R&B Singer Tina Marie passes away...

[Jiveturkey]

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.

haha same here!

[Ravine]

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.

I'm with you, on that, but the truth is that a record company "sort of has to" aim their product at someone.
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.

[royce]

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.

[Vic_doucette]

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.

Did we listen to the same CKLW? The Big 8 played a boatload of black artists.

[FoxyScholar10]

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!)