Teddy Pendergrass R.I.P.

I’m burning a copy of Teddy Pendergrass’ Anthology for a co-worker. She’s a single, black woman in her mid-thirties who moved to Iowa from the South side of Chicago. She’s working to support her two school age boys and-from what I’ve heard from others in the office-she’s also dealing with her Mom’s health, causing her a few drives back to Chicago and a few days of FMLA. She’s a hard worker and she doesn’t suffer fools well. She’s the one who told me about Teddy Pendergrass passing.
I have to credit Brad Company for even considering Teddy. He worked for a record store and a used copy of the album Teddy came across the counter. Brad praised Teddy’s prowess and knack for knockin’ the ladies.
In short: Teddy Pendergrass should definitely be on the shortlist of your mixtape for coitus.
Don’t believe me? Check out the “Live Medley” on Anthology, where Teddy does a goddamn suave into to the band and backing singers and then proceeds to kiss the audience on the neck and behind the ear by telling them how important they are to him. Then Teddy reminds the crowd how he began with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and he proceeds to start a medley of some popular songs with them. He starts with “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and you can literally hear all the women in the audience orgasm after he utters the first three words of the song.
He got my co-worker talking, that’s for sure.
“Luther’s (Vandross) gone. Now Teddy’s gone. There’s no one left.”
She did go on to say how she saw Freddie Jackson on an old rerun of Family Matters and how her two boys think Michael Jackson is the shit-just like she did when she was their age.
I remember thinking it was a bit weird that there was a transvestite in his car the night of his car accident. Now I understand that if you’ve fucked as much trim as Pendergrass did, you probably go out of your way to find new forms of excitement, including befriending chicks with dicks.
Idiocyncracies and fetishes aside, Teddy had a great set of pipes and an impeccable sense of drama. That climaxing crowd was not much of an exaggeration and Pendergrass did it all by continually projecting that those songs were as intimate as if he was undoing the back of their bras.
Plus, as my friend Brad pointed out “Teddy doesn’t just ask you to do something…he tells you to do it.” It’s not ‘Could you turn of the lights please?’ it’s ‘Turn ‘em off!’ Pendergrass had such authority that he could drop the drawers on nearly anyone in earshot of the speaker and that’s what made him a badass on top of being a remarkable vocalist.
See you later, Teddy.
Heaven better lock up the daughters now that you’re there.