Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes

Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Wake Up Everybody (1976)
On request. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were an American singing group, one of the most popular Philadelphia soul groups of the 1970s. The group's repertoire included soul, R&B, doo-wop, and disco.

Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 1950s as The Charlemagnes, the group is most noted for several hits on Gamble & Huff's Philadelphia International label between 1972 and 1976, although they performed and recorded until Melvin's death in 1997.

Despite group founder and original lead singer Harold Melvin's top billing, the Blue Notes' most famous member was Teddy Pendergrass, their lead singer during the success years at Philadelphia International.

Despite success, the Blue Notes' lineup continued to change regularly. In 1974, Melvin Brought in Jerry Cummings to replace Lloyd Parks, and female singer Sharon Paige was added to the lineup. While at the top of their success in 1976, Pendergrass quit the Blue Notes, after unsuccessfully lobbying to have Melvin rename the act "Teddy Pendergrass & the Blue Notes". Pendergrass went on to a successful solo career, cut short by a paralyzing 1982 car accident, although he made a brief comeback at the historic Live Aid concert in 1985.

Teddy Pendergrass

Teddy Pendergrass - Is It Still Good To You (1982)
Teddy Pendergrass was born on March 26, 1950 to Ida Geraldine Epps and the late Jesse Pendergrass (who was murdered in 1962), who left when Pendergrass was very young and was never a part of his life. He was a student at the old Thomas Edison High School for Boys.

However, he dropped out in the 11th grade to go into the music business. According to author Robert Ewell Greene, Teddy Pendergrass was ordained a minister as a youngster.
Later he was to become a drummer for a band, and later lead singer. The church was his initiation for talent and eventual success.

Pendergrass's career began when he was a drummer for The Cadillacs, which soon merged with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. Melvin invited Pendergrass to become the lead singer after he jumped from the rear of a stage and started singing his heart out. Months later the group signed with Gamble & Huff on the then CBS subsidiary Philadelphia International Records in 1972. His first solo album was self titled Teddy Pendergrass (1977), followed by Life is a Song Worth Singing (1978), Live Coast to Coast and Teddy (1979), 1980's TP and the final Philadelphia International Records album It's Time for Love (1981).

On March 18, 1982, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on Lincoln Drive, Pendergrass was involved in an automobile accident when the brakes failed on his Rolls-Royce and he hit a tree which left him paralyzed from the waist down, due to a spinal cord injury, and limited use of his arms. Pendergrass and his passenger, Tenika Watson, a transsexual nightclub performer with whom Pendergrass was casually acquainted, were trapped in the wreckage.