* Vicki Sue Robinson; Disco Diva, Voice-Over Artist

Vicki Sue Robinson, 46, disco diva best known for her 1976 hit “Turn the Beat Around.” Robinson was born in Harlem, the daughter of a white radical folk singer and a black Shakespearean actor. She began singing as a child, making her debut at the Philadelphia Folk Festival when she was 6. Her early influences included Dinah Washington, Laura Nyro and the O’Jays. As a teenager she landed roles in the Broadway productions of “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.” She was signed by RCA Records in the 1970s and released four albums, briefly topping the charts with her lone 1976 hit, which brought her a Grammy nomination. After the disco era, however, her career flagged. Robinson turned to singing jingles and doing voice-overs in commercials. She delivered such lines as “We’re all connected” for Bell Atlantic, “Double your flavor” for Wrigley chewing gum and “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup” for the popular coffee brand. Audiences discovered her again during the recent disco revival. Last year, she appeared off- Broadway in a successful one-woman show, “Vicki Sue Robinson: Behind the Beat,” described by one reviewer as a “musically sophisticated, endearingly self-mocking” tour of the singer’s life. She took pleasure in her recent comeback, telling an interviewer a year ago that she got “a real tickle out of people saying, ‘Where have you been?’ I’ve never left. I kept singing in the clubs for a long time, and I’ve done a lot of jingles. So I tell them I’ve probably been right in their bedrooms and they didn’t even know it.” On Thursday at her home in Wilton, Conn., of cancer.