VANDERBILT SAVES VOICES OF THE STARS

Nashville clinic serves famous and unknown in Music City Singers are susceptible to abrasions and calluses from slamming vocal cords together too hard, too often, said Voice Center physician Dr. David Francis. There also are fluctuations in the thickness of the vocal cords that can cause voice problems. Just like guitar strings, thinner vocal cords make higher notes. Thicker guitar strings — like vocal cords swollen from overuse or a virus — make lower notes, the gravelly or low voice that sometimes accompanies colds and flu. And then there are potentially serious, potentially irreversible voice-altering afflictions like polyps, cysts and cancer. Doctors at the Voice Center have found that country music and rock ‘n’ roll singers are more likely to suffer from vocal problems than opera and other classically trained singers. Shania Twain, for example, had lesions on her vocal cords. Larry Gatlin had to undergo several surgeries to remove cysts that had developed on his cords, followed by long periods of complete silence — “which was pretty hard, because I always have a lot of witty, clever and glib things to say,” Gatlin said. For country rocker Gary Allan, an unexpectedly discovered polyp on his vocal cord robbed him of his falsetto for most of last year.