Teena Marie
No White artist has sang R&B more convincingly than Teena
Marie, whose big, robust vocals are so Black-sounding that when she was
starting out, some listeners wondered if she was a light-skinned
African-American. Not to be confused with Brazilian jazz singer Tania
Maria, Marie
grew up in West Los Angeles in a neighborhood that was nicknamed "Venice
Harlem" because of its heavy Black population. The
singer/songwriter/producer was in her early 1920s when, around 1977, she landed
a job at Motown Records. It was at Motown that she met her mentor and
paramour-to-be, Rick
James, who ended up doing all of the writing and producing for her debut
album of 1979, Wild
And Peaceful. That LP, which boasted her hit duet with James,
"I'm Just A Sucker For Your Love," didn't show Marie's picture--so
many programmers at Black radio just assumed she was Black. When her second
album, Lady
T, came out, much of the R&B world was shocked to see how fair-skinned
she was. But to many of the Black R&B fans who were eating her music up, it
really didn't matter--the bottom line was she was a first-rate soul singer whose
love of Black culture ran deep.
By her third album, 1980's gold Irons
In The Fire, Marie
was doing most of her own writing and producing. That album boasted the major
hit "I Need Your Lovin'," and Marie
went gold again with her next album, It
Must Be Magic (which included the major hit "Square Biz"). It
Must Be Magic turned out to be her last album for Motown, which she had a
nasty legal battle with. Marie
got out of her contract with Motown, and the case ended up with the courts
passing what is known as "The Teena Marie Law"--which states that a
label cannot keep an artist under contract without putting out an album by him
or her.
Switching to Epic in 1983, Marie
recorded her fifth album Robbery
and had a hit with "Fix It." In 1984, Marie
recorded her sixth album, Starchild
and had her biggest pop hit ever with "Lovergirl." Though Marie
had often soared to the top of the R&B charts, "Lovergirl" marked
the first time she'd done so well in the pop market. Ironically, Marie
was a White singer who had enjoyed little exposure outside the R&B market
prior to "Lovegirl."
Three more Epic albums followed: 1986's Emerald
City, 1988's Naked
To The World (which contained her smash hit "Ooh La La La") and
1990's Ivory.
Unfortunately, Marie's popularity had faded considerably by the late 1980s, and
Epic dropped her. In 1994, the singer released Passion
Play on her own Sarat label.