![]() “In any case, I finished a bunch of tunes for Teena.” Rick thought writing for her was easy: “The songs just seemed to come.” “I was amazed at how Motown could spend so much without getting at least one tune out of it,” said Rick. He also heard that she was running out of road, since more than $400,000 had been expended in studio time, with nothing considered fit enough for release. In his autobiography, Memoirs Of A Super Freak, Rick declared, “Never in my life had I heard such a range with so much passion in a white voice.” “I left the company,” recalled McNeir, “and two years later, Rick James came in and saw the same thing.” That is extraordinary pipes in a tiny frame. Other producers – Winston Monseque, Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise – also worked with Teena then, but nothing was released. “God painted her black all up and down her throat,” McNeir wrote in accompanying notes for 2011’s First Class Love: Rare Tee, a revealing compilation of her earliest Motown sides. After a stint in a group called Entourage, she signed solo to the record company and was paired with Ronnie McNeir, an artist on Motown affiliate label, Prodigal. However that compliment came about, seasoned Motown producer Hal Davis appears to have been the first to glimpse diminutive Teena’s talent. thought enough of Teena to call her “a discovery of mine… a young, white, talented singer” in his autobiography, To Be Loved. That film never made it to the big screen, but Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. Hers was a meandering path into music, by way of an extrovert personality, a tap-dancing cameo in an episode of hit American TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies, and a prospective part in a Motown Productions movie, The Innkeeper, when she was a teenager. ![]() None of this was preordained when she was born Mary Christine Brockert on March 5, 1956. The tragedy lies in the premature passing of both: Rick James on August 6, 2004, at age 56, and Teena Marie on December 26, 2010, at age 54. “There are no words to describe how much I love you,” she declared to her mentor in the liner notes, “but I will say it sho’ was fun being back in the studio with you. ![]() On Teena’s rich, story-packed 2004 release, La Dona the biggest hit of her four decades in the music business she and Rick were reunited on ‘I Got You,’ which they also wrote together. I used to listen to all the early Tamla things, like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.” Teena Marie.
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