She Recorded Hits While Dying—Motown Kept Exploiting Tammi Terrell was only 24 when she died from brain cancer on March 16, 1970. But her story isn't about the cancer—it's about the men who broke her before it did. She was brutalized by James Brown while still a teenager, then savagely abused by David Ruffin of The Temptations. In 1967, while performing "Your Precious Love" with Marvin Gaye, she collapsed onstage—a brain tumor was found. Over the next two years, through EIGHT brain surgeries, we

David Ruffin and Tammi Terrell had a tumultuous, violent relationship in the late 1960s after meeting when Terrell joined the Motortown Revue. Ruffin, a member of The Temptations, proposed to Terrell, but she discovered he was already married, and the relationship ended after he became increasingly violent, culminating in an incident where he hit her with a motorcycle helmet. Terrell later attributed her severe migraines, which began around this time, to the emotional and physical abuse she expe