Name	Teresa Brewer
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Theresa Breuer
Born	May 07, 1931 Toledo, Ohio,
Died	October 17, 2007 New Rochelle, New York
Spouse	Bob Thiele
Genre	Traditional pop
Years active	1949-1970s
Label	London, Coral, RCA Victor, Philips
Url	Teresa Brewer Center

Teresa Brewer (7 May 1931 – 17 October 2007) was an American pop singer whose style incorporated elements of country, jazz, R&B;, musicals and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Born Theresa Breuer in Toledo, Ohio, Brewer died of a neuromuscular disease at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. at the age of 76.

Biography

Teresa Brewer grew up in Toledo, Ohio, USA. Her father was an inspector of glass for the Libbey Owens Company (now Pilkington Glass); her mother was a housewife. At the age of two, Theresa was taken by her mother to audition for a radio program, "Uncle August's Kiddie Show" on Toledo's WSPD.

She performed for cookies and cupcakes donated by the sponsor. Although she never took singing lessons, she took tap dancing lessons. From age five to twelve, she sang and danced on the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," then a popular touring radio show. Her aunt Mary traveled with Theresa until 1949, when Theresa married. She was devoted to her aunt, who shared Brewer's home until her death in 1993.

At the age of 12, Theresa returned to Toledo and ceased touring in order to have a normal school life. She continued to perform on local radio. In January 1948, 16 year-old Theresa won a local competition and (with three other winners) was sent to New York to appear on a talent show called "Stairway to the Stars", featuring Eddie Dowling. It was at about that time that she changed the spelling of her name from Theresa Breuer to Teresa Brewer. She won a number of talent shows and played night clubs in New York (including the famous Latin Quarter).

An agent, Richie Lisella, heard her sing and took her career in hand, and soon she was signed to a contract with London Records. In 1949 she recorded a record called "Copenhagen" with the Dixieland All-Stars. The B side was a song called "Music! Music! Music!" by Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum . Unexpectedly, it was not the A side but the B side that took off, selling over a million copies and becoming Teresa's signature song.

Another novelty song, "Choo'n Gum," hit the top 20 in 1950, followed by "Molasses, Molasses". Although she preferred to sing ballads, the only one of those that made the charts was "Longing for You" in 1951.

In 1951 she switched labels, going to Coral Records. By this time she was married and had a daughter, Kathleen. Since she never learned to read music, she had demos sent to her to learn the melodies of the songs she would record. Despite her lack of formal training, she had a number of hits for Coral. One of her recordings, "Gonna Get Along Without You Now" (1952) was better known in a 1956 version by Patience and Prudence and was also a hit in 1964 for Skeeter Davis as well as Tracey Dey. In 1952, she also recorded "You'll Never Get Away" in a duet with Don Cornell, followed in 1953 by her best selling hit, "Till I Waltz Again with You".

More 1953 hits were "Dancin' with Someone," "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", and another gold record, "Ricochet". In later years she followed with "Baby, Baby, Baby," "Bell Bottom Blues," "Our Heartbreaking Waltz" (written by Sidney Prosen, who had written "Till I Waltz Again With You") and "Skinnie Minnie." During those years she continued to play night clubs in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and elsewhere.

In the mid-50s, she did a number of covers of rhythm and blues songs like "Pledging My Love," "Tweedle Dee" and "Rock Love." She also covered some country songs like "Jilted," "I Gotta Go Get My Baby" and "Let Me Go, Lover!."

In 1956 she had a two-sided hit with "A Tear Fell" and "Bo Weevil," both covers of R&B; songs. This was followed by "Sweet Old-Fashioned Girl." Also that year she co-wrote "I Love Mickey", about New York Yankees center fielder Mickey Mantle, who appeared on the record with Brewer. It was also reported that the two had developed an attraction for each other. Another big hit in 1956 was Brewer's syncopated rendition of "Mutual Admiration Society". Some of her songs have a decidedly pre-rock beat to them, especially "Ricochet," "Jilted," and "A Sweet Old Fashioned Girl".

In 1957 she recorded more covers: of country song "Teardrops in My Heart" and R&B; songs "You Send Me" and "Empty Arms." The last chart hit of hers was "Milord" in 1961, an English language version of a song by Édith Piaf.

In 1962 she switched labels again, to Philips Records, where she recorded many singles and albums over a five year period, including Gold Country in 1966. In addition to having her record new and contemporary material, Philips put Brewer in the studio to re-record her earlier material with new arrangements, instrumentation and recording equipment: the resulting album (PHM 200-062) was issued as Teresa Brewer's Greatest Hits. After leaving Philips, Brewer made a few recordings for other companies, but with no more big chart hits. In the 1970s she released a few albums on Flying Dutchman Records owned by her second husband, jazz producer Bob Thiele. In 1975 she release an album "Unliberated Woman" produced by Elvis Presley's producer Felton Jarvis. One of the tracks is "For the Heart" written by Dennis Linde.

Teresa appeared in the 1953 musical "Those Redheads from Seattle" - she was a natural redhead herself - and "stole the picture" from strong competition such as Rhonda Fleming, Agnes Moorhead and Guy Mitchell.

She appeared on television as a guest star on The Muppet Show in 1977.

Later career

Teresa Brewer re-emerged as a jazz vocalist on Thiele's Amsterdam label in the 1980s and 1990s recording a number of albums including tribute albums to Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Irving Berlin. She also recorded with such jazz greats as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines and Bobby Hackett.

Altogether, she recorded nearly 600 song titles. For her contribution to the recording industry, Teresa Brewer has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street.

In 2007 Teresa Brewer was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

The singer died on October 17, 2007, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a rare degenerative brain disease. She was 76.

Hit Singles

References

External links

Teresa Brewer Center

Teresa Brewer page on Olde Time Cooking & Nostalgia site

Teresa Brewer in the 1960s

Teresa Brewer at Findagrave.com

Category:1931 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American female singers Category:American pop singers Category:Coral Records artists Category:People from Toledo, Ohio Category:People from New Rochelle, New York Category:People from Westchester County, New York Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:Deaths from progressive supranuclear palsy Category:Red Baron Records artists

Name	George Segal
Birthname	George Segal, Jr.
Birth date	February 13, 1934
Birth place	Great Neck, New York, USA
Occupation	Actor
Yearsactive	1960–present
Spouse	Wilhire North (1956-1981) (divorced) 2 childrenLinda Rogoff(1983-1996) (her death)Sonia Schultz Greenbaum (1996-present)

George Segal, Jr. (born February 13, 1934) is an American actor.

Early life

Segal was born in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, the son of Fannie and George Segal, Sr. He was educated at George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Pennsylvania. He also attended Haverford College.

Career

A 1955 graduate of Columbia University, he has played both drama and comedy, although he is more often seen in the latter. Originally a stage actor and musician, Segal appeared in several minor films in the early 1960s as well as the well-known 1962 movie The Longest Day.

Segal was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1961 making his film debut in The Young Doctors and appearing in the The Naked City produced for television by Columbia's Screen Gems.

He started attracting girls in 1965 as a distraught newlywed in Ship of Fools, as a P.O.W. in King Rat in a role originally meant for Frank Sinatra, and as an Algerian Paratrooper captured at Dien Bien Phu who leaves the French army to become a leader of the FLN in Lost Command. He was loaned to Warner Bros for his well-regarded performances as Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), then appeared as a British secret service agent in The Quiller Memorandum, a Cagneyesque gangster in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, perplexed police detective Mo Brummel in No Way to Treat a Lady, a bookworm in The Owl and the Pussycat, a war weary platoon commander in The Bridge at Remagen, a man laying waste to his marriage in Loving, and a hairdresser turned junkie in Born to Win. Segal also starred with Ruth Gordon in Carl Reiner's 1970 dark comedy Where's Poppa?

He played a burglar in the 1972 comedy The Hot Rock with Robert Redford, a comically unfaithful husband in A Touch of Class and a midlife crisis victim in Blume in Love. He co-starred with Jane Fonda as suburbanites-turned-bank-robbers in Fun with Dick and Jane, and starred as a faux gourmet in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

Segal was relatively inactive in the 1980s, but bounced back as the sleazy father of Kirstie Alley's baby in Look Who's Talking, and in the 1993 sequel Look Who's Talking Now, and as a left-wing comedy writer in For the Boys (1991).

He also starred in the NBC television sitcom Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003) as Jack Gallo, the sharp, though somewhat silly, head of the fashion and style magazine Blush.

He is also an accomplished banjo player; he played with a dixieland jazz band while in college at Columbia that assumed different names; when he was the one who booked a gig, he would bill the group as "Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazzband". The group, which later settled on the name Red Onion Jazz Band, later played at his first wedding.

Filmography

The Young Doctors (1961)

The Longest Day (1962)

Act One (1963)

Channing, (1963)

The New Interns (1964)

Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964)

King Rat (1965)

Ship of Fools (1965)

Lost Command (1966)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

The Quiller Memorandum (1966)

Death of a Salesman (1966)

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)

Bye Bye Braverman (1968)

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

The Girl Who Couldn't Say No (1969)

The Southern Star (1969)

The Bridge at Remagen (1969)

Loving (1970)

Where's Poppa? (1970)

The Owl and the Pussycat (1970)

Born to Win (1971)

The Hot Rock (1972)

Blume in Love (1973)

A Touch of Class (1973)

The Terminal Man (1974)

California Split (1974)

Russian Roulette (1975)

The Black Bird (1975)

The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976)

Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)

Rollercoaster (1977)

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978)

Lost and Found (1979)

The Last Married Couple in America (1980)

Carbon Copy (1981)

Killing 'em Softly (1982)

The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood (1984)

Stick (1985)

Run for Your Life (1988)

All's Fair (1989)

Look Who's Talking (1989)

Time of Darkness (1991)

For the Boys (1991)

Me, Myself and I (1992)

Joshua Tree (1993)

Look Who's Talking Now (1993)

The Feminine Touch (1994)

Deep Down (1994)

Direct Hit (1994)

Seasons Of The Heart (1994) TV movie

To Die For (1995)

The Babysitter (1995)

It's My Party (1996)

Flirting with Disaster (1996)

The Cable Guy (1996)

The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)

Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003)

Heights (2004)

(2005)

Chutzpah, This Is? (2005) (short subject)

My Wife Is Retarded (2007) (short subject)

Three Days to Vegas (2007)

Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure (2007) (voice)

Private Practice (2007) (1 episode)

Boston Legal (2008) (1 episode)

Made For Each Other (2008)

Pushing Daisies (2009) (1 episode)

Entourage (2009) (3 Episodes)

2012 (2009)

Retired at 35 (2010)

References

External links

Category:1934 births Category:American banjoists Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Actors from New York Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Living people Category:People from Long Island Category:People from New York Category:People from Great Neck, New York Category:Haverford College alumni

Name	Sonny James
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	James Loden
Alias	Sonny JamesThe Southern Gentleman
Born	May 01, 1929
Origin	Hackleburg, Alabama
Genre	country music, pop music
Occupation	singer-songwriter
Years active	1953–1983
Label	Capitol, Dot, RCA, Monument, Dimension

James Loden (born May 1, 1929), known professionally as Sonny James, is an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his 1957 hit, "Young Love". Dubbed the Southern Gentleman, James had 72 country and pop chart hits from 1953 to 1983, including a five-year streak of 16 straight among his 23 number one hits. Twenty-one of his albums reached the country top ten from 1964 to 1976. He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. James is currently retired and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Biography

Musical beginnings

Loden was born to Archie Loden and Della Burleson Loden, who operated a 300-acre (121 hectare) farm outside Hackleburg, Alabama. His parents were amateur musicians, and his sister Thelma (five years older) also played instruments and sang from an early age. By age three he was playing a mandolin and singing. In 1933 the family appeared on a radio audition which resulted in their being offered a regular Saturday slot on Muscle Shoals, Alabama radio station WMSD-AM. About this time the parents volunteered to raise an Alabama girl named Ruby Palmer, and soon Ruby was also part of the musical group, and the singing Loden Family was soon playing theaters, auditoriums and schoolhouses throughout the Southern United States.

To this point the musical appearances had been a part-time effort for the family, as they returned after each gig or tour to work the family farm. After a few years the father decided they were professional enough to immerse themselves into the field full-time, so the father leased out the farm and they took a daily spot on radio station KLCN, where they provided early-morning accompaniment for the area's early-risers. After that they had spots on several other radio stations around the South. In 1949 they returned to Alabama, with a show on radio station WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. Near Christmastime that year, the two girls were married in West Memphis, Arkansas in a double ceremony and left the group. The parents found other girls to take their place, but the group soon fell apart (the parents returned to Hackleburg and opened a clothing store, where James worked while belatedly finishing his final year of high school). on the Memphis, Tennessee radio station WHBQ, but that was interrupted near the end of the summer when James' National Guard unit was activated to participate in the Korean War, one of the first US groups to respond to that conflict. On September 9, 1950 his Alabama Army National Guard unit was sent to Korea, returning home in the fall of 1951. Loden was honorably discharged and moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he signed with Capitol Records with the help of Chet Atkins, with whom he had previously roomed. The company asked him to drop his last name professionally, and he released his first studio record as Sonny James.

While appearing on Louisiana Hayride he met musician Slim Whitman. James' performance on stage playing a fiddle and singing brought a strong crowd response, and Whitman invited him to front for his new touring band. James stayed with Whitman's group for two months. before returning to Nashville to make further recordings, including what became his first Top Ten country hit, "That's Me Without You". Over the next few years, he had several songs that did reasonably well on the country music charts and he continued to develop his career with performances at live country music shows. He also appeared on radio, including Big D Jamboree, before moving to the all-important new medium, television, where he became a regular performer on ABC's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri beginning in October 1955.

Top of the charts

In late 1956 James released "Young Love", a 45 rpm single for which he would forever be remembered. As the first teenage country crossover single, it topped both the country and pop music charts in January 1957. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Dubbed the Southern Gentleman because of his polite demeanor, he gained more exposure with an appearance on the popular Ed Sullivan Show. After leaving Capitol Records for the first time in 1959, James signed with National Recording Corporation. His career also included stints with Dot (1960–1961), RCA (1961–1962), his second stint with Capitol (1963–1972), Columbia (1972–1979), Monument (1979), and Dimension (1981–1983).

He went on to a long and highly-successful career, and in 1962 he became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. From 1964 to 1972 he was a dominant force in country music. He was a guest on the Bob Hope Show and Hee Haw, and made minor appearances in several Hollywood motion pictures. In 1969 Billboard magazine named him Artist of the Year. In 1971, James made a special music recording for the crew of Apollo 14, who later presented him with one of the small American flags that they had carried to the Moon.

Number-one streak

Beginning in 1967 with "Need You" and ending with "Here Comes Honey Again" in 1971, James recorded 16 straight number one country singles of his 72 verified chart hits. His career number one total was 23, the last coming with 1974's "Is It Wrong (For Loving You)". During this time James also helped launch the solo career of Marie Osmond, producing her first three albums, including the 1973 smash hit, "Paper Roses".

The number-one streak record, however, is a point of contention. Country supergroup Alabama surpassed James' record in 1985 with their 17th number one song, "Forty Hour Week (For a Livin')", but the dispute stems from their 1982 Christmas single, "Christmas in Dixie". The song peaked at 35 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in January 1983, during what could be considered a streak of 21 number one songs. Some sources, such as Joel Whitburn's "Top Country Songs: 1944-2005," disregard non-number one Christmas singles in determining chart-topping streaks, and consider Alabama to have surpassed the record; others, however, including the Alabama Music Hall of Fame Web site, state that the failure of "Christmas in Dixie" snapped Alabama's streak before it could achieve parity with James' 16.

Family

In 1957 James married Doris in Dallas, Texas. and appeared on TV for the first time in nearly 20 years to accept his induction during the Country Music Association Awards on November 6, 2006. In 2009 Sonny James was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Discography

Notes

External links

Sonny James at the Country Music Hall of Fame

Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:American military personnel of the Korean War Category:American country singers Category:American country musicians Category:American male singers Category:American members of the Churches of Christ Category:Songwriters from Alabama Category:People from Marion County, Alabama Category:Musicians from Alabama Category:Grand Ole Opry members Category:Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:National Recording Corporation artists Category:Groove Records artists Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Capitol Records artists