(BLACKAMERICA) TV One’s “UnSung” begins a new season Monday that features a distinctly Philadelphia flavor with an international flair mixed in between.
The hour-long, documentary-style program starts with a look at Teddy Pendergrass, the Philadelphia sex-symbol soul singer who was on the cusp of superstardom before a tragic automobile accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.
The next episode examines the career of Tammi Terrell, a Philadelphia-area native who skyrocketed to fame in the 1960s through Motown duets with Marvin Gaye. Her success, however, was marred by physically abusive relationships with James Brown and David Ruffin and halted by an incurable brain tumor that claimed her life at 24.
The nine-episode series concludes Monday, Nov. 8 with The O’Jays, the Cleveland group that repeatedly struck gold in the 1970s on the song-writing and music-arranging magic of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, architects of the Philadelphia soul sound that also helped propel Pendergrass, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and The Spinners to the top of the charts.
“In the course of doing the show, you do start to realize there were major music capitals that were really close to being on the level of Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis – and Philadelphia was one of them,” Mark Rowland, an “UnSung” co-executive producer, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Everybody knows the Philly sound.”
Stretching beyond the City of Brotherly Love, the series crosses the Atlantic this season to examine Heatwave – the multi-ethnic, interracial funk-disco band that reached stardom in the 1980s with “Boogie Nights” and “Always and Forever” before fatal and life-threatening tragedies struck individual band members – and Musical Youth, the England-based Caribbean boy band that became a worldwide sensation in the early ’80s for its pop-reggae hit “Pass the Dutchie.” The band achieved brief fame, but saw only a fraction of the fortune its hits amassed.
“Two types of people get ripped off in the music industry,” band member Michael Grant says on the show. “Kids and black people. We were both.”
“UnSung’s” new season is rounded out with episodes on Parliament-Funkadelic mastermind George Clinton, sultry Angela Winbush, torch singer Miki Howard and the Fat Boys, rap’s original overweight lovers.
TV One executives say “UnSung” is one of the black-oriented cable network’s most popular programs, so much so that some artists have contacted the show’s producers about going on and telling their unvarnished stories of the rise, fall, triumphs, tragedies and controversies that marked – or blocked – their paths to stardom.
Representatives for George Clinton’s reached out to the show after Clinton saw last year’s episode on his friend Bootsy Collins in which the funky bass player spoke candidly about getting caught up in the whirlwind of drug abuse while a member of Clinton’s free-wheeling Parliament-Funkadelic universe.
Clinton figured that he, too, had a story to tell. He may be known as the energetic genius/showman behind Parliament-Funkadelic, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, the Brides of Funkenstein, the Horny Horns, Parlette and a decade’s worth of sold-out concerts, but few people know that Clinton is nearly destitute – the victim of bad record deals and his own drug use.
He asked Bootsy about his “UnSung” experience.
“He wanted to know did I think he should do it, did it help me in any way,” Bootsy told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “I told him, ‘Yeah.’ You’ve got to understand, George got ripped off more than a lot of artists because … George not only had one record deal, he had a record deal for Parliament, he had a record deal for Funkadelic, he had a record deal for Parlette, Brides of Funkenstein, Horny Horns, Bootsy’s Rubber Band. So he had his hand in everything.”
To read more go to: http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/entertainment/gossip/21893/2
