R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who was one of the most electric and successful figures in music until a car crash 28 years ago left him in a wheelchair, died of colon cancer January 13, 2010. He succumbed to the disease in suburban Philadelphia, where he had been hospitalized for months.
The singer's son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father underwent colon cancer surgery eight months before he died and had "a difficult recovery."
Before the crash, Pendergrass established a new era of R&B with an explosive, raw voice that symbolized masculinity, passion and the joys and sorrow of romance in songs such as "Close the Door," "It Don't Hurt Now," "Love T.K.O." and other hits that have since become classics.
He was an international superstar and sex symbol. His career was at its apex - and still climbing.
Pendergrass, who was bom in Philadelphia in 1950, suffered a spinal cord injury in a 1982 car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down - still able to sing but without his signature power.
Pendergrass left a remarkable imprint on the music world as he ushered in a new era in R&B with his fiery, sensual and forceful brand of soul and his ladies' man image, burnished by his strikingly handsome looks.
Months after Pendergrass' death, a legend died.
Lena Home, the enchanting jazz singer and actress known for her plaintive signature song "Stormy Weather" and for her triumph over the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white authences but not socialize with them, died May 9. She was 92.
Home died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Home, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her talent and artistry, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success: "I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," she once said. "I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."
"I knew her from the time 1 was bom, and whenever I needed anything she was there. She was funny, sophisticated and truly one of a kind. We lost an original. Thank you Lena," Liza Minnelli said Monday. Her father, director Vincente Minnelli, brought Home to Hollywood to star in "Cabin in the Sky."
In the 1940s, Home was one of the first Black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub in New York City and when she signed with MGM, she was among a handful of black actors to have a contract with a major Hollywood studio.
In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical "Stormy Weather." Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her most famous tune.
Home was only 2 when her grandmother, a prominent member of the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enrolled her in the NAACP.
But she avoided activism until 1945 when she was entertaining at an Army base and saw German prisoners of war sitting up front while black American soldiers were consigned to the rear.
That pivotal moment channeled her anger into something useful.
She got involved in various social and political organizations and - along with her friendship with singer-actor-activist Paul Robeson - got her name onto blacklists during the redhunting McCarthy era.
By the 1960s, Home was one of the most visible celebrities in the civil rights movement, once throwing a lamp at a customer who made a racial slur in a Beverly Hills restaurant and, in 1963, joining 250,000 others in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech.
Another industry icon was lost May 31.
Ali-Ollie Woodson, who led the legendary Motown quintet The Temptations in the 1980s and '90s and helped restore them to their hitmaking glory with songs including Treat Her Like A Lady." died at 58 after battling cencer.
By the close of the year, Portuguese Love R&B soul singer Teena Marie died. The 54year-old revered and fully immersed herself in Black culture - and in turn was respected and adored by Black authences, not only for her immense soulful talents, but for her inner soul as well.
She died the day after Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment