 to an African-American family in Woodlawn, a working-class neighbourhood on the south side of Chicago.

Her father was a postal worker and trumpet player who worked long hours, "from four o'clock in the morning [until] nine o'clock at night", and she rarely saw him; her mother worked in the administration department for Playboy Enterprises.

Both parents' careers left deep imprints on her; she was raised to appreciate music by her father and lived for a period in the Playboy Mansion as a bunny.

Cherry was introduced to Hugh Hefner by her friends, and was underage at the time she lived in the mansion.

She attended Academy of Our Lady High School and graduated in the early 1970s.

As a teenager, she sang in a girl group influenced by the Supremes and was a regular attendee at the Regal Theater in Chicago, a venue frequently attended by black music fans.

Cherry first aspired to be a model after graduating high school, putting together a book of headshots and finding work with several agencies.

She disliked her unusual last name, but was told by modelling agencies it was an asset to her career.

Cherry later moved to New York City for her career, but it failed to prosper, and she found work as a cocktail waitress to pay the bills.

Cherry first heard about David Bowie through her agent, who was an early fan and gave her a copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

She was captivated by the record, which she played "about a hundred times", and by Bowie's aesthetic sensibility.

At the time, Cherry was a waitress at the Genesis nightclub and a close friend of Stevie Wonder's then-girlfriend, who knew Bowie; when she invited Wonder to host an afterparty at Genesis, Bowie attended.

When the two first met, he was attracted by her close-cropped blonde hair and asked if she was a singer, inviting her on the spot to sing backup on a planned tour of Japan.

Their relationship quickly turned personal as well as professional.

Shortly after they began dating, Cherry met Bowie's wife Angela Barnett (also known as Angie Bowie) and was shocked to learn he was married until Bowie clarified they were in an open marriage.

Cherry and Barnett initially became friends, but ultimately became mutually jealous.

Anticipating the Japan tour, Cherry quit her job and sold her apartment, only for the tour to be cancelled.

Not to be dissuaded, she went to Europe to search for Bowie.

Travelling Europe, Cherry attracted the attention of some modelling agencies due to her striking and defining visual aesthetic.

Designers treated her as "a goddess from outer space" as she made the rounds through the major fashion capitals of Paris, London, and Milan, and she was featured in Vogue and Elle.

After a year, Cherry found Bowie working on the album Pin Ups near Paris.

They spent a week in the Château d'Hérouville to record the album, which she described as "one of the most beautiful times in my life", and lived together in Paris for eight months.

Bowie hoped to steer Cherry's burgeoning career, saying she could be the "next Josephine Baker" and hoping to sign her to MainMan, run by his manager Tony Defries.

She collaborated with English musician David Bowie between 1972 and 1975; the two met in New York City when she was a nightclub waitress and Bowie was touring for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Afterwards, they began a period of personal and artistic collaboration that heavily influenced the Young Americans "blue-eyed soul" era.

Following this, she struck out as a solo singer and backing artist for musicians such as Luther Vandross and Chaka Khan.

Growing up in Chicago with significant exposure to the local African-American music culture, Cherry became an influence in the works of a number of pre-eminent artists, as well as a respected musician in her own right.

Cherry's influence on Young Americans through her connections to major soul music institutions such as Sigma Sound Studios and the Apollo Theater has proven a particularly noted part of her legacy, as has her contemporaneous work with proto-new wave band the Astronettes.

He founded a soul-influenced trio called The Astronettes, featuring Cherry, long-time collaborator Warren Peace, and Jason Guess, and recorded and produced their tracks in London through late 1973 and early 1974.

Cherry's solo career has been long-running, with her first album Ripe!!! released in 1980.

Her solo work, known for its disco influence, has received a mostly positive critical reception but a lack of commercial success; factors blamed for this critical and commercial disconnect include racial discrimination within the music industry and backlash against her predominant genres.

In January 2022 she released her autobiography All That Glitters: The Ava Cherry Story.

The Astronettes project was quickly shelved and the material was not released until the 1990s; however, Bowie kept the trio as his backing singers for the Diamond Dogs era.

The Astronettes received mixed reviews, with some describing it as "sketchwork" only valuable as a curiosity, while others admired it for a "new wave before the term existed" sensibility.

Cherry's major influence on Bowie was in Young Americans, his ninth studio album.

The heavily soul-influenced work drew on Bowie's interest in black music, and the backing trio of Cherry, Robin Clark (wife of guitarist Carlos Alomar), and a then-unknown Luther Vandross impacted the album's sound.

Cherry introduced him to the Apollo Theater, where he poached Alomar and Vandross from the house band; Bowie and Alomar would go on to write some of the album's most successful songs, while Vandross would break out as a celebrity in his own right.

She also introduced him to the Sigma Sound Studios, synonymous with Philadelphia soul, where the album was recorded.

Cherry was later quoted as saying that it was her influence on and encouragement of Bowie that inspired him to perform black music in the first place.