Dispatches from the Pursuit of This Vintage Life

Last year I began to explore the world of yacht rock and wrote about my findings here. Inside of a year later, I found the Paul Davis album Cool Night on vinyl at a thrift store in central Florida. This floored me. I often find that, just after I become interested in an artist, I will find their music out in the wild. I add a movie to my Watchlist? Bam – there it is. Although I also sometimes think that I may have seen these things out there before but they just didn’t yet register with me. Whatever.

I finally got around to listening to Paul’s album some 5 months after buying it. My expectations were low. I think that I just bought it because of how fascinating it was to have found it and in such good condition. I do love the title track, though, and it shows up on many of my yacht rock playlists and radio stations. One weeknight I got the record out. Here’s what I found.

Paul Davis looks like Derek Trucks and could pass for a member of the Allman Brothers Universe. But his voice is closer to Carl Wilson and his music is decidedly lightweight and mellow. The boy from Meridian, Mississippi started out in a country vein on Bang Records, having been signed by the window of that label’s founder, Bert Burns (of Van Morrison infamy). In the summer of ’77, he struck gold with a wimpy little tune called “I Go Crazy”. This was a massive hit and – get this – spent 40 weeks on the Hot 100 chart which was then a record for the longest ever chart run! Paul Davis! Who knew?

Moving to Arista, he eventually released Cool Night. The lovely title track starts things off and Paul also does versions of “Nathan Jones” and “Love or Let Me Be Lonely” but a real surprise for me kicked off Side Two. I know I have heard many times – likely back in my youth – “’65 Love Affair” and I had that recall right away but I had not, until the moment I flipped the record over, knew who sang it. It’s a great song, another written by Paul alone. One last thing to throw at you regarding this album; it was the first ever to be both recorded and mixed digitally.

It is a pleasant record but I guess some won’t like it and those people won’t be alone. You know who else hated this Paul Davis album? Paul Davis. It was – by some margin – his most successful album and yielded three Top 40 hits but Davis was so chagrined and disillusioned with the recording industry itself that he stopped making records. Reminds me of Rimbaud and Eddie Wilson. He did, though, later sing two country duets – one with Marie Osmond and one with Tanya Tucker – that both went to Number One on the Country charts. So, even when he had tapped out he had hits. But he still wasn’t done. He threw out a little ditty for Dan Seals called “Bop” that I recall being on the radio all the time in the winter of ’85-’86. This major crossover hit made it to the top of the Country charts. Not a bad run for Paul Davis, a guy who just wasn’t into it. He left the industry for good in 1988.

On the personal side, he was married to a woman who also recorded for Bang but who packed her career in to stay home with the couple’s special needs child. Paul Davis was an avid golfer and billiards enthusiast who seemed to be good at many things. He even tried his hand at getting shot. He was leaving a hotel in Nashville one night when a mugger shot him in the abdomen. It was touch and go for a bit but Davis survived. Eventually, though, he dropped dead of a heart attack a day after turning 60 in 2008.

---

So often the CDs you see at a thrift store are just garbage. I wish the volunteers would take a bit more time curating the donations. Take a look at the CD or record – anybody likely to buy that? If not, throw it out. In terrible condition? Pitch it. It’s getting more rare to find good titles out thrifting – but it sure is satisfying when you do.

I found a good batch one day and among them was a Teddy Pendergrass compilation. Thought I would take a chance though I knew little about Teddy. All I really knew was he was handsome, had sung with Harold Melvin and spent his last years in a wheelchair, a tetraplegic or paralyzed from the chest down. What I also knew – what was the favourite of the few things I knew about Teddy Pendergrass – was that fantastic picture of him on stage with the steam coming off of him. And the other shot of him in the mink. When I finally got around to listening to the disc, I had to augment my listening with a little research. Here’s what I found.

Teddy was born and spent most of his life in Philly, joining the scores of people I run across who were born in Pennsylvania. In 1972, Teddy joined Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes which I kinda knew but I didn’t know that Teddy was the lead singer of that group. This means that it is Pendergrass singing lead on the group’s biggest hit, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”, a song I’ve heard countless times on oldies radio. It also means that Ted sings lead on one of my newest favourite songs, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” from 1975. This was news to me and the Pendergrass stock rose. Melvin and Teddy eventually clashed – Melvin “ran” the group but Teddy was the “face” and the voice of the group – and Ted bolted. Harold & Co. would never score again but Teddy went on to a distinguished career.

This CD I bought – Greatest Hits from 1998, seen below – wasn’t bad and mixed it up pretty well, alternating between uptempo workouts and slow jams. I learned that Teddy was the premiere “brown sugar lovin'” singer of the late 70s, the number one sex symbol in soul music and was referred to as the Black Elvis. He was a purveyor of the “bedroom ballad” and as I listened, chuckling in the car on my way to work, I realized that Teddy was the king of the type of song that would often be parodied as over-the-top sex music. Almost embarrassing to hear in the wrong company. “Turn Off the Lights” is an “erotic ballad” (!) that was a huge hit for Teddy and must’ve drove the chicks nuts. I mean, dig this; “Turn off the lights and light a candle. Tonight I’m in a romantic mood, yeah. Let’s take a shower, said a shower together, yes. I’ll wash your body and you’ll wash mine, yeah. Rub me down in some, some hot oils, baby and I’ll do the same thing to you. Just turn off the lights, come to me. Girl, I wanna give you a special treat…Would you mind if I asked you to? Would you rub me down? Would you rub me down in some, in some burnin’ hot oils, baby, yeah. I swear I’ll return the same thing, the same thing to you, baby…”. I mean, it’s outrageous.

I was happy to hear though that Teddy could also let loose and bring the funk on some energetic tracks, as well. So, points for him. And cat could move some units. During his time working with Gamble & Huff at Philadelphia International Records, he released five consecutive platinum albums, a record at the time for a Black R&B artist. And charts? Every one of his LPs released in his prime – pre-accident – landed in the Top 20 of the Pop charts and every one of his first eleven albums – so, all but the three released at the tail end, after the fact – were Top Ten on the R&B charts, the listing that really matters to a cat like Teddy. Also I had it confirmed for me that I love Teddy’s voice. It is muscular, throaty and robust and puts me in mind of Dennis Edwards of the Temptations.

In March of ’82, Teddy was cruising through Philly in his Maserati with a suspended licence due to unpaid parking tickets. He crashed that Maserati and took to driving his new Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. He was driving with a trans woman in the passenger seat, a friend he had known for some time, when he lost control and hit two trees. The trans woman walked away with scratches – and Teddy never walked again. Amazingly, Teddy continued to record and even performed on stage at the Live Aid concert at JFK in Philly in 1985. Later in ’88, Teddy had another Number One song on the R&B charts – I can’t imagine that another paralyzed recording artist ever achieved that, before or since. Amazing. As if being consigned to a wheelchair wasn’t enough, Pendergrass later battled colon cancer but underwent successful surgery. Soon after returning home, though, Ted was admitted again suffering respiratory issues. He would soon pass from respiratory failure in 2010 at 59 years of age.

Couple of sidebars that came from my exploration of Teddy Pendergrass. In 1977, Teddy’s girlfriend and manager was shot to death on the doorstep of her home. When I read that the assumption was she was killed by the “Black mafia”, I had to look up that outfit to fascinating results. And I found it interesting that Ted’s 1984 album Love Language included a duet with a young up-and-comer named Whitney Houston. This was before anything for Whitney and so I read a little about her. She interests me not one iota but it was intriguing to read about her historic but relatively brief run of three records, in particular, released between ’85 and ’90 that rang up some staggering sales. I read too a little of her impact on popular culture which is apparently a topic unto itself.

To wrap up, here are two great examples of why I love to collect music on physical media. I don’t always love what I hear but I love what I learn. I love where it takes me. I am keeping neither the Paul Davis record nor the Teddy Pendergrass compact disc. So, they are not becoming a part of my collection but I’m glad I bought them. Sometimes its not about the “keeping” but more about the finding, the buying and the listening followed by the learning. This is fun stuff for me.

---

My work here is done. On to the next town, the next yard sale, the next thrift store. Always searching, the journey will never end. Someone must do the vintage archaeology and I suppose…it is I. This is Gary Wells reporting from a lonely street…

---