Teddy Pendergrass Dead at 59

R&B great Teddy Pendergrass, who had been one the music industry’s most successful figures until he was forced into a wheelchair by a car accident 28 years ago, has died of colon cancer. He was 59 years old.

Pendergrass was an international superstar and sex symbol who ushered in a new era of R&B music with a uniquely raw vocal style that reeked of masculinity.  He electrified crowds with songs like “Close the Door,” “It Don’t Hurt Now,” and “Love T.K.O.”

One of his closest friends and longtime collaborator Kenny Gamble had worked with Pendergrass on several of his biggest hits.  He says the singer even had a movie in the works.

“He had about 10 platinum albums in a row, so he was a very, very successful recording artist and as a performing artist,” Gamble said. “He had a tremendous career ahead of him, and the accident sort of got in the way of many of those plans.”

Teddy Pendergrass grew up in Philadelphia having been born there in 1950.  He sustained an injury to his spinal cord in a car crash in 1982 that  left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Pendergrass made the best of the situation, morphing his personality from sex symbol into role model, according to Gamble.

“He never showed me that he was angry at all about his accident,” Gamble said. “In fact, he was very courageous.”

Pendergrass died on Wednesday in Philadelphia, where he had been hospitalized for several months.

Teddy Pendergrass II, his son, said the elder Pendergrass had undergone colon cancer surgery about eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery.”

“To all his fans who loved his music, thank you,” his son said. “He will live on through his music.”

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