R&B Singer Teddy Pendergrass Dies At 59

Soul and R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who first gained fame as the lead singer of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes in the 1970s, died Wednesday at Bryn Mawr Hospital in his native Philadelphia. Pendergrass failed to fully recover from colon cancer surgery he had eight months ago. After singing lead on Blue Notes songs such as "If You Don't Know Me By Now" and "Wake Up Everybody," Pendergrass set off on a successful solo career in the late 1970s. In March 1982 Pendergrass was on his way to a party in the Germantown section of Philadelphia when the brakes on his Rolls-Royce failed and he hit a tree. The accident paralyzed him from the waist down. He made a surprise appearance at the 1985 Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, performing "Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand." That same year Pendergrass sang a duet with Whitney Houston on her debut album. He founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, an organization to help people with spinal cord injuries. Teddy Pendergrass was 59.