The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (43 page)

The assumption, naturally, was that he was merely repeating what
she
had told him, and she could never convince Motown denizens otherwise. But she maintained her innocence. “Comparing is a terrible thing to do in a family situation,” she concluded. “It produces crippling sibling rivalry [and] it became a very difficult situation for me.” Those who couldn’t measure up to her—meaning, everybody—subsequently “turned not only on Berry but on his chosen one.”

Missing from Ross’s self-pitying tale of woe, of course, is that there’s no room for her pre-success presumptions in which she, in effect, put the company on notice that no one
would
be like her. Gordy only held her to it—without objection from her, at the time. But in the nuclear-driven Gordy, she had the cover she needed for plausible deniability. “I am quite clear,” she stressed, “that I am not responsible for anybody else’s success or failure.”

Not that the lesser Motown mortals had much sympathy; they’d never heard a word suggesting that Diana cared a whit about anyone else’s fate. But Ross from here on in began to, as she recalled, “live under constant stress,” manifestations of which would soon become evident. Without pause, however, the beat went on.

The next song from HDH was “Back in My Arms Again,” early tracks for which were cut in late December 1964 and completed with the girls’ vocals in late February. Cutting it in the same quarter- and eight-note beats as “Stop! In the Name of Love,” but with a freer, bluesier gait, HDH—let’s say
with
the Funk Brothers—made Studio A rever-berate, buffing up a melody that was driven by a simultaneous line of 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 215

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Earl Van Dyke’s nifty honky-tonk piano riffs and Ashford’s vibes, which in turn played off Mike Terry’s honking sax, blaring trombones, and thunderous drum and bass lines.

Eddie Holland’s lyrics had Ross going beyond her usual pining, yearning, and burning; now she could strut triumphant and smug, ignoring pleas to “break away from the boy I love” and risk suffering the

“heartache he’ll bring one day.” Having “lost him once” by listening “to my friends’ advice,” she adamantly swore that “it’s not gonna happen twice.” Most cleverly, the lyric identified the meddling friends, with

“How can Mary tell me what to do when she lost her love so true? And Flo, she don’t know, ’cause the boy she loves is a Romeo.”

“See, that’s how girls talk, they put the blame on their friends for screwing up their love lives,” Eddie says. “I always tried to write to that kind of voice and attitude with those songs.” Whether intended or not, it was a perfect match for Ross’s attitude.

On a more subtle level, it was even a mild homily of her “de-friending” of Wilson and Ballard, not that anyone perceived it that way, least of all Mary and Flo, who saw it mainly as a welcome, and overdue, recognition that they, too, were Supremes—one that allowed them a taste of the acclaim Diana lived with 24/7. Released in mid-April with “Whisper You Love Me Boy” on the reverse, “Back in My Arms Again” was only nine days later the lead song on
Billboard
’s Spotlights page, its breakout so breakneck that the showbiz bible didn’t have time to get the title right—calling it “Back in Your Arms Again”—in pegging it a

“[h]ot follow-up to ‘Stop! In the Name of Love,’” with “a strong lyric and powerful vocal performance pitted against a hard rock background in full support. A winner all the way!”

Billboard
seemed genuinely ready to swoon at just about any Supremes product by now. Just weeks before, it had boosted onto its

“Breakout New Albums” page
The Supremes Sing Country, Western and
Pop,
the oddball mélange produced by Clarence Paul that had sat on the shelf for a year before a belated release to cash in on the group’s popularity (to no avail; it stiffed, on merit, rising no higher than No.

79)—one of three Supremes albums issued between March and July.

The others were the intriguing
We Remember Sam Cooke
, covering hit songs by the recently murdered soul singer (e.g., “You Send Me,”

“Chain Gang,” “Twistin’ the Night Away,” “Bring It on Home to Me,”

“Shake”)—which stalled at No. 75 on the pop album chart but made it to an impressive No. 5 on the R&B chart—and the obligatory
More
Hits
, another compilation of hits and filler that would ring in at No. 6

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pop, 2 R&B. And two
more
LPs were cut and cataloged—a live album and the other of Broadway show tunes called
There’s a Place for Us—
but both were held back and never issued.

The very listenable and marketable “Back in My Arms Again” shot up the pop chart, almost
too
fast; it was in the Top Forty by early May and in the top spot on June 12, to be bumped after a week only by the equally meteoric trip of the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself.” With the Copa a month away, and riding a trail of five consecutive No. 1 hits—

something achieved only by Elvis until then, in 1956–57 and 1959–61, and which the Beatles were working on en route to six in a row by early

’66—the girls were called back into the studio to record another current ditty to coincide with the big gig. Reaching into the HDH barrel, Gordy came out with “Nothing But Heartaches,” another winner but with blemishes, one of which was familiarity. Indeed, the HDH-Supremes

“ballpark” was in need of expansion. Though perfectly catchy power-pop, it left a somewhat tiring effect after one listen, as if it had been heard—because it
was,
in “Back in My Arms Again.” Then, too, after the happy ending of “Back,” the brooding despair of “Heartaches” and its fatal-attraction lyrics—“He brings nothing but heartaches / Ooh, nothing but heartaches / But I can’t break away / Oh no, keep a loving him more each day”—and the vision of Diana Ross “crying myself to sleep” were downers.

For once, a Supremes record wasn’t a must-have; released in July backed with “He Holds His Own” and hurriedly included on
More
Hits
, it didn’t move onto the charts until after the Copa gig and peaked at a disappointing No. 11 in late August. While Gordy tried to amelio-rate some of the damage by claiming the record sold over a million copies, as best as could be determined by the RIAA it managed to sell only around 600,000.

The downer of “Nothing But Heartaches” was the least of the Supremes’ problems in the run-up to the Copa, the subtitle of which, right up to their entrance on the stage there, could have been “Nothing But Headaches.” The expectations were high from the start, only to intensify as July 29 approached. Gordy, turning
Billboard
into a PR arm, was able to get them on the front page of the July 17 issue, when the caption noted not only that “the hottest recording group in the world” had a new single but that “New Yorkers will have an opportunity to see this exciting act when it opens at the famous Copacabana night club July 29 for three weeks.” A week later, ads run by the club popped up in the New York dailies; bannered “THE COPA RAINS SUPREMES” 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 217

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with their picture, they gave lower billing to stand-up comic Bobby Remsen and “the world famous Copa Girls,” and at the bottom touted

“full course dinners from $5.25 . . . 2 shows nightly 9 & 12, 3 shows Fri. & Sat. 8, 11:30 & 2.”

Things were moving so fast and furiously that Diana, prodded and exhorted by the relentless Gordy, looked like she might not make it to New York. Pushed to the limit every day in rehearsals, all three girls were run ragged—only days before the show Flo came down with a case of the flu—but Gordy worked Diana the hardest, putting her under tremendous pressure by telling her that she was the whole act and that success or failure rested solely on her. Overtired and too nervous to eat, she lost weight on her already undernourished frame; at five-foot-five she normally carried 103 pounds, but now she was down to 90, her face hollowed, her legs spindly.

Of course, the “emaciated” look was in vogue, thanks to the British model Twiggy and her concentration-camp-survivor appearance. If that was the new paragon of fashion and glamour, Diana was relieved, as she no longer would need to enhance her waifish figure with those padded bras and such. Neither was Gordy averse to the idea, in his drive to imbue her with elegant sophistication. What concerned him was possibly having to postpone the Copa, which at this point would mean financial disaster for Motown after so much money had been shelled out to publicize it. Such was his terror that
he
couldn’t eat either; nor did he want to even
think
about leaving the Copa in the lurch and perhaps never being allowed back in. And so he consulted dietitians to prepare special meals for Diana. Thankfully, she got strong enough and recovered, as did Flo, who flew to New York two days before the gig. Still, nearly everyone at Motown kept their fingers crossed that Diana would make it through the next three weeks in one piece.

For a 400-seat nightclub, the Copacabana had a Vatican-like imprimatur in the showbiz community, and Motown was at its mercy negotiating with Jules Podell, the cigar-sucking, Runyonesque tough-guy character who owned the quarter-century-old watering hole on East 60th Street. Even though the summer was the time new acts were booked in lieu of the big names who took their shows to the Catskill Mountain hotels, Podell nonetheless would give little ground on the Supremes. Never before had a “rock” act played that most important of 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 218

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VIP venues, nor for that matter had any act seemingly younger than 40, its marquee a dependable gleaning of ’50s cool and first-name recognition—Frank, Sammy, Tony, Ella, Peggy, Nat—with mass appeal to the mainly middle-aged tourists who jammed into the place night after night to drink like fish in a Brazilian motif complete with jungle palms, coconuts, and murals of banana boats.

Rumors that Podell was either part of or a cover for the Mob were something he shared with Gordy. And if the Copa was starting to lose a bit of its luster, along with that of the New York club scene, Podell was still baronial in 1965. To be sure, he had Motown over a barrel in giving his stage over to the Supremes, more so knowing that Gordy would agree to just about anything. It turned out to be a contract that would bring the girls in for three annual engagements, the first for a three-week run for a flat payment of $3,000. At sixteen shows a week, including that killer thrice-a-night weekend schedule, this came to all of $180 a show—or $60 each
.
In truth, Gordy would have taken three subway tokens, but at least the handout would be bumped up to $10,000 a week for the second year and $15,000 for the third—that is, if Podell chose to have them back, a decision that was all his. At the same time Gordy could justifiably claim that Motown was being ripped off, since he had to foot all production costs, not to mention throwing parties for the New York industry crowd and his distributors, and putting up the large Motown contingent in suites at the Plaza Hotel.

Basically, all Podell had to do was turn the lights on and off each night. As Gordy would recall with lingering distaste, “Knowing what a major launching pad his club was, Jules made us pay for everything. . . .

No discounts on food or drinks; you paid full price, no matter who you were—manager, musicians, or star.” He called the Supremes agreement

“a slave contract,” as ironic a complaint as there possibly could have been from Gordy.

For many reasons, the opening was as much an ordeal for Gordy as for the girls. Just days before, he was called back to Detroit when Loucye Gordy suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and a day later died on the operating table. With the most contrasting of emotions imaginable, the Gordy family attended a funeral on the morning of July 29, then flew to New York for the opening—one of the saddest moments in Berry’s life followed almost immediately by one of his most exultant.

Somehow, he was able to put on his game face and cheer on the Su -

premes, fully expecting them to ease his grief by tearing the roof off the joint.

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Ross, Wilson, and Ballard hardly needed to be put under any more pressure; it was more than enough that the future of Motown, as Gordy saw it now, was riding on them. And if anyone ever doubted that Diana Ross was a trouper beyond compare, the most convincing rebuttal of all would be that Copa run of shows. Programmed as she was by Gordy, Atkins, King, Askey, and Powell, and kept sharp right up until the opening—while they were in New York, he booked them into a small club in northern New Jersey for several nights rather than have them sit around the Plaza—it was a wonder she could come out and be anything close to natural when she’d get her cue at the Copa. But, considering that she’d waited twenty-one years for this moment, there was also no way she would not be ready for her grand entrance.

At the same time, if anyone failed to understand the continent apart the Supremes were from their—and Gordy’s—musical roots, a small ad in the New York papers the day of the opening brought it home. Hours later, while the Supremes were making history at the Copa, the world they’d left behind carried on: At the Apollo Theater that night, the Shirelles, Wilson Pickett, Shep and the Limelighters, and Garnet Mimms would be on those grimier boards, as would the Marvelettes an evening later—representing the Motown the Supremes and Berry Gordy had turned their backs on.

Down at the Copa, black and soul were quaint notions. With Gordy and the Motown cognoscenti at the head VIP table sat tastemakers of their new world, scribes like Ed Sullivan and Earl Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, actor Jack Cassidy—though Gordy did not forget the honchos of his distributing companies and the still-important solons of the radio such as Murray the K and Frankie Crocker of New York’s all-black station WBLS. He also invited his boyhood idol, Joe Louis. Over the course of the evening, he would shell out $10,000 for drinks—charged to the Supremes as “promotional expenses.” Everything was in place and ready as Bobby Remsen finished warming up the crowd—everything, that is, except the Supremes, who were frantic backstage because their chosen dresses for the opening, blue with green and yellow feathered flowers at the advice of Maxine Powell, had still not arrived. Rummaging through “leftover” dresses in a tizzy, and Diana starting to unravel to the point that Mary thought she had a