Information/Write-up
Cheryl Keyla emerged in the mid-1970s as one of the appealing new voices to come through R. Harlan Smith’s Royalty Records, part of the first wave of Alberta country artists given a proper studio platform during the label’s formative years. Based in Calgary, she wrote much of her own material and developed a straightforward, melodic style built around clear phrasing and unvarnished emotion. Her earliest sides for Royalty — including “Singer in the Band,” “Anywhere With You,” “Good Time Girl,” and “Blues Country Style” — introduced her as both singer and songwriter, blending prairie country instincts with a light pop sensibility that made her records easy to program on western Canadian radio.
In 1975 she recorded her only full-length album, Too Much Love, at Project 70 Studios in Edmonton with Joe Kozak and R. Harlan Smith producing. The album showcased eight of her own compositions alongside a handful of carefully chosen covers, reflecting both her writing voice and her range as an interpreter. Songs like “You Made It Easier,” “Singer in the Band,” “Anywhere With You,” and the title track carry her characteristic ease — conversational, unforced, and grounded in the acoustic textures of mid-’70s Alberta country. The record circulated widely throughout the Prairies and remains one of the more distinctive releases in the early Royalty Records catalogue, capturing a moment when independent western Canadian labels were beginning to leave a national imprint.
Keyla continued recording into the late 1970s, cutting the single “Kentucky Blue Eyes” backed with “Blue Label Blues,” a gently modernized country-blues track that received regional airplay into 1979. Although information on her later career is limited, the small body of work she left behind — especially Too Much Love — stands as a snapshot of a young Alberta songwriter finding her voice at a time when local studios, small labels, and self-written country material were just beginning to shape a broader Canadian country identity.
-Robert Williston
Written and performed by Cheryl Keyla
Produced by R. Harlan Smith and Project 70
Helping Hand Music
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