Tammi Terrell: Pre-Med at Penn, Eight Brain Surgeries and the Easy Dispute

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Tammi Terrell was born Thomasina Winifred Montgomery in Philadelphia in 1945 to parents who had wanted a son and called her Tommy. At 12 she renamed herself Tammy after the film Tammy and the Bachelor. According to her sister, she was assaulted by three boys at 11, and around that time began suffering severe migraines that doctors dismissed. By 15 she was recording for Scepter and Wand, then toured with the James Brown Revue, leaving in 1963 after Brown beat her for not watching his set from the wings. She enrolled as a pre-med student at the University of Pennsylvania and sang with Jerry Butler to pay tuition until Berry Gordy saw her in a Detroit club and signed her on her 20th birthday in 1965.

At Motown she was paired with Marvin Gaye, recording Ain't No Mountain High Enough without being in the room with him. Her relationship with David Ruffin turned violent, and the abuse gave doctors a reason to blame her headaches on trauma and stress. On October 14, 1967, she collapsed into Gaye's arms on stage at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. After eight surgeries she died on March 16, 1970, at 24.

• Gaye was shy and stage-frightened; he said he did not grasp her talent until they sang together live.
• Gaye claimed Valerie Simpson stood in for Terrell on the Easy album; Simpson and Terrell's sister Ludie say Terrell sang over Simpson's guide vocals.
• Late in 1969 Gaye spotted her in the audience at the Apollo and they sang You're All I Need to Get By together.
• She weighed 93 pounds when she died, and her mother barred everyone from Motown except Gaye from the funeral.
• Biographers link Gaye's grief over her death to the turn that produced What's Going On.