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That same year, fed up with not getting enough of the credit or the cash, Pendergrass quit the band.Īs a solo artist, Pendergrass was often called the “black Elvis”. ![]() Perhaps that also explains why so many of their songs were covered by other artists, most notably Thelma Houston, who refashioned Don’t Leave Me This Way into a disco smash in 1976. But to this day, most people assume the guy who sang those tunes was Harold Melvin, but no: it was Pendergrass. Everybody knows their biggest hits: Wake Up Everybody, If You Don’t Know Me By Now, The Love I Lost, and Don’t Leave Me This Way. His early career is obscured by the fact that he rose to fame in a band that did not carry his name: Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. The legend of Teddy Pendergrass, who died of cancer in 2010, might be better known had it not been cruelly curtailed at both ends. “He wasn’t built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or nothing, he came out in that wife-beater T-shirt and they went crazy. “I think the tone of his voice hit a certain centre in them, or something,” suggests James Carter, who played drums in his band for seven years, and therefore had a ringside seat on the Pendergrass effect. Gordon’s big idea was to put on women-only concerts – “Spend the night with Teddy” – where women would be given chocolate teddy-bear lollies to suck as they swooned to slow jams such as Turn Off the Lights (sample lyrics: “Turn off the lights and light a candle / Tonight I’m in a romantic mood / Let’s take a shower together / I’ll wash your body and you’ll wash mine / Rub me down with some hot oils, baby, yeah / And I’ll do the same thing to you”). They disguised themselves as maids to get into his hotel room. They rushed the stage and threw their underwear at him when he performed. By all accounts, women found him irresistible, and Pendergrass felt obliged to love as many of them back as he possibly could. Think Barry White in the body of Idris Elba. He was a tall, handsome, stylish man, given to performing in a white vest and a layer of sweat. “And all the guys loved Teddy because he’d get the women in the mood for them. “One guy said to me: ‘Teddy Pendergrass was an early form of Viagra,’” says Olivia Lichtenstein, the documentary’s director. His music, especially at the peak of his solo career, was very much in the groove of smooth, seductive soul, powered by a husky, passionate-yet-effortless baritone. Gordon didn’t have to do a lot of market research to come that conclusion: Teddy Pendergrass oozed sex – in his music, in his stage act, in his lifestyle. Note: When you embed the widget in your site, it will match your site's styles (CSS).“W ith Teddy, we realised it was all about sex,” says his manager Shep Gordon at one point in new doc Teddy Pendergrass: If You Don’t Know Me. Get the embed code Teddy Pendergrass - Soul Legends (New Stereo Recordings) Album Lyrics1.Love TKO (New Stereo Recording)2.Turn Off the Lights (New Stereo Recording)3.When Somebody Loves You Back (New Stereo Recording)4.You're My Latest, My Greatest, Inspiration (New Stereo Recording)Teddy Pendergrass Lyrics provided by Tell me what you wanna do, babe (I'm willin' to try)> Tell me what you wanna do, babe (I'm willin') (Anything that you want, anything that you need, I got it, I got it) Tell me what you wanna do, babe (‘Cause you've been so sweet, yeah, yes) Tell me what you wanna do (I wanna give you a special treat) (Somethin' that I've been wantin' to do all the time, yeah, yes Tell me what you wanna do (I've got somethin' in my mind) (There's somethin' I, somethin' I wanna do to you, baby) Tell me what you wanna do (There's somethin' I) You can get what you want any time you want itĬome get what you need, give me what I need You see, there's somethin' I, somethin' I, somethin' I, somethin' I You're the only one in this whole wide world that I'd ever need I wanna give you a special treat, you've been so sweet I swear I can do the same thing, the same thing to you, baby Would you rub me down in some, in some burnin' hot oils, baby, yeah Girl, there's something that I-I wanna do to you, I wanna do, I wanna do to you, baby Show you I much I missed you, missed you, my dear Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again ![]() I wanna love you, love you all over, yeah See, you're the only one in the world that I need Girl, I wanna give you a special treat, you're so sweet I'll wash your body and you'll wash mine, yeah Let's take a shower, shower together, yeah
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