George HaffendenThis August sees the release of an excitingly ambitious project from Cleopatra Records in the form of a ‘new’ album from the late, great Teddy Pendergrass which sees the Philadelphia soul icon ‘duet’ with a variety of soul and R&B icons. Cleopatra Records are calling this the “posthumous duet” style, which is becoming used more frequently thanks to the improvements in recording technology. The album is entitled Duets, Love & Soul, and is to feature ‘duets’ with Martha Reeves, Rose Royce, the Ohio Players, The Stylistics and more.
Natalie Cole was one of the first artists to make use of this technology, allowing her to sing a heartbreaking duet with her father, the great Nat “King” Cole. Less impressively was Barry Manilow’s attempt last year to do an album of ‘dream duets’ with artists from Whitney Houston to Louis Armstrong; unless you’re a die-hard Bazza fan, we recommend you don’t waste your time. The difficulty with duet albums is getting the duet partners to really connect with each other. For instance, Tony Bennett’s duet albums are recorded live with a full band, and the other singer live with Mr Bennett in the studio to give the song a natural feel. Contrast that with Frank Sinatra’s Duets I & II and well, it feels a bit forced: Sinatra did not record with his duet partners, giving it a sort of sterile feel, despite the talent present on the albums from Luther Vandross, to Aretha Franklin, to his son Frank Sinatra Jr. If the producers of the new Duets, Love & Soul album can prevent against that, then it should be a real treat for Teddy Pendergrass fans.
Given the mixed success of these types of duet, we approached the news of a ‘new’ Teddy Pendergrass album with caution, fearing the worst – that this might be another Barry Manilow affair. Combine that with the general brilliant-ness of Pendergrass’ duets with Stephanie Mills on songs like ‘Two Hearts‘, as well as duet with Whitney Houston, we were pretty sceptical. Thankfully, the first single, a Pendergrass classic of ‘Love TKO’ featuring songstress Angie Stone is actually pretty good. The two voices fit together fairly well; as far as we can tell, the Pendergrass vocal is not the same vocal that’s on the original, potentially taken from a live recording or an alternative mix, we’re not too sure. Nonetheless, it seems to work pretty well – and you can judge for yourself below, via SoundCloud.