Teddy Pendergrass, 1950-2010

Teddy Pendergrass, one of the great voices of Philadelphia soul music, has died at age 59, of colon cancer. Starting out on the drums, Pendergrass emerged to sing lead for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes from 1970 to 1976, a cornerstone in the empire of superproducers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, before launching a solo career that banked heavily on his sex appeal. Pendergrass sang in a wheelchair after a 1982 car crash left him paralyzed from the waist down. ‘’He used to say something in his act in the wheelchair,” said Gamble, in eulogy. “’Don’t let the wheelchair fool you.’ Because he still proclaimed he was a lover.”