Track Listing

1. Music Music Music
2. Let Me Go, Lover
3. Till I Waltz Again With You
4. Ricochet
5. A Tear Fell
6. Bell Bottom Blues
7. Anymore
8. Jilted
9. Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now
10. How Important Can It Be
11. The Banjo's Back In Town
12. The Hula Hoop Song
13. How Do You Know It's Love
14. Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue)
15. Sing Sing Sing
16. Empty Arms
17. Tweedlee Dee
18. You Send Me
19. A Sweet Old Fashioned Girl

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59178 in Music
• Released on: 2000-08-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Running time: 24 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Best of Teresa Brewer
What a joy to listen to Teresa Brewer (Little Miss Dynamite) and actually hear every word. This is what the 50's was all about, made more obvious by the number of British Artists who recorded their versions of her songs and actually did better. All this before the charts came into being. Her voice range goes from sweet to beating swing and her country style equals Dolly Parton any day? Music,Music,Music certainly brought back memories for me of my long suffering mother shouting for me to turn the radio down everytime it was played. Keep an eye out for the Lawson-Haggart Jazz band with Teresa belting out the standards. Anything from her is fine with me, but then being in my mid 70's memorabilia such as this is all I have to keep my foot tapping. Great stuff.

The original 50s diva
After one listen to this CD, it became clear to me Teresa Brewer was probably the original "get over your man" diva. Like a precursor to Whitney Houston or Gloria Gaynor, this compilation contains it's fair share of female empowerment songs which just scream "I'll get over you". Tracks like "Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now" and "Ricochet" illustrate this well.

So, as for the CD itself. A budget-priced compilation from the Spectrum label which can usually be relied upon to use master tapes of "oldies" artists, unlike other labels I won't mention. However, it doesn't seem to bother digitally remastering them; on this and one or two other compilations the sound quality on tracks is a little inconsistent. However there don't appear to be too many mastering errors on the tracks here, and it's nice to have these 50s hits on CD.

The sleeve note is pretty good. At least they seem to be fans of the relevant artist - Ossie Dales and Dave McAleer provide good info as always. However, I was annoyed that the sleeve note mentions songs on this disc making their CD debut. One of which is apparently "Nora Malone", a minor hit for her in the UK. I looked, and looked. And couldn't find it on the CD. The truth that I eventually found out is that the master tape could not be located. A little honesty wouldn't go amiss.

As for the hits, it appears to contain original versions of her small bunch of UK hit paraders. Teresa's biggest hit was arguably in her pre-chart days with "Music! Music! Music!". The version included here was recorded for Vogue Coral in 1953. The original was on London. In fairness, this version is quite good, if lacking in authenticity.

While she wasn't really in the major league of American popstars (at least not here in Britain) there are some great songs in here that she really stamped her mark on. Let Me Go Lover, A Tear Fell, Bell Bottom Blues (better than Alma's IMO), Tweedle Dee are amongst my favourites on this CD. Ricochet is also great, despite Teresa apparently having a cold when she recorded it. A Sweet old Fashioned Girl is another catchy number from top 50s novelty songsmith Bob Merrill. It shows the contrasting styles at the time well - blending a sentimental tune with a rock n rolling rhythm. Admittedly, Kay Starr's "Rock And Roll Waltz" demonstrates this idea better, but Teresa's interpretation is good too.

There are a few too many passable novelties here to be honest. Sing Sing Sing just about scrapes the barrel in that category. The Banjo's Back In Town and Hula Hoop Song have got stuck in my head over time, I'm afraid to say.

An essential compilation if you like 50s pop music.

An extremely talented and versatile singer
Teresa seems to be the kind of singer that people either love or hate. Her distinctive voice is loved by some and hated by others. The diversity of her recorded output further polarizes opinions. Some people cannot take her seriously as a jazz singer because of her fifties pop music. I am in no doubt that Teresa was one of the finest singers of the twentieth century.

Teresa's roots were in jazz - she started as a jazz singer and returned to jazz in the seventies after recording a lot of great pop music (and even a little country music) in the intervening years. This compilation focuses on her fifties pop music, including all the song that people love or hate.

The compilation begins with her first and biggest American hit (Music music music) and includes such other classics as Let me go lover, Till I waltz again with you, Ricochet, A tear fell, Bell bottom blues, Jilted, Gonna get along without ya now, Banjo's back in town and You send me. Some of these songs were covers, especially of R+B songs. There are also a couple of covers of country songs (Anymore, Empty arms).

Teresa was less successful in Britain but it was common practice in those days for British artists to cover American songs, so Teresa only had three major UK hits (Let me go lover, A tear fell, A sweet old-fashioned girl) while others had UK hits with Ricochet (Joan Regan) and Bell bottom blues (Alma Cogan). Curiously, Till I waltz again with you didn't chart for anybody in the UK. In contrast, Let me go lover proved extremely popular as three versions made the UK top ten including Teresa's, though Dean Martin and Ruby Murray both did better in the UK charts than Teresa with this song. Teresa would have had another huge hit with Music music music if UK charts had existed at the time of its release.

I have seen a number of compilations of Teresa's music on CD through the years and I've yet to see a definitive hits collection. This one also misses a few but all the essentials are here - and this is the strongest collection of Teresa's pop music available at the time I write this review.