R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who was one of the most electric and successful figures in music until a car crash 28 years ago left him in a wheelchair, has died of colon cancer. He was 59.
Pendergrass died Wednesday in suburban Philadelphia, where he had been hospitalized for months.
The singer’s son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery.”
Before the crash, Pendergrass established a new era of R&B with an explosive, raw voice that symbolized masculinity, passion and the joys and sorrow of romance in songs such as “Close the Door,” “It Don’t Hurt Now,” “Love T.K.O.” and other hits that have since become classics.
He was an international superstar and sex symbol. His career was at its apex — and still climbing.
Friend and longtime collaborator Kenny Gamble, of the renowned production duo Gamble & Huff, teamed with Pendergrass on his biggest hits and recalled how the singer was even working on a movie.
“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 Thursday. “He had a tremendous career ahead of him, and the accident sort of got in the way of many of those plans.”
Pendergrass, who was born in Philadelphia in 1950, suffered a spinal cord injury in a 1982 car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down — still able to sing but without his signature power. The image of the strong, virile lover was replaced with one that drew sympathy.

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There was a 7.0 Earthquake that struck Haiti. There’s plenty of stories out there about it, so we won’t post anything here or any of the horrific pictures. We just wanted to say that our prayers and thoughts are with those people over there.

Bang bang bang, everybody hit the deck, hide the women and children, shots are  blazing.  Those shots are being fired upon a new yet overused component of hip hop called auto-tune.  As the smoke clears and the robotic screaming subsides, the individual taking the loudest shots is none other than the Marcy assassin otherwise known as the great Jay-Z.  Now it would be rude and stupid of me not to acknowledge that jigga man is the largest (non user of auto-tune) mc in the game, and to discount his actions and opinions on certain parts of hip hop would be disrespectful.  But on the other-hand who the f—, and I repeat who the f— is young Hov to put salt in the game for these young Alvin and the chipmunks sounding ass mc’s.  Let’s be frank (or whoever you wanna be), these cats are eating off auto-tune, talent or not.  Now last time I heard Hovi was rakin in the dough and was worth somewhere around half a billi.  So I suspect he is not hurting for that cheddar, in the way of needing to knock these young users of auto-tune out the box.  Since his self proclaimed burial of auto tune (DOA) seems not to be motivated by money maybe we need to put a microscope under this whole vocal process.  I would like to pose a question, does it help or hurt hip hop in any major way?  If it hurts the game, how does it?  Maybe its just the over-saturation of it right now?  Or maybe it can be blamed on the program directors of these radio stations playing these songs until our ears bleed.  Either way some of these songs are straight trash, basura, garbage, rubbish and should never be heard by humans unless they are locked up in Guantanamo bay and need to be tortured for secrets that threaten the safety of every American.  Now on the other side of that coin we have the man, the myth, the legend T-Pain (the artist out of Tallahassee Florida who has bought to the forefront and embodied autotunin). Outright this dude has simply and consistently made smash hits using auto tune.  He has been able to be creative and flawless in his execution of some pretty good songs, proving that auto tune is alive and well.  I believe if anyone should have that license to merc these corny copy cats it should be T-Peezy.