Don't Leave Me This Way
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Don't Leave Me This Way was written in the early 1970s by songwriters Huff, Gamble and Gilbert.
They were the composers behind the famous black American Philadelphia Sound.
It was first performed by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, featuring Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocals.
It later became a hit for Thelma Houston and The Communards.
As the title suggests, the song is all about longing, yearning and loss.
Remarkable stories reflect the pain expressed in this soul classic, including one told by Dr Dan Gottlieb, a quadriplegic therapist who befriended Teddy Pendergrass after he became paralysed in a car accident.
Sharon Wachsler recalls dancing to the version made famous by The Communards in 1986 before a devastating illness left her housebound and reliant on her beloved service dog Gadget, who gave her a reason to keep going. When he died, the song was the only way she could express her grief over his loss.
The Reverend Richard Coles, formerly of The Communards, talks about the significance of Don't Leave Me This Way as a dancefloor anthem for young gay men in the 1980s that was later to become associated with the AIDS epidemic that took so many of their lives.
Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Maggie Ayre
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2013.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland. |
| 0:11.3 | It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here, |
| 0:16.2 | but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world. |
| 0:19.6 | And because the team has such a diverse |
| 0:21.1 | range of skills and strengths, we have trained journalists, people who love digging through |
| 0:25.9 | archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts. We really can do those stories justice. So if you |
| 0:31.9 | like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK. |
| 0:38.8 | My accident happened on a highway here in Pennsylvania and a large truck was driving one way. |
| 0:48.2 | I was driving the other and the truck lost its entire wheel and it bounced across the highway and crushed my car, and it |
| 0:56.8 | broke my neck. And that's how I became a quadriplegic. My name is Dr. Dan Gottlieb. I'm a psychologist, |
| 1:05.6 | and I host a radio show here on Philadelphia's NPR affiliate called Voices in the Family. |
| 1:13.7 | It's a psychology call-in show, and we cover a wide range of subjects covering everything that |
| 1:22.3 | relates to psychology. It was about five, maybe eight years after my accident. |
| 1:29.4 | I had been back to work for several years practicing, |
| 1:33.2 | and I got a call from Teddy Pendergrass saying that he wanted to come see me. |
| 1:44.7 | Teddy Pendergrass was the Rhythm and Blues superstar. |
| 1:51.3 | He was the idol of so many, mostly girls and women. |
| 2:00.4 | Mm-hmm. This is just a couple of years after Teddy had his accident and also became a quadriplegic. |
| 2:13.7 | Don't leave me this way. |
| 2:20.4 | I can't survive Can't stay alive without your love |
| 2:25.4 | Don't leave me this way |
... |
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