Singer Ruth Brown, whose recordings of Teardrops in My Eyes, 5-10-15 Hours and (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean shot her to rhythm-and-blues stardom in the 1950s, has died at the age of 78.
Brown, who later in life won a Grammy and a Tony, died Friday at a Las Vegas-area hospital of complications from a stroke and heart attack, said Lindajo Loftus, a publicist for the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which Brown helped establish.
"Ruth was one of the most important and beloved figures in modern music," singer Bonnie Raitt said in a statement.
"You can hear her influence in everyone from Little Richard to Etta [James], Aretha [Franklin], Janis [Joplin] and divas like Christina Aguilera today.
"She was my dear friend and I will miss her terribly," Raitt said.
Brown's soulful voice produced dozens of hits for Atlantic Records, cementing the fledgling record label's reputation as an R&B powerhouse. Trained in a church choir in her hometown Portsmouth, Va., Brown sang a range of style from jazz to gospel-blues in such hits as So Long and Teardrops in My Eyes.
She later crossed over into rock 'n' roll with some success with Lucky Lips and This Little Girl's Gone Rockin', a song she co-wrote with Bobby Darin.
But as the hits dried up in the late 1950s, Brown was forced into retirement. She spent most of the 1960s raising her two sons alone and earning a living as a maid, school bus driver and teacher.
Career renaissance
Brown enjoyed a career renaissance in the mid-1970s when she began recording blues and jazz tunes for a variety of labels and found success on the stage and in movies.
She won acclaim in the R&B musical Staggerlee, and won a Tony Award for best actress in the Broadway revue Black and Blue.
She also played a feisty deejay in the 1988 cult movie Hairspray. A year later, she won a Grammy for best jazz vocal performance for the album Blues on Broadway.
Brown continued to perform and record in her later years, becoming a popular host of National Public Radio's Harlem Hit Parade.
She also became a prominent advocate for the rights of aging R&B musicians during her long struggle to recoup her share of royalties from Atlantic.
Her effort led to the formation of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, a Philadelphia-based non-profit dedicated to providing financial and medical assistance, as well as historical and cultural preservation of the musical genre.
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