Singer Teresa Brewer established herself as a big voice in a petite package with the novelty hit "Music! Music! Music!" in the 1950s.
Teresa Brewer, 76, a bold-voiced singer whose novelty hit "Music! Music! Music!" established her as a jukebox favorite in the 1950s and secured her four-decade career performing in nightclubs and on Las Vegas stages, died Oct. 17 at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She had progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder.
Ms. Brewer was a veteran radio performer at 19, when "Music! Music! Music!" became a pop-chart smash in 1950 with its bouncy Dixieland-ensemble backup and command to "put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon."
After a period of similar fare, she won over audiences as a balladeer singing "Till I Waltz Again With You" (which reportedly sold more than 1.4 million copies), "Let Me Go, Lover" and "A Sweet Old-Fashioned Girl."
Her voice was startlingly brassy for a 5-foot-2, 100-pound singer, and the disparity prompted jokes. Referring to a brash nightclub performer, entertainer Bing Crosby joked that Ms. Brewer was the "Sophie Tucker of the Girl Scouts." Time magazine called Ms. Brewer "a topnotch singer with a voice somewhere between a blowtorch and a cello."
A striking brunette -- later a blond -- she was cast as a star of the musical western film "Those Redheads from Seattle" (1953) and was a mainstay of television variety shows for several years.....
....She was credited as co-author of several songs, including "I Love Mickey," a novelty tune she recorded with New York Yankees center-fielder Mickey Mantle in 1956.
Her first marriage, to William Monahan, ended in divorce. Thiele, whom she married in 1972, died in 1996.
Survivors include four children from her first marriage, Kathleen Monahan-Granzen of Rye Brook, N.Y., Susan M. Dorot of White Plains, N.Y., Megan Ahearn of Port Chester, N.Y., and Michelle McCann of New Rochelle; a stepson, Bob Thiele Jr. of California; a brother; four grandsons; and five great-grandchildren.
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