“I’m too black to be white and too white to be black” Teena Marie once told a radio announcer. I just returned home from an intimate tribute by friends and family for the recently passed artist/songwriter/producer extraordinaire Teena Marie. Among the performers covering some of her amazing songs were Lalah Hathaway, Faith Evans, Shanice Wilson and George Duke. It was a beautiful evening honoring a very talented woman and artist, whose voice was powerful enough to intimidate even the superstars who paid tribute to her.
Teena was one of the few caucasion artists on the early Motown roster, but she had as soulful of a sound as any of the African-American artists on the label. She continued to defy color lines in both her music and her life, and fought to break down the many sexual and racial stereotypes facing female artists during the past 30 + years of her career.
Teena was signed by Berry Gordy as a solo artist but her first successful album came from her collaboration with Rick James. Wild and Peaceful scored Teena her first top-ten R&B hit, “I’m Just a Sucker for Your Love” a duet with James. Because the album cover didn’t have her picture, many radio programmers incorrectly assumed Teena was African-American, a myth that was later disproved when she performed with James on Soul Train in 1979, becoming the show’s first white female guest.
Teena continued writing and producing her own material, another rare act for a successful female artist of that period, and had many additional hits including It Must Be Magic, “Square Biz,” “Portuguese Love”, “Lovergirl”, and ” Ooo La La La”.
In 1982, Teena also made a great contribution to the careers of other recording artists by winning a lawsuit to get her music back from Motown and create the “The Brockert Initiative”, which made it illegal for a record company to keep an artist under contract without releasing new material for that artist.
Teena passed away last year at the young age of 54. In addition to the tribute tonight and seeing her live, I had the great pleasure of seeing her last duet performance with Rick James at the 2004 BET Awards, shortly before Rick passed away.
It will likely be years before Teena gets the true recognition she deserved as an artist, but her music will live on in the hearts of millions and the things she stood for: the breakdown of color lines, integrity, passion, honesty and empowerment of and rights for female artists, are values we can all admire.
In addition to buying and listening to her music, I highly recommend checking her out in the must-see documentary, “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”.
