I first found Teena in 1981, when I was a year out of high school. She was a little white girl from Venice Beach making all kinds of R&B, the first little red headed white girl to be signed by Motown Records in 1976 -- the woman that would become the Ivory Queen of Soul.
It didn't take much to fall in love with Teena Marie's music. She was a natural soul performer who swam upstream to find her success in the (then) segregated music industry.
UPDATE IV: Marie took to Twitter to send a number of messages on Christmas day. Amongst her final tweets: "May Gods Light always shine on you and your...