Friday, June 6, 2014

Remembering - Interview with the late, great Teddy Pendergrass



He needs no introduction!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSE6QQUHUME
Posted by Djata Bumpus at 6:52 AM

2 comments:

Blabren said...

Teddy Pendergrass is a Philadelphia singing legend. The soulful and powerful quality of his voice is unmatched by any other Philly singer of his era I can think of.  

Coincidentally, we attended Philadelphia's Thomas Edison High School at the same time. Edison was known as a tough all-boys high school located in North Philly. 

As Teddy was two years older and one grade ahead of me, I only knew of him. He was a member of a click of Edison's cool guys known as the "Twenty-Three Nuts." I, on the other hand, was more academically inclined, but ran with a bunch of regular guys. 

I graduated Edison and started college in 1969. A friend, and fellow Edison High School student, visiting me at college in 1970 or 1971delivered the news that Teddy started singing with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Until that point I had not known he was involved in music at all. 

Later Teddy Pendergrass became a major singer with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Shortly thereafter, he launched his stellar solo career.  The rest is history. The man was bigger than life, and a hero to us. 

A 1982 auto accident in Philadelphia, left Teddy Pendergrass paralyzed from the waist down.  He spent the subsequent years in relative obscurity, while fans awaited his return to performing. 

The best thing I took from the Art Fennell interview is Teddy's admission that he was asked to be a spokesman for spinal cord injury cures before Christopher Reeves, but turned it down. His reasoning was that he did not want to be part of the quixotic spinal cord focus of the time. He felt his efforts should be geared toward maximizing the victims' productivity, accomplishments, and life with the condition. 

This strikes home with me. I have a similarly affected close relative. Focus on cure and return to prior functioning is hindering this relative's ability to maximize current functioning. Teddy Pendergrass had it right. 

August 5, 2010 at 7:03 PM
Djata Bumpus said...

Yeah…Teddy was a spectacular singing artist…He started out as a drummer, doing studio work mostly…Harold Melvin and I were buddies, during the early- to mid-Eighties..He passed only a few years after that…I used to hang sometimes at a spot Teddy frequented before the accident called Fantasy Lounge at Broad & Locust streets….Boxing champ Saad Muhammad and others frequented there, at the time too…Yes, Teddy had it right, to an extent, as far as spinal chord injuries go…Still, we need cures too…BTW, I was a Black Panther, durig the time that you were finishing high school and going to college (69-71), although my comrades wanted me to stay in school and organize…However, because I was highly intellectual and powerfully built, even though I was younger than most Panthers, I was also incredibly precocious, so I stayed “in the field”, organizing, teaching, and helping establish a number of successful ventures that the Party initiated. …Cheers!

August 6, 2010 at 9:47 AM

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