Tammi Terrellreal name is Thomasina Winifred,she was born in Philadelphia. Members of her family have said her parents figured their eldest child would be a son and had settled on "Thomas". After Terrell's birth, they added in "-ina". Terrell was called "Tommie" by family. Terrell has a younger sister, Ludie (born 1949). Terrell began singing in church at an early age. Terrell developed a rebellious, free-spirited streak and changed her name to "Tammy" after seeing the film Tammy and the Bachelor in the summer of 1957 and hearing its theme song "Tammy". Around this time, Terrell began complaining of migraines and headaches. Terrell's family said that this foreshadowed her later struggle with brain cancer but that at the time they did not regard it as a major issue.
By the age of thirteen, Terrell had begun a professional singing career. In 1960, prior to her fifteenth birthday, she signed with Scepter Records, and recorded the doo-wop single "If You See Bill" , releasing it under the name "Tammy Montgomery". Though the record wasn't a success, it did establish Terrell in some R&B circles and Terrell went on tour with some of Scepter's biggest artists and other popular R&B artists of the Philadelphia area, including Chubby Checker and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. She also opened for R&B star Gene Chandler, with whom she had a friendship. In 1962, Terrell came to the attention of James Brown and the seventeen-year-old found herself in Brown's popular Revue becoming one of Brown's first female headliners. In 1963, Terrell recorded for Brown's Try Me Records, releasing the ballad, "I Cried", which gave her some chart success. Terrell and Brown also had a personal relationship, which was hampered by Brown's physical abuse towards her. After a horrific incident backstage after a show, Terrell asked Chandler (who witnessed the incident first hand) to take her to the bus station so she could go home. He later called her mother to come pick her up. This ended Terrell's two-year relationship with Brown. Ludie Montgomery stated in her memoirs of Terrell that she met Sam Cookein 1964 after Cooke showed a romantic interest in Terrell. Before a relationship could forge, however, Cooke was murdered in Los Angeles that December.
After recording a single for Checker Records in 1964, produced by the legendary Bert Berns and paired with singer Jimmy Radcliffe on a now-released duet version of the song "If I Would Marry You" wherein she debuted as a co-writer with Berns, Terrell semi-retired from show business and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania where she stayed for two years majoring in pre-med. In 1965, Jerry "The Ice Man" Butler asked Terrell to sing with him in a series of nightclub shows, which Terrell agreed to with a schedule that would allow her to continue her studies in Pennsylvania. In March 1965, Motown Records CEO Berry Gordy spotted Terrell performing in Detroit and asked Terrell to sign with Motown. Terrell agreed and signed with Motown on April 29, 1965, her 20th birthday.
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