The track gave the Blue Notes their first ever Top Ten R&B hit.īut Pendergrass’ Hollywood-script-worthy leap from back of the stage to front-and-center was not reflected in the single’s billing. Pendergrass debuted as a singer on the Blue Notes’ 1972 single “I Miss You,” a towering, tear-out-your-hair ballad that gets progressively more wrenching over the course of eight minutes. “He stood out in those early shows, so finally he had to give up the drums.” “He almost went unnoticed, except his voice couldn’t ,” Simpson says. If You Don’t Know Me argues that Pendergrass’ lack of accolades is due in part to the time before his solo career: The singer got his start as a drummer in Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, a long-running soul ensemble. Teddy Pendergrass: The Remixes is out March 8. In addition, Wasted Talent, one of the companies that produced the film, also worked with Sony’s Legacy Recordings and the publication Mixmag to put together an EP that enlists contemporary dance music luminaries to remix Pendergrass’ work. ![]() First is Teddy Pendergrass: If You Don’t Know Me, the latest in a deluge of music documentaries, which premiered on Showtime February 8. “You have white men controlling the music industry whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, they don’t pick the strapping black guy to stand behind.” Because of that, she adds, “ hasn’t been celebrated to the extent he should have been.” “When you get a black man who’s tall, strapping and has that kind of voice, it’s very hard to launch them,” explains Valerie Simpson, who worked with Pendergrass as part of the songwriter-producer-artist duo Ashford & Simpson. He only cracked the Top 40 once, and he went unrecognized by most critics at the time - you won’t find raves about his music in year-end Pazz & Jop polls. ![]() Popular, too: Pendergrass released a platinum-certified LP every year between 19.īut thanks to the partially segregated way that music is made, marketed and consumed in America, the pop mainstream treated Pendergrass, who died in 2010, with relative indifference. When paired with the elite writers, arrangers and instrumentalists at Philadelphia International Records in the Seventies, the resulting music was often magnificent. Teddy Pendergrass’ voice was astounding, muscular enough to lift cars and crack granite.
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