Tammi Terrell signed with Motown Records on her 20th birthday in 1965. The next year she recorded “All I Do (Is Think About You)” written by a teenaged Stevie Wonder, Clarence Paul and Morris Broadnax. The song was never released during Terrell’s lifetime but came out on the A Cellarful Of Motown! Volume 1 compilation in 2002. Wonder recorded the song himself for his 1980 Hotter Than July album and only the Motown connoisseurs know of Terrell’s version. It will never be known how the public would have received her recording in the ’60s but she was most visible then and now as part of a duo with Marvin Gaye. She became famous for her duets with Gaye which started in 1967 with Ashford & Simpson’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Their recording was entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, 31 years after being nominated at the 10th ceremony. Terrell recorded three albums of duets with Gaye and one solo album in her career that was ended by brain cancer upon her death in 1970. Gaye went into a deep two-year depression after Terrell’s passing. Terrell’s sister Ludie Montgomery released My Sister Tommie–The Real Tammi Terrell in 2005 about her life. The late singer was also the subject of TV One’s Unsung series.
