Teresa Brewer

Teresa Brewer launched her career during the 1950s as an energetic novelty singer who navigated the emergence of rock music before reappearing in the 1970s as a lively jazz performer. Listeners sometimes feel unsettled by her endearing, faintly nasal phrasing in the Your Hit Parade vein when it appears in jazz settings, yet her strongest moments reveal an effortless, spirited swing that draws much of its vitality from the accomplished musicians who regularly join her on record. She first performed at age five on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour and achieved her initial major success as a teenager in 1950 with the irresistibly infectious "Music! Music! Music!" The song quickly appeared on jukeboxes across the country and initiated a run of hit singles for Coral that continued through 1961. Her 1972 marriage to producer Bob Thiele sparked a return to recording with an extended series of albums on his Doctor Jazz, Signature, and Red Baron labels, frequently alongside such figures as Count Basie, Benny Carter, Duke and Mercer Ellington, Stephane Grappelli, Earl Hines, and Clark Terry.