Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Andrea True Connection -- "More, More, More" (1976)


But if you want to know how I really feel
Get the cameras rollin'
Get the action goin'

Andrea True (who was born Andrea Marie Truden) was a porn star who later became a disco singer.

Andrea was born in 1943 in Nashville.  She attended Saint Cecilia Academy, a tony all-girls Catholic high school, then moved to New York City in hopes of becoming a movie star.

Andrea True
Andrea landed a few minor roles in mainstream movies – for example, she was an extra in The Way We Were – but eventually accepted an invitation to star in adult movies.  She eventually starred in more than fifty hardcore porn films.


Andrea True's porn oeuvre included Double Header, Doctor Feelgood, The Wetter the Better, and – this is one I really want to see – Sexual Freedom in the Ozarks.

Andrea also appeared in Deep Throat, Part II – the R-rated sequel to the most famous and widely-viewed adult film of all time.  In her 1980 autobiography, the late Linda Lovelace – the star of Deep Throat – describes Andrea as "much too smart to be doing what she did for a living," and tells how she tried to organize porn stars into a union.


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In the mid-seventies, while at the height of her porn career, Andrea was hired to do commercials for a real estate company in Jamaica.  While she was there, the country was plunged into a political crisis, and she was unable to leave until things were sorted out.

So she asked songwriter and record producer Gregg Diamond to come to Jamaica and produce a track for her.  The result of their collaboration was "More, More, More," which climbed all the way to #4 on the Billboard "Hot 100."


Andrea True eventually recorded three albums.  The first one was moderately successful, but the next two were flops.  After her third album failed to sell, she returned to doing porn.  But she was a bit long in the tooth by then – she was almost 40 – and her comeback attempt was unsuccessful.  

Andrea then developed a goiter on her vocal cords, which prevented her from making a singing comeback as well.  She eventually moved to south Florida, where she worked as a drug counselor and gave psychic readings.  

In 1999, the Canadian group Len released "Steal My Sunshine," which sampled "More, More, More."  Click here to read the previous 2 or 3 lines, which featured "Steal My Sunshine."

"Steal My Sunshine" was released on Len's
You Can't Stop the Bum Rush album
The success of "Steal My Sunshine" resulted in royalties and publicity for Andrea True.  She also appeared in the 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat, which examined the impact of that famous adult film on American society.  

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I was a senior at Rice University in Houston when Deep Throat was released.  I didn't have to go to my neighborhood porn theater and pay to see that movie.  Instead, I got to view it for free in my "Sociology of Mass Media" class.   

The local prosecuting attorney filed an obscenity complaint against the theater that was showing the movie in Houston, and my sociology professor – the late Chad Gordon – was hired to be an expert witness for the defense.  So he had our class watch the movie one day and fill out questionnaires about what we thought about it.  (You can best believe no one skipped class that day.)  

Professor Gordon testified that our answers to those questionnaires showed that Deep Throat was not obscene in the eyes of local college students, whose opinions on that topic should count just as much as the opinions of the little old ladies who attended the local Baptist churches.


I don't know how much our professor's testimony had to do with it, but the obscenity prosecution ended up in a hung jury.  The same thing happened when the prosecutor decided to retry the case.  After the second hung jury, the prosecutor gave up, making Houston and all of Harris County, Texas, safe for fans of adult films.  


Professor Gordon died in 2007.  Here's an excerpt from a Rice University student newspaper story about him:

Former sociology department chair Chad Gordon, who was with the sociology department since its inception in the 1970s, passed away in late May after fighting cancer. . . . He was an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard before he came to Rice in 1970.
Sociology professor William Martin said Gordon was well-known for his courses on human sexuality and television called “Sex with Chad” and “TV with Chad,” respectively.
“[He taught] courses that were quite popular and a little different from the other offerings in our department,” Martin said.
Gordon had a creative teaching style and would take students to cemeteries and funeral home museums when he taught a course on death, Martin said.  He said Gordon also integrated progressive media into his course about television, often using TV clips, which were not considered a teaching tool at the time he began teaching it.
Sewall Hall, home of Rice's
Sociology Department
Martin said the last course Gordon taught on death and dying resonated on a very personal level.
“He taught his death and dying course when he was quite aware, and his students were aware, that he had a fatal disease,” Martin said.  “He was very candid about that, and I’m sure that was significant for the students as well.”
Gordon was also known for the band he formed during his early years at Rice and his strikingly colored motorcycle that he could be seen driving around the campus, Martin said.  Additionally, Gordon was known for the pool parties he threw at his house, and for being a “free spirit.”  He loved spicy food, and his friends would engage in contests with him to see who could eat the greatest amount of spicy food in one sitting, Martin said.
He said Gordon was a compassionate man who had a lasting impact on each student.
“[Gordon] seemed always to be in a good mood,” Martin said. “He always had a twinkle in his eye.”
The late Chad Gordon
As for Andrea True, she died of heart failure at a Kingston, New York, hospital in 2011.  She was 68 years old.

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Click here to listen to "More, More, More."

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

1 comment:

  1. You may watch parts of " Sexual Freedom in the Ozarks" here:
    https://www.redtube.com.br/1189239

    ReplyDelete