Jill Corey, a torch singer who soared to fame as a teenage television star in the early 1950s, at one point becoming one of Columbia Records’ top vocalists, died on April 3 at a hospital in Pittsburgh. She was 85. The cause was septic shock, her daughter, Clare Hoak, said. Ms. Corey was irresistible to the mythmakers of the time.

A stirring contralto with a pixie haircut, wide expressive mouth and enormous eyes, she drew comparisons to Judy Garland and had quite an origin story. The youngest daughter of a widowed coal miner, she was born Norma Jean Speranza in Avonmore, Pa. When she was 17, a local DJ helped her record a tape singing unaccompanied, except for the sound of a train rattling as it passed by the studio.