Watching the snow covered world out the window Monday morning as our laughing and giggling kids threw snowballs, my husband announced from the den, "Teena Marie died.  Who's that?" he asked.

I love music.  Who doesn't?  But, I also love to play music that creates kind of an eclectic taste from rock musicians to emulate—you know—Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, to enjoying the pure dance rhythms of Prince and Donna Summer that my sister and her boyfriend (now husband of 27 years) brought into our house growing up. 

"Who's Teena Marie?" I choked on my coffee.  "What?  You don't remember Lady T?"

Teena Marie died Sunday at the age of 54.  There's no word yet on what she died of except the news pouring in from various media outlets say "natural causes."  

Although nominated for a Grammy, she was one of those talented pioneers in the music industry who did something unique and never got credit for it.

"Teena Marie was the first woman rapper,"  I told my husband.

Some say it was Blondie with "Rapture" but Teena Marie's "Square Biz" was the first song a woman broke into talking the beat instead of actually singing a melody, not because she couldn't sing.  Nope, she had a strong perfect-pitch voice and funky energy about her music kind of like a Rick James funk who was rumored to be her mentor and lover.

"Teena Marie was a white woman who sang awesome soul music,"  I told the kids when they came in the house. "Teena Marie was the first white person ever to be signed to the Motown record label."

I pulled out CD's and listened to her while cleaning up the piles of wrapping paper and endless boxes leftover from our Christmas extravaganza week.

As the horns trilled and her intricate sounds filled the house, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to this amazing R & B singer / songwriter that struck right when the crossover from rhythm & blues hit disco and rap, and punk were born at the same time creating an explosive end to the melancholy, sappy 70's decade dominated by McCartney & Wings and Elton John ballads.

It was during one of my very first jobs in Syosset where I discovered Teena Marie.  

Teena Marie appeared on the music scene in 1979, the year I turned 14.  I worked every Saturday answering phones and taking reservations at a restaurant called Frisco Wharf now known as Major's Steakhouse on Jericho Turnpike.

Frisco Wharf was a well-known seafood place with a live lobster tank, a newly formed craze "the salad bar" and gift shop where they sold homemade fudge.

One of my sister's friends worked as a waitress there and they needed someone just to hang out and answer the phones during the day while the restaurant was officially closed.  I jumped at the chance to do something other than my other babysitting job during the doldrums of winter.

Every Saturday, my father or mother would drop me off at the restaurant from 12 to 5 pm and I'd sit reading Shakespeare homework for 9^th grade English class at South Woods Junior High.

When the bartender would arrive, she'd turn on the stereo system that piped throughout the bar. I'd eat maraschino cherries and jot down reservations in the big book as Teena Marie belted it out on WBLS radio station.

A few months into the job, my boss called my parent's house.

"Do you have any friends who might want to maintain the salad bar at night?" he asked me.

"I'll do it!" I said.  So, my hours increased.  I'd work all day from 12 to 10 pm making $3.00 an hour and eat a free dinner.  At 14, I thought it was the greatest job and I was rich.    

Soon I met a busboy—Jim who was a senior at Kennedy High in Plainview.  He became my first official "car date" where we went to the movies alone together.  He was tall, Irish and had an easy, kind smile that curved up the corners of his mouth.

I worked for six months answering the phones by day, filling up the salad bar at night.  Until one day in the summer, after we'd just returned from a family trip to Maine, Frisco Wharf shut their doors for good and I lost my one-day a week job.

And Frisco Wharf evolved to Majors.  Jim went off to college.  I still had Teena Marie and "Square Biz" became one of my most requested songs – kind of a running joke with my friends when we'd go out to clubs.

How will you remember Teena Marie?