The Lights Turned Off

Have you ever had a song that took you back to certain times in your life? For me, it’s never the mention of a song, but hearing the song itself that instantly (mentally) transported me back in time. When I hear George Benson’s ‘Love Masquerade’, I’m a child again, visiting my grandmother, aunts, and cousins in Memphis. When I hear Christopher Cross’s ‘Never be the same’, I’m in my freshmen year of college in Harrogate Tennessee, tired of my roommate using my turntable to play his music. And when I hear Teddy Pendergrass’s “The Whole Town's Laughing At Me,” I’m a young boy in Brossard Quebec and Chicago, at my grandfather’s house.

Teddy Pendergrass was one of my favorite childhood singers. He was one of the greatest soul singers and balladeers of all time. He passed away yesterday from colon concer. The crooner, who many affectionately knew as just "Teddy," started in music with a group called the Cadillacs in the late 1960s and was still with the group when it merged with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.
I can still envision the 8-track tape of that group in the 70’s, and his first solo effort, on the top of my grandfather’s HiFi, along with his 8-track tapes of Al Green, BB King and Johnnie Taylor.
He had quite a few hits, but my favorite song of his was Turn Off the Lights. I was a teen then when I first heard it, and my voice hadn’t yet dropped to the bass-singing voice I have now, but I used to sing that song all the time, along with Love TKO, which I wanted to sing at my voice recital in college but couldn’t find the sheet music ( I ended up singing Luther’s A House Is Not A Home).

In 1982, Pendergrass was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed. But Pendergrass returned to the studio in 1984 in his wheelchair to record an album.

In 1996, I went to my first and only musical, when I saw him and Stephanie Mills in Your Arms Too Short to Box with God

In 2009, Pendergrass underwent surgery for colon cancer and had difficulty recovering from that disease from which he eventually died yesterday January 13, 2010, at age 59, while hospitalized at Bryn Mawr Hospital in suburban Philadelphia.

Here's a couple songs from him;