LEGEND: Wild Cherry

Wild Cherry: Featured Legend of Red Hots Burlesque

We’ve got a penchant for a wild woman at Red Hots Burlesque, and they don’t come any wilder than…

WILD CHERRY

Exotic-looking burlesque dancer Wild Cherry was raised on the carnival circuit. She was taught at home to read and write, and was not able to get formal schooling, which kept her from a lot of work opportunities. She began performing in the girlie shows on the carnival circuit not because of a particular call to dancing, but because it was a good option for a woman looking for work. She learned to dance similarly to her education: not in schools, but from mimicking the dancers she saw in musicals. While living in Tampa, she was captivated by the voodoo of New Orleans, and moved there in 1958. Wild Cherry was named for her penchant of arguing and fighting, especially with customers. She worked in clubs that expected her to convince patrons to buy the girls expensive drinks, a practice called B-drinking, and she didn’t enjoy the entitlement that some customers decided these drinks also purchased. Once, she went to the bar and bought her own beverage, returned to an unruly customer and said, “It’s my drink and I can do what I want with it,” and then threw the drink in his face. The New Orleans scene was just as spicy as the cuisine during the ’60s and ’70s. “…If [the women] did decide they didn’t like somebody, in theaters I’ve seen, they would take a rolling pin and a light bulb, and grind that glass up fine like a powder and put it in your face powder. They would put shoe polish in the eye mascara tube. They could get really rough. They didn’t play,” Cherry recounted in an interview with producer Rick Doulap in 2010 of the women in the New Orleans burlesque stripping scene during her heyday. Wild Cherry quit dancing in her mid-40s, but has continued to perform at the Burlesque Hall of Fame and the New Orleans Burlesque Festival. This year Wild Cherry was the featured guest at Burlycon, a convention for burlesque performers, fans, and aficionados.