Wow! I was online browsing some news articles and ran across this sad news....
Singer-songwriter Teena Marie dies at 54
By the CNN Wire Staff
December 26, 2010 10:54 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Musi...ss_igoogle_cnn
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Wow! I was online browsing some news articles and ran across this sad news....
Singer-songwriter Teena Marie dies at 54
By the CNN Wire Staff
December 26, 2010 10:54 p.m. EST
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Musi...ss_igoogle_cnn
Very sad... this is really hitting my friends hard if Facebook and Twitter are any indication. We Gen-Xers are children and teens of the 1980s, just when Teena was on the top of the R&B/soul charts. Another class act from Motown... and although he wasn't the greatest mentor for her in the end, she was sheer magic with Rick James.
She was attempting to make a comeback and has a young daughter. She will surely be missed.
Yeah, this is a part of my background for sho'. Those duets with Rick James were great. Both had wonderful chopes and I really preferred James slow jams over his more popular dance songs. He had a great voice and together they did love ballads out off the charts!
Just a few samples of her music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Q8Z1d_kcY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7MJX...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm1ib...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHlTyRS5hcQ
Quote:
Originally Posted by English
R.I.P. Teena. I can't add anything to more to what Zacha341 and English have said except you will be missed!
Starchild was my favorite Teena album. I loved Lovergirl and Out On A Limb. Although I remember Square Biz, I was too young to know who she was at the time. She has definitely made some wonderful music.
EDIT: I forgot to mention my favorite Teena Marie song which was a very unknown song of hers that was on the Goonies soundtrack, 14K. I doubt many other people would like this song but I always loved it.
"I'm going on a treasure hunt, care to come along?/
With diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and a list of jewels this long/
It could be so adventurous, listen what I say/
At the end of every rainbow there's a pot of 14K!!!"
What's at the end of the rainbow? At the end of every rainbow there's a pot of that 14K!
Teena, I hope at the end of your rainbow you found your pot of 14K......
She's not very well known over here. Probably here most famous song was Ooo la la la, which charted as the base song for the Fugees hit with the same name.
Edit:
Browsing through youtube I realize I heard a sample from It must be magic in some remix before.
My girlfriend at the time was a huge fan. We went down to Joe Louis to see her perform with a bunch of other acts, I think Areatha was on the bill. That had to be mid 80's. She sure had a strong voice.
One of my friends who is a Chicago transplant to the Detroit area would tease about how often Lady T's music was played on Detroit radio--every other song in her estimation. Both her husband and I had similar reactions to the joke: "Teena Marie is all that!" LOL! And that's the truth.
"Square Biz", "Cassanova Brown", and "Portuguese Love" are my favorite Teena tunes.
Nobody has done R&B/blue-eyed soul like Teena. He musical legacy puts the crap of today's "music" to full shame. Prayers for comfort and peace be with her family.
And a distinct voice rare amongst the current boiler-plate, pre-fabbed-bobbity-bob-hip-hop, 'non-descript' rabble of female vocalists 'thrown' up the pop chart per the award shows, videos, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by kenp
Beautiful woman, talented singer, great guitar player. She created a large part of the soundtrack of my life. Sad to hear that she is gone.
14K was my favorite song too! It is somewhat obscure and was not on youtube last night. Here is a link to it:
http://www.tinyurl.com/ripteena
P.S. You may have to click on the word "qui" to hear the song....
Umm, I'm getting a redirect to a Spanish web link, not her or the song......?Quote:
Originally Posted by rooms222
That is correct. The website appears not to allow direct links to the MP3 files. You click on the work qui on the redirect and it plays the MP3. I think it says something like "you can access the resource here" [[in Italian or Spanish) and you click on the "here" or "qui."
Here is the unshortened link:
http://thegoonies.altervista.org/rad...%2014K.mp3.rbs
Wow, I'm surprised to meet someone else that even knew the song. It was a very good song and perfectly accentuated her "Starchild" sound.Quote:
Originally Posted by rooms222
I had the YouTube link in my post, I'm post it again here: Teena Marie - 14K
Most if Tina Marie's songs that I have listened
were awful! and depressing. It made me vomit.
Nice work, Danny. Way to spit on the body before it even cools down.
I suppose that if I say I have a similar nauseous reaction to many of your damnfool posts, I'll be seen as the Bad Guy.
Oops. Too late.
I hear that. From time to time someone will post the passing of someone here that I either do not know or had little interest in etc. I avoid posting a bashing post, and keep it movin'. Everyone is not going to like the same things, that's a given....Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravine
I saw her perform this year at the Fox. She was the opening act for The Time, but put on a full concert that lasted close to two hours. She covered all of her hits. By the time The Time had come out, most of us were a little worn out from all the clapping, cheering, singing, and dancing in the aisles to her show. Cassanova Brown is my favorite song, but only by a hair to all of her other hits. I am so glad my wife and I decided to go to that concert. It will be a cherished memory and she will be missed. God Bless you, Lady T.
I think her voice & singing ability were under-appreciated, probably due to a combination of factors.
For one thing, I think a deliberate effort was made to market her as the Little White Girl Singing Black Music, a corny & trivializing "blue-eyed soul" portrayal, one of which she probably was aware and to which she probably contributed. The references to "collard greens & cornbread" near the end of "Square Biz" strike my ears as a conscious act of pandering.
Who can blame her? She wasn't the first talented musician to opt for a little bit of that kind of thing in order to make it. When it comes to "fakin' it," if we punish all of the guilty by ignoring their work, whooops!! there goes Louis Armstrong, and if we pretend that he never happened, the progression of jazz music becomes a novel with a missing chapter.
But, don't get me started on music and the music biz.
For my money, her recorded performance of "Lover Girl" is one of the great pop-music performances of the musically-god-forsaken 80's.
Making the performance even more remarkable is that, like much of her work, it was written & produced by Teena Marie herself.
Or, so say the credits. But, that's the story, and let's stick with it.
R.I.P., Teena Marie. You were better than some folks-- even some of your fans-- realized.
I've heard several accounts that this was a very nice concert [[well being at the wonderful Fox was one reason). I hear Tina really poured her heart out and she was poised to make a comeback having started to record some stuff when Faith Evans etc. I gather this was a one performance set. No way could they have broken this down into two shows that night....Quote:
Originally Posted by royce
"For one thing, I think a deliberate effort was made to market her as the Little White Girl Singing Black Music, a corny & trivializing "blue-eyed soul" portrayal, one of which she probably was aware and to which she probably contributed. The references to "collard greens & cornbread" near the end of "Square Biz" strike my ears as a conscious act of pandering"
perhaps, but her first album intentionally lacked a picture so as to limit prejudging according to what i have read, but its interesting to me that oftentimes when a white person lives a "blue-eyed soul" kind of life, they are, at times, identified as "faking it" instead of living out their influences growing up and being who they are.
Rest in peace Lady T..........thank you for the beauty you shared.
Well stated... you make some interesting points and yes I do understand she wrote much of her music. I wonder if her approach would have been different had she come along now?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravine
[quote=crosswordgirl;210469
perhaps, but her first album intentionally lacked a picture so as to limit prejudging according to what i have read, but its interesting to me that oftentimes when a white person lives a "blue-eyed soul" kind of life, they are, at times, identified as "faking it" instead of living out their influences growing up and being who they are.
.[/quote]
You beat me to it, she was marketed at the beginning to hide she was white. Thats a fact.
I heard a quote yesterday saying she was a black singer trapped in a White body. What a dumb thing to say
Yeah the labels are a bit much... musical expression and appreciation is fluid and should be... I think of all of the rock and river music and artists who've soothed and inspired me, having been part of my life. And I'm black so what label fits me : ) ? LOL!
Quote:
Originally Posted by kenp
Crosswordgirl wrote:
"...its interesting to me that oftentimes when a white person lives a "blue-eyed soul" kind of life, they are, at times, identified as "faking it" instead of living out their influences growing up and being who they are."
That's a really good point, and it moves me to clarify what I meant.
I used the term "fakin' it" rather loosely, and the comment you just made is more direct-- and likely more specifically true in re: Teena Marie-- than was my generalized remark.
What I'm talking about is how, lotsa times, folks in the entertainment industry are marketed in a way that is more important to the big-shots on the 9th Floor than to the performers themselves, and sometimes the performers are all-too-willing to play right along.
Which is to say that Louis Armstrong may not always have quite exactly "felt" that big-ass, cheesy grin which we became so accustomed to seeing on his face.
However, your report that her first LP lacked a photo presents evidence which puts a contrasting light on the entire matter, yup, yes it does.
I heard some folks on the radio refer to her as a "one-hit wonder," which just goes to show that one's perception is greatly influenced by the environment in which they live and by to what they are paying attention.
I suppose that if, in the early '80's, one listened only to "Top-40" radio and was generally unaware of anything that didn't tear a path through the Billboard charts, the statement is true.
However, the same guys who I heard using that description would probably swallow their tongues if I was to say something like, "'Iron Man' is the only hit record Ozzy Osbourne ever made."
Yea, the music industry sucks on the promotional tip. I remember when Living Colour [[a black rock group) first came out, they didn't get their picture on the cover of their first album either. I wonder what other roadblocks they faced. Anyhoo, people should just enjoy the music and the record company should just release the music and let the public decide. Good is good and bad is bad and it shouldn't matter if the singer is black, blue, or orange.
haha same here!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravine
I'm with you, on that, but the truth is that a record company "sort of has to" aim their product at someone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumbled_pavement
In this case, we may be looking at a peculiar, and ironic, juxtapositioning of intents: Perhaps the record company was hoping to down-play her whiteness at the same time as Teena was wanting to express her identification with black music.
All of that makes for an interesting discussion, but we all-- with the exception of Danny, whose comment is befuddling, to me-- seem to agree that she was a helluva singer.
Hopefully, her death will not be immediately forgotten by our Attention-Deficit-Disorderly media, and we will get some details as to how such a relatively young person came to her end.
I pulled up "Lover Girl" from YouTube, and her execution of the first verse, as it leads into the chorus, is still goddam thrilling, to my ears. What a voice.
Record companies seemed to have played it safe on many occasions back when audiences were more segregated by racial lines or musicical genres than they are today. Charlie Pride was a black country singer whose first album didn't have a picture of him. Yet, after the public demostrated that they liked his music through record sales it was later "safe" to show him on his next album, eventhough there was probably a small handful of the public that was turned off by this revelation because of their racist views. Today, the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish [[Darryl?) can sing country music and few bat an eye.
Mariah Carey was, IMHO, marketed as a white singer when she first hit the seen. I remember she had a TV special which showed her white mother but said nothing about her black father. Once she was a commerical success, she then started to cater to the black audience by doing collaborations with black hip-hop artists. Had she promoted herself as a biracial singer or sung more urban contempory music or hip-hop music, would she have been as successful as she turned out to be? I doubt it. Alicia Keys is biracial and this was something that was known up front by the public. It didn't appear to hurt her success because the times have changed and the white audience is more open to artists of color or should I say the record companies are more open to allowing this to happen. And that's great. However, it's funny to me now that back in the 70s and early 80s in Detroit WJLB was the black station and CKLW was the white station, yet today when I hear WNIC play oldies, the songs are mostly the songs of black artists that I listened to on WJLB. This is also great. Too bad 30 years ago, Tina Marie couldn't do what Mariah and Alicia have done. Yet who's to say she didn't make it possible for them to achieve the success they have achieved. RIP Lady T.
Did we listen to the same CKLW? The Big 8 played a boatload of black artists.Quote:
Originally Posted by royce
All I know is that when I heard "Young Love" and "Square Biz" as a middle/high school student in northwest Detroit in the mid/late '80s, I didn't know Teena was White. And when I found out she was White, I didn't care. I kept [[and keep on) singing:
"Act 2 scene 5 is my command performance
my name is clairvoyance and it's all too clear
I was the one
who said tune in tomorrow
I think about tomorrow, even when I am asleep and
who are you to say
what I did when you weren't around
just because I fell in love with you
Casanova Brown"
Second verse to Teena's tune "Casanova Brown"
Also, FYI: WJLB played Madonna back in the early '80s, starting with "Holiday". Madonna didn't sound like a Black singer, but I liked the song enough [[also "Borderline" and "Lucky Star").
Disclaimer: Please DO NOT read that I am comparing Teena to Madonna. They are LIGHT YEARS APART [[no pun intended!) :D