![]() ![]() The first track featured Rick James prominently, acting as both duettist to Teena and master of ceremonies, introducing this soulful new starlet as “Lady T.” Hey, if she was down with Rick, the king of punk-funk, she had to be OK. Calling Teena’s album that was like telling the cognoscenti: “this woman is funky.” The title, Wild And Peaceful, would have been known to long-term funkateers: in 1973 Kool And The Gang, at the pinnacle of their hardcore groove period, had released a great LP by the same name. It was a case of easing her into a market that still fretted about the racial heritage of artists. James, his co-producer/engineer Art Stewart, and Teena fashioned six songs with a wilfully modern feel, a description that still holds even when they acknowledged Motown’s hit-making past through covers of The Temptations/ Smokey Robinson’s “Don’t Look Back” and (unreleased at the time) Brenda Holloway’s “Every Little Bit Hurts.” The result was the superb Wild And Peaceful, a debut album that put Teena Marie on the map when it was released on March 31, 1979. In fact, he was so convinced about Teena that he decided to focus on her – and turned down producing Diana Ross, the label’s greatest female star. One Motown icon who thought she could was Rick James, who had broken the mold at Motown himself in the 70s by bringing a badass rock attitude to his funk. Listen to Wild And Peaceful on Apple Music and Spotify. Could this girl, a former actress who had been a child star in a syndicated US comedy show, cut it as a funky soul singer on the label that had been laden with powerful Black talent for two decades? But she was the first to be an assertive, self-determining artist with an impressive range of instrumental skills. ![]() Teena Marie was not the first white woman signed to Motown, having been preceded by the likes of Chris Clark and Kiki Dee in the 60s. ![]()
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