Cherry Smith
Artist. Ska
- Active
- 1963-1966
- Sunrise
- August 22, 1943, Trench Town, Kingston, Jamaica
- Sunset
- September 24, 2008, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida (heart attack)
Cherry Smith, born Ermine Ortense Bramwell, sang backing vocals in the original Wailers until 1966. She was also known as Cherry Green, after the surname of her half-brother Carlton. The Irish Times obituary preferred that name, saying she had sometimes been called Cherry Smith "for reasons that remain unclear."
She was born in Trench Town and was nicknamed Cherry as a girl for her light complexion. She was in the group, with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingston, and Junior Braithwaite, that auditioned for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One, but by David Katz's account a day job and a young child kept her from the first session, where Beverley Kelso took her place, and from most of those that followed. She sang on a handful of sides, among them "Lonesome Feelings," and left in late 1966.
Marley's official website named Kelso the only surviving original Wailer after Smith's sunset while not listing Smith as a member of the group, an inconsistency that reflects a long-running argument over who counts as an original Wailer. The dispute has continued: Maxine Stowe, a former Studio One employee and relative of Dodd's, said in 2021 that she never saw Smith emerge as a singer and did not regard her as one.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Bob Marley (collaborator)
- The Wailers (session work)
- Junior Braithwaite (collaborator)
Notes
- Katz says she began harmonizing with the group under Joe Higgs in 1962, rehearsed with it for two years, and made "her permanent exit from the group in late 1966." David Katz, "Cherry Green," Guardian, November 20, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/20/popandrock. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 38, places "Cherry Green" and Beverley Kelso as the two backing singers in the group that first came together at Higgs's yard in 1961.
- Katz adds that the group may not have known her real surname and that she "has sometimes been referred to as Cherry Smith, for reasons that remain unclear." Katz, "Cherry Green."
- "Original Wailer and Important to Ska Music," Irish Times, November 22, 2008, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/original-wailer-and-important-to-ska-music-1.913811.
- Katz says she was born in "the upper section of Trench Town" and nicknamed for a complexion "referred to as 'red' in the Jamaican colloquial parlance." Katz, "Cherry Green."
- Katz says she was present at the group's audition for Dodd, which he dates to July 1964, but "was unable to attend the group's first recording session and was replaced by Beverley Kelso"; she was "absent from most of the group's recording sessions" but sang on "Lonesome Feelings" and "There She Goes" (October 1964), "What's New Pussycat?" (July 1965), and "Let the Lord Be Seen in You." Katz, "Cherry Green." The Rough Guide dates the Wailers' signing to Dodd to "just before Christmas" and the release of "Simmer Down" to the end of December 1963. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 38.
- Wikipedia reports the website's claim and its omission of Smith. "Cherry Smith," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Smith. In 2021 Bunny Wailer's former manager, Maxine Stowe, argued that only Marley, Tosh, and Bunny Wailer were Wailers and that "Beverly Kelso is a background person, she is not a Wailer either," while Aston Barrett Jr. claimed membership for his father; the same report notes that the deaths of Braithwaite, Smith, and Bunny Wailer have been said to leave Kelso "the only surviving founding member." "Who Was the Last Surviving Wailer?" DancehallMag, April 6, 2021, https://www.dancehallmag.com/2021/04/06/news/who-was-the-last-surviving-wailer.html.
- Claude Mills, "Who Was the Last Surviving Wailer?," DancehallMag, April 6, 2021, https://dancehallmag.com/?p=32834.
