Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass has died at the age of 59 following �a difficult recovery� from colon cancer surgery, his son has told the AP news agency. Teddy Pendergrass II said his father died at a hospital in Philadelphia.
He is survived by his wife, his son, two daughters, his mother and nine grandchildren. He was paralysed from the waist down in a 1982 car accident. In 2001 he went on his first tour since the accident. Pendergrass enjoyed early success with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, whose hits included If You Don't Know Me By Now, before going solo in 1976.
He was the first black male singer to record five consecutive multi-platinum albums in the US. Pendergrass, who has used a wheelchair since his accident, made a return to live performance at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in July 1985. �To all his fans who loved his music, thank you�, his son said. �He will live on through his music�.
After suffering a spinal cord injury in 1982, he spent six months in hospital before returning to the studio the following year to record the album �Love Language�. He performed his first solo live dates in almost 20 years in May 2001 in Atlantic City, which was followed by concerts all over the US.
In 2006, Pendergrass told the BBC the tour took enormous effort.�For a start, I had to have a group of people with me to look after my health needs�, he said. �But if you add to that the problems of transporting a wheelchair from airport to airport, it was all just too much effort�. He later founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance to help people with spinal cord injuries �achieve their maximum potential in areas of education, employment, housing, productivity and overall independence�.
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