Teresa Brewer, 76, 1950s Pop Songstress

By STEPHEN MILLER
Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 18, 2007

Teresa Brewer, who died yesterday at 76 at her home in New Rochelle, was a sprightly songstress best known for her 1950 hit "Music! Music! Music!" with its catchy intro, "Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon."

The bouncy song, originally a B-side throwaway track, became her biggest hit and signature tune.

Standing 5-foot-2, brunette, and with a perky nose, Brewer was telegenic and her songs played up her all-American image. She had such novelty hits as "Choo'n Gum" (1950) and "The Hula Hoop Song" (1958), but the vocal talent was for real. Time magazine described her as "leather-lunged" and added that her voice was "somewhere between a blowtorch and a cello." Comparing her to a brash nightclub entertainer of the era, Bing Crosby called her the"Sophie Tucker of the Girl Scouts."

Brewer's greatest popularity came in the mid-1950s, when she scored hits such as "You'll Never Get Away," "Ricochet Romance," and the million-selling "Till I Waltz With You Again," while performing at some of the spiffiest rooms in the country, including the Versailles and the Latin Quarter in New York, the Sahara in Las Vegas, and the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. Her last charted hit, a cover of Edith Piaf's "Milord," came in 1961.

In the 1960s, Brewer mostly stopped touring to concentrate on raising her four daughters, but she also began making jazz records, including "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing," Duke Ellington's last recording. She also recorded with Count Basie, Benny Carter, Stephane Grappelli, and Earl Hines.

Later she verged into rock and country; her yodel was said to be exemplary. In 1991 she recorded a tribute to Louis Armstrong, "Memories of Louis."

Born Teresa Veronica Breuer on May 7, 1931, in Toledo, Ohio, she was the daughter of a glass inspector at the Libby-Owens Co. She made her first appearance on radio at age 2, in an audition for a local radio station at which she sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." By age 5, she was a regular on the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour" radio program, and she later toured with some of the "Major Bowes" live performing units. She also starred in an early Toledo television program, "Toledo's Miss Talent."

At 16, Brewer dropped out of high school, won a talent contest, and moved to New York. There she quickly found an agent and a recording contract, and a new spelling for her last name — the W supposedly looked better on a marquee. "Music Music Music" was her splashy introduction to a nation addicted to the hit parade, although the original release was the A-side, "Copenhagen." She was just 18.

Brewer became a stalwart of Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town." Sullivan would introduce her as "the little girl with the big voice," and she became a serious contender in various national popularity polls.

In 1953, she appeared in a 3–D film, "Those Redheads From Seattle," in which her performance inspired Paramount to offer her a seven-year contract. "I already had two kids and was expecting my third, so I thought that was ridiculous," she told her official fan Web site. "I said, 'No, thank you.'" In 1958, she described her technique for keeping her voice in shape, despite a restricted touring schedule. "No trouble at all," she told the Los Angeles Times. "I keep in training by screaming at the children."

Brewer was divorced from her first husband, Bill Monahan, in 1972 and was remarried to Bob Thiele, a recording engineer who had recorded such jazz pioneers as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Anita O'Day for his own Signature and Flying Dutchman labels from the 1940s. With Thiele as producer and creative partner, her repertoire became deeper and more adventuresome. He died in 1996.

Brewer is survived by her daughters, four grandsons, and five great-grandchildren.