Karen Sherry Finds Her Ascap Hat Fits Best

"One thing I've learned is never to lose what you've done," says Karen Sherry, ASCAP's senior VP/director of industry affairs and VP/executive director of the ASCAP Foundation.

By any measure, Sherry's done plenty in what she lightheartedly calls her "checkered career." Her ASCAP résumé is substantial enough: Starting as director of public relations in 1979, the following year she picked up the title of assistant to the president, serving under Hal David and then Morton Gould. In 1986 she added the title of director of public affairs. She was promoted to VP of communications in 1996, then to senior VP and member of ASCAP's senior management team in 1999.

She has supervised communications at ASCAP, coordinated legislative grass-roots efforts there, and produced special projects and events, including Broadway tributes to such ASCAP luminaries as Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen. She's the society's industry liaison with music-business and cultural organizations, and she oversees the ASCAP Foundation's educational programs, scholarships, grants, and recognition awards.

But when she alludes to past experience, Sherry also means her own success as a recording artist/songwriter, her teaching background, and her PR work prior to ASCAP.

With her sister Lois, the Brooklyn-based '60s duo the Sherry Sisters had a worldwide 1 million-selling pop hit in 1964 for Epic with "Sailor Boy" and performed with the likes of the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, and such comedians as Jackie Mason and Allen & Rossi.

"Want to know the truth?" Sherry says, laughing in response to the inevitable question of whether she misses the Sherrys' '60s stardom. "We loved the music production part of it but found the touring part tedious. We were managed by Jerry Weintraub, who managed John Denver and Lesley Gore at the time, and we decided to take a leave of absence."

The sisters thought they'd get back together again, but enjoyed their new paths too much, Sherry continues. "My sister went to law school and became a prominent entertainment lawyer, and I was an associate professor of Spanish and Spanish literature at New York University. Then I decided to pursue the business side of music—having been a recording artist in the creative side."

But first, Sherry became a freelance publicist for a firm representing Paramount Pictures. Charged with media publicity for the studio's Agatha Christie movies, her "first-biggest thrill," she says, was setting up radio and TV interviews for Bette Davis during the publicity campaign for Death on the Nile.

"My second-biggest thrill was at ASCAP when I met Fred Astaire, when ASCAP presented him the Pied Piper Award in L.A.," Sherry says. But her publicity work for Broadway musical composer Jerry Herman had more lasting value: "He started a program, The ASCAP Foundation Jerry Herman Legacy Series, to bring the American musical-theater heritage to young people across the country. Whenever a musical tours, we buy blocks of tickets for young people in various cities who otherwise couldn't afford to go, and we provide transportation for them. Then they participate in a question-and-answer seminar with the composer and lyricist afterwards. It's particularly gratifying because I worked with Jerry so many years ago and have come around full circle."

Likewise, Sherry's participation with the Foundation's Music in the Schools project, which was developed in conjunction with the Diane Warren Foundation, renews a relationship with another eminent ASCAP member.

"She's a graduate of our pop workshop program," Sherry says, "and now, so many years later, she's helped found this great program that works hand in hand with VH1 Save the Music [a music education program. It goes] to public schools across the country, where they deliver instruments, and it provides sheet music, folios, and methodology books."

Her involvement with the ASCAP Foundation, Sherry says, is the most rewarding part of her job description. "Having been there so long, I've done many things at ASCAP over the years. I've worn many hats and enjoyed them all. But of all the things I've done, I get the most satisfaction from my work with the Foundation, because its two missions are music education and talent development, and both of those are so close to my heart because of my background.

"Had these kinds of programs been around when I was a struggling songwriter and artist, I would have been thrilled—and I know that the people whose lives these programs touch are thrilled, because we get so many letters of appreciation."

Sherry's goal now is to set up more programs benefiting young people in these areas and enlist participation from the Foundation board's esteemed directors. "[Board member] Valerie Simpson and [husband and songwriting/performing partner] Nick Ashford went to the [Foundation co-founded and supported] Manhattan School of Music Summer Camp and gave a lesson in writing songs. Now its theme song is [the Ashford & Simpson-penned] 'Reach Out and Touch.' "

Looking back at her career, Sherry notes that such nurturing of new talent is "helped immeasurably" by her own songwriting/performing past. "It goes back to never losing what you've done. Even my Spanish comes into play, because I'm one of the founders of ASCAP's Latin Music Council."

Sherry is also on the board of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, a former president of the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a current Academy national trustee. She adds, "I still get up and sing at Club NARAS at the trustees meetings every year."