CMT.com has an article on Cherryholmes up today by Edward Morris.
The article describes how the popular family band came to be – a story that will be familiar to their many fans – and includes a lengthy interview with patriarch Jere Cherryholmes.
Among the topics covered are the family’s closeness with Jimmy Martin, and how they came to sing at his memorial service.
“We brought our instruments over there and played music with him and went out to eat with him. He called on the phone quite frequently. … Then he got real sick [with cancer], and we’d call on him. His last Christmas was the Christmas of 2004. He called on Christmas morning and asked us what we were doing. We said we were just going to have Christmas dinner, that we didn’t have any relatives out here. So he said, ‘Well, I’m here by myself. Why don’t you come over and visit me?’ So we went and spent the day with him and ate pecan pie and ice cream and talked. …
“The last time we saw him was about four days before he passed [on May 14, 2005]. We hadn’t taken our instruments over that time because we thought he’d be kind of tired and wouldn’t be up to it. But he asked us to sing for him, and we sang a couple a cappella. One of them, he really liked, and he teared up pretty good. Before we left, he asked me if we would sing that at his funeral. … So we did.”
That song was the Louvin Brothers’ “No One to Sing for Me,” which Cherryholmes recorded on its first Skaggs Family album.
Read the full article at CMT.com.
