A USM digital compilation by late and revered soul star and Motown staple Teena Marie is now available to stream and download. Love Songs And Funky Beats: The John Morales Mixes gathers together the mixes of the best of the artist’s catalog on Motown, for whom she created a sequence of memorable singles and albums in the late 1970s and early 80s.
The collection centers on Women’s History Month and on Teena Marie’s birthday on March 5, when she would have turned 67. The Californian singer and songwriter died at the age of 54 on December 26, 2010.
After signing to Motown in 1976 via an introduction to staff producer Hal Davis, Teena Marie worked on some recordings that remained unreleased at the time before being championed by emerging “punk-funk” artist-producer Rick James. Some of those early tracks were later collected on the 2011 album First Class Love: Rare Tee.
James and Art Stewart produced the 1979 debut that marked her out as a rare talent, Wild and Peaceful. It contained the funky US R&B Top 10 hit “I’m A Sucker For Your Love,” which features in an infectious, near-nine-minute live version with Levi Ruffin Jr. on the new Love Songs And Funky Beats, in Morales’ M+M mix.
The 18-track remix set includes the M+M remix of “Behind The Groove,” which became the biggest international single success for “Tee,” reaching No.6 in the UK from her second album, 1980’s Lady T. It was also a Top 5 US dance hit. The third single from that LP, “Lonely Desire,” is on the new album, along with another of her best-known tracks, “I Need Your Lovin’”, which made the UK Top 30, the US R&B Top 10, and No.2 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart. It originated on the Irons In The Fire album, released in the summer of 1980, only six months after Lady T.
Tee’s fourth and final studio album for Motown, 1981’s gold-selling It Must Be Magic, yielded her biggest R&B single (at No.3) of her years with the label in “Square Biz.” Its M&M mix is on the remix album along with other favorites such as the title song from It Must Be Magic and “Fire and Desire,” her duet with James from his platinum-selling 1981 album Street Songs.
Buy or stream Teena Marie’s Love Songs And Funky Beats: The John Morales Mixes.