[Dixielandjazz] Teresa Brewer Jazz Singer?

[Stephen G Barbone]

> Don Ingle <cornet at 1010internet.com> wrote: Actually Teresa could be  
> a fine jazz-oriented singer, and certainly gave due respect to Mr.  
> Waller's song list in here album, "Love ya Fats." Swung hard and  
> enthusiastic - but then with material like that who could not.   
> (Admittedly there is some prejudice here since she was from Toledo,  
> hometown of mon pere, Red Ingle. He loved the great "belters" and  
> when he heard her the first time he said..."son, there's a natural  
> 'belter.' I have long since agreed. Sure, she didn't bill herself as  
> a "jazz singer," but neither did many others whose style was jazz at  
> heart, from Crosby to Bennett. One man's opinion - and like a nose  
> we all have one!



For those who doubt Don Ingle, or his dad's assessment  note Ms.  
Brewer's NY Times obit. Note especially her performances (shortly  
after her marriage to Bob Thiele)  with Count Basie and Duke  
Ellington, and later with Wynton Marsalis and Dizzy Gillespie.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

NY Times - October 18, 2007 - By Douglas Martin
Teresa Brewer, Cheerful Chart-Topper on the Hit Parade, Is Dead at 76


Teresa Brewer, “the little girl with the big voice” 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, “Music! Music! Music!,” 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 “Choo’n Gum,” “Till I Waltz Again With  
You” and “Ricochet.”

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 “urgent, high-pitched voice that seems to curl up  
at the end of a note.”

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 “at best she can swing  
with a loose and easy fervor,” but quickly suggested that part of her  
success came from the performers with whom Mr. Thiele placed her.

Her first jazz recording, “The Songs of Bessie Smith,” was with Count  
Basie, and she performed on one of Duke Ellington’s last albums, “It  
Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.”

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

She sampled many American musical forms, from country music to pop to  
swing to bebop. She developed her vocal technique, adding a “husky  
lower register and a variety of timbres, from brassy to breathy,”  
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 Today’s 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 “more  
theatrical,” 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  
station’s children’s talent show. She performed “Take Me Out to the  
Ball Game” 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 “Major Bowes’  
Amateur Hour.” 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 “Molasses, Molasses” were “icky, sticky” and should have been  
children’s records.

Her transition began in the mid-1950s when she recorded some rhythm- 
and-blues and country songs. “Let Me Go, Lover,” 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. “My daughters introduced me  
to the new music and my husband taught me to listen to jazz,” 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, “Memories of Louis.” 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. “It’s eerie to note  
that her inexhaustible sprightliness is still there, and her voice, an  
intriguing combination of powerhouse growls and high-pitched squeaks,  
doesn’t appear to have lost any energy or thrust over the decades.”