NEW YORK — Singer Teresa Brewer, who topped the charts in the 1950s with such hits as “Till I Waltz Again with You” and performed with jazz legends Count Basie and Duke Ellington, died Wednesday. She was 76.
Brewer died at her home in New Rochelle of a neuromuscular disease, family spokesman Bill Munroe said. Her four daughters were at her bedside.
Brewer had scores of hits in the 1950s and a burgeoning film career but pared down her public life to raise her children. She re-emerged a decade later to perform with jazz greats Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Wynton Marsalis.
“She was just a wonderful, lovely lady,” said Munroe, a longtime family friend. “Her career was always a hobby with her; her family always came first. She always considered her legacy not to be the gold records and the TV appearances, but her loving family.”
Brewer had close to 40 songs that topped the charts, Munroe said, including “Dancin’ with Someone,” “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall,” “Ricochet” and “Let Me Go, Lover.”
Throughout her decades-long career, Brewer performed on TV with Mel Torme, sang with Tony Bennett and guest-hosted several variety shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” according to her Web site.
By 1952 she had her first hit, the single “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now,” on Coral Records, and her first child. In 1953, “Till I Waltz Again with You” sold more than 1.4 million copies. That year she also won a poll conducted by Paramount Pictures to select the country’s most popular female singer to cast in the studio’s 3-D Technicolor movie, “Those Redheads from Seattle.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.