Teri Thornton, born Shirley Enid Avery (September 1, 1934 – May 2, 2000) was an American jazz singer and piano player.
She moved to New York City in the 1960s, where she found work singing for television advertisements, and recorded for several different labels.
Late in the 1960s, Thornton faded from public view, and only decades later was discovered to have been singing on various song poem records in Los Angeles on the Preview label as "Teri Summers."
She played clubs in New York after moving back there from Los Angeles in 1983, and in the 1990s she fully revived her career.
[1] In 1998, she won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Vocal Competition in Washington, DC.