[Dixielandjazz] Teresa Brewer Obit - Music, Music, Music

[Steve Barbone]

Teresa Brewer loved Dixieland. Remember the tribute she did to Louis
Armstrong in 1991? And her performance of Bessie Smith tunes with Basie?
And her performance with Ellington?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Teresa Brewer, Cheerful Chart-Topper on the Hit Parade, Is Dead at 76

NY TIMES - By DOUGLAS MARTIN - October 18, 2007

Teresa Brewer, ³the little girl with the big voice² who popped to the top of
the 1950s hit parade with perky, relentlessly cheerful songs, then
reinvented herself as an exuberant jazz singer in the 1970s, died yesterday
at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 76.

The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative brain
disease, said Bill Munroe, a family spokesman and friend.

The elfin Ms. Brewer achieved teenage stardom as a spunky novelty act; its
catchy song, ³Music! Music! Music!,² became a jukebox fixture, earned a gold
record and became her signature song. She recorded it again several times,
using different punctuation.

Her early pop hits included ³Choo¹n Gum,² ³Till I Waltz Again With You² and
³Ricochet.²

Ms. Brewer recorded nearly 600 songs. Her public recognition was heightened
by many television appearances with personalities like Ed Sullivan, Mel
Tormé, Perry Como, Arthur Godfrey and Tony Bennett and engagements at
leading nightclubs.

John S. Wilson, writing in The New York Times in 1982, characterized Ms.
Brewer, a veritable porcelain doll in appearance in her early career, as
having an ³urgent, high-pitched voice that seems to curl up at the end of a
note.²

Urged on by her second husband, Bob Thiele, a record producer who recorded
many jazz greats, Ms. Brewer resolutely proceeded to transcend what she
called this cutesy-poo image.

Allmusic.com, the Internet music guide, somewhat grudgingly acknowledged her
transformation. It says that ³at best she can swing with a loose and easy
fervor,² but quickly suggested that part of her success came from the
performers with whom Mr. Thiele placed her.

Her first jazz recording, ³The Songs of Bessie Smith,² was with Count Basie,
and she performed on one of Duke Ellington¹s last albums, ³It Don¹t Mean a
Thing If It Ain¹t Got That Swing.²

But some jazz critics praised her performances for both musicality and
emotionality. Nat Hentoff wrote: ³Teresa Brewer is irrepressibly herself,
constantly evolving, constantly enjoying the surprise of herself. The woman
is a phenomenon.² 

She sampled many American musical forms, from country music to pop to swing
to bebop. She developed her vocal technique, adding a ³husky lower register
and a variety of timbres, from brassy to breathy,² Robert Palmer wrote in
The Times in 1978. She even became known for a yodel with a distinctive
little yelp.

Ms. Brewer balanced her public career with a devotion to home and family. In
1959 Today¹s Living magazine reported that she turned down engagements that
would keep her away from her children more than 12 weeks a year, and did her
own housework and cooking.

Theresa Breuer, who later changed her name to one she deemed ³more
theatrical,² was born in Toledo, Ohio, on May 7, 1931, into a family with
little aptitude or interest in music. Her father inspected glass for the
Libby-Owens Company.

When she was 2 her mother took her to an audition for a radio station¹s
children¹s talent show. She performed ³Take Me Out to the Ball Game² for pay
consisting of cupcakes and cookies. She never took singing lessons, but did
take tap classes. 

She entered other talent shows and became a regular on ³Major Bowes¹ Amateur
Hour.² When she was 12 her parents curtailed her touring so she could
concentrate on schoolwork, but she dropped out two months before graduation.
At 16 she found luck and an agent in New York. Her image became a bouncy,
upbeat one, though she later said she actually preferred blues, ballads and
Dixieland jazz. She secretly thought hits like ³Molasses, Molasses² were
³icky, sticky² and should have been children¹s records.

Her transition began in the mid-1950s when she recorded some
rhythm-and-blues and country songs. ³Let Me Go, Lover,² originally a country
song, became one of her biggest hits.

In 1972 Ms. Brewer divorced Bill Monahan and married Mr. Thiele, and
immediately expanded her musical horizons. ³My daughters introduced me to
the new music and my husband taught me to listen to jazz,² she said.

Mr. Thiele died in 1996. Ms. Brewer is survived by her four daughters from
her first marriage, Kathleen Monahan Granzen, Susan Monahan Dorot, Megan
Monahan Ahearn and Michelle Monahan McCann, all of Westchester County, N.Y.;
a stepson, Robert Thiele Jr. of Los Angeles; four grandchildren; and five
great-grandchildren.

In 1991 Ms. Brewer returned to the studio to record a jazz tribute to Louis
Armstrong, ³Memories of Louis.² It includes Wynton Marsalis and Dizzy
Gillespie, among other trumpeters. Several reviewers noted that few singers
sounded less like Armstrong than Ms. Brewer.

But a review of a live performance in The Toronto Star shortly afterward
praised her enduring distinctiveness. ³It¹s eerie to note that her
inexhaustible sprightliness is still there, and her voice, an intriguing
combination of powerhouse growls and high-pitched squeaks, doesn¹t appear to
have lost any energy or thrust over the decades.²