The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (76 page)

EPILOGUE: WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?

405

she revealed in
Supreme Faith: Someday We’ll Be Together
. She made a few recordings for Atlantic and Boardwalk Records and played regular gigs in Las Vegas and Reno. In the early 1990s she cut her first album in twelve years,
Walk the Line
for CEO Records, releasing the singles “One Night with You” and “Walk the Line.” However, when she got the idea to tour with two other singers in a show called “The Supremes Show with Mary Wilson,” Motown slapped a suit on her; like Flo, she couldn’t use the name after leaving Motown. Though she fought it, she lost.

(Ironically, Motown couldn’t stop interlopers from using the name, leading Wilson to lobby for laws against such copycat groups, noting that “[t]here are like five or six Supremes” out there.) Wilson and Ross have not shared the same stage since the unsightly

“Motown 25” proceedings. The closest thing to a Supremes reunion in the last three decades was a “Motown 45” TV special on April 4, 2004, at which Wilson and Birdsong sang a Supremes medley with Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child.

In 1994, Wilson was driving with her son Raphael on a California highway when she fell asleep at the wheel of her Jeep Cherokee. The car hit the center divider, severely injuring Wilson and killing her son.

While recovering, she claimed Ross had been there for her and that the two of them had ended their “feud.” Wilson then moved from L.A. to New York to start a new life, getting a liberal arts degree from New York University and acting in some off-Broadway plays. She starred in the national touring company of Duke Ellington’s
Sophisticated Ladies
in 2001 and in
The Vagina Monologues
at the Detroit Opera House in 2003.

In July 2006, she underwent an emergency angioplasty after suffering sharp chest pains. In short order, she was back on the road again and during the same year moved to Las Vegas. In late 2008 she was reportedly in the studio with Brian and Eddie Holland—who themselves had done little since the ’70s (other than issuing bonds in 1998 worth $30 million backed by future royalties of their old songs)—recording songs adapted from her personal diaries.

Wilson endures not just as a Supremes echo but, fairly or not, as the antithesis of Diana Ross, through her own smart planning.
Dreamgirl
’s slams at Ross all but guaranteed a best-seller that extended the cleft between Ross and the “other” Supremes dating back to the ’60s.

But if that was a wise business decision, the notion of Wilson playing 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 406

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living martyr to Ross’s designing woman may not be entirely accurate, or fair. Wilson, for example, conveniently omitted from her memoirs that when she was in financial trouble in the early ’80s, Diana loaned her a substantial amount of money.

Indeed, chapter and verse can be written about Ross’s generosity—

witness the trust fund for Flo Ballard’s children, a gesture not matched by Wilson. Another example comes from Janie Bradford, the former Motown receptionist and co-writer of “Money.” In the early ’80s, down on her luck, she and Freddie Gorman—who wrote the Supremes’ first songs—co-wrote a song called “‘I Am Me.”

“I had this song,” she recalls, “and one day I left a message for Diana, not expecting her to return it; I hadn’t spoken with Diana in years.

But then my daughter picked up and squealed, ‘Mom, it’s Diana Ross!’

I said to myself, look, I’m going through hell, I’m gonna tell her the truth. And I did. I said, ‘Diana, if there’s any way you can record this song of mine, please do it because I need the money.’ And she cut it and put it on the back of ‘Muscles’! That was a huge hit. So you can imagine the royalties that came in, and still do. That’s Diana Ross.” Jack Ashford, the tambourine master of the Funk Brothers, has a similar story:

I was on the bus with the Supremes on a tour of England, and being one of the downtrodden musicians, I was in the back, on the hump. Berry and the girls were up front. And it was cold on that bus. And Diana came walking back, saw me shivering under a blanket, and asked, “You wanna share that blanket?” I’m trying to act cool but inside I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, come on!” Earl Van Dyke, he’s looking at me and Diana under the blanket and he goes, “Watch out, Jack, it’s a long way from England to Detroit!” So anyway, we got to Manchester and Diana and I were on a boat and I was saying I was broke, which was just the fact, we’d all blown our expense money like the first day. I said, “Diana, got any money?” And she pulls out of her purse a St. Christopher medal and gives it to me. She says, “It’s my grandmother’s, but take it, maybe it’s worth some money.” You know something? I still got that medal. I would’ve never sold it. That was the kindest thing anyone ever did for me—and it was Diana Ross who did it!

In
Secrets of a Sparrow
, anecdotes like this go unmentioned. But Ross does make a case that it was actually she who was victimized by 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 407

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the Supremes, who she says “treated me very badly” and went “against me with a vengeance. They had blamed me, acted as if everything were my fault”; after being “tormented, treated as if I were invisible, talked about behind my back, I tried to perform and pretend all was well.

[But] when they stopped talking to me, it was too much to ignore.” The problem is that few ever believed such a thing—and never will after the debacle of the Supremes’ 2000 Reunion Tour, which, as
Time
reported, was “STOPPED IN THE NAME OF INDIFFERENCE,” leaving Ross as the foil for having tried to make herself five times more valuable than Wilson, fifteen times more than Cindy Birdsong. And allowing Wilson to wallow in the martyr role again, declaring, “I am very hurt and disappointed. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I wouldn’t be part of a reunion. It was very devastating.” Diana, in turn, was compelled to crack back, “In my heart, I know that it would be very hard for me to be with her on stage.” Cut to Wilson: “People walk up to me and say, ‘I just want to give you a hug and say, ‘Thank you for standing up to her.” Back to Ross: “I think if we offered her the moon, she will not be happy.”

And so on, and on. The feud, back on, apparently will never end.

And without the music they left, we might hate them both for it.

Concludes Shelly Berger:

Listen, when you go down the road with those two, sometimes you want to scream. I love them both, dearly, and both of ’em fired me! All the bullshit goes with the territory, and they both have their own territory.

I happen to have my own story about Diana. On our first trip to Europe, we went to Germany, and people would kid me because I’m a Jew, they’d call me, “Herr Berger,” and ask, in a German accent, “You have relatives in this country?” But Diana was genuinely worried about me because there was a lot of anti-Semitism over there. And at the Frankfurt Airport, an at-tendant told me there was a call for me in a private room so I went inside. When I came out, there was Diana Ross, standing all alone in the middle of the terminal. Talk about a shocking sight. The Supremes were
always
with people, the managers, the valets, they were never alone, especially Diana. I said,

“What are you doing here?” She said, “I was waiting for you. I thought someone was gonna try and take you away.” She’d slipped away from everyone just because she was worried about 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 408

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me. I can only assume she was ready to fight the entire German army the way she was ready to fight those rednecks in that bar.

So when people talk to me about Diana Ross, I remember her standing there like that, 90 pounds dripping wet, ready to go to war to protect me.

I’ll only say this: Diana can be very tough. She’s very demanding—of herself. She knows how to push better than anyone else, for better and for worse. That’s why we’re talking about her. That’s why we’re talking about
them
.

Ross could be more artful than to look back on the Supremes, as she does, with only grudging enchantment—calling those times a “positive” experience, because “I decided to make it that way, and so it was.” But when she allows that it was an “amazing time,” on
that
point there can be peace. The chorus can take the cue, draw breath deeply and wail for the congregation:

And so it was, brothers and sisters. And so it was.

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Bibliography

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Ballard, Maxine “Precious.”
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Benjaminson, Peter.
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Clemente, John.
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Coffey, Dennis.
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Early, Gerald Lyn.
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George, Nelson.
Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown
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Goldsmith, Olivia.
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Gordy, Berry.
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Hirshey, Gerri.
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Liles, Raynoma.
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Posner, Gerald L.
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Reeves, Martha.
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Ritz, David.
Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye
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Robinson, Smokey.
Smokey: Inside My Life
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Ross, Diana.
Secrets of a Sparrow
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Singleton, Raynoma Gordy.
Berry, Me and Motown.
McGraw-Hill Contemporary, 1991.

Slutsky, Allan.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson
. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1989.

Smith, Suzanne E.
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Williams, Otis, and Patricia Romanowski.
Temptations
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Wilson, Mary.
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Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Detroit Magazine
, “Motown Is Really Big,” Van Gordon Sauter, 3/21/65.

Time
, “The Sound of the Sixties,” Ray Kennedy and A.T. Baker, 5/21/65.

The Toledo Blade
, “Hitsville U.S.A.,” Ray Oviatt, 8/22/65.

Billboard
, “An Act for All Ages,” Aaron Steinfeld, 8/7/65.

Variety
, “Supremes Swing at Philharmonic,” 9/15/65.

Chicago Daily News
, “The Motown Sound,” Michaela Williams, 9/25/65.

Detroit Magazine
, “The Supremes in Eight Easy Lessons,” Mort Persky, 1/30/66.

Time
, “The Girls from Motown,” 3/4/66.

Chicago Tribune
, “Supremes: 11 Frantic Hours,” Nancy Moss, 3/20/66.

Look
, “The Supremes: From Real Rags to Real Riches,” 5/3/66.

Billboard
, “Motown Expansion in High Gear with Broadway, TV, Movies,” Eliot Tiegel, 6/11/66.

Sepia Magazine
, “Supremes and Hitsville U.S.A.,” 8/66.

New York Times Magazine
, “The Big, Happy Beating Heart of the Detroit Sound,” Richard B. Lingeman, 9/27/66.

Detroit Magazine
, “Supremes Starring on Behalf of Our Torch Drive,” George Walker, 7/30/65.

Time
, “Democracy in the Foxhole,” 5/26/67.

Time
, “Homemade Bomb” (film review), 5/26/67.

Time
, “Heavyweight Featherweight,” 9/8/67.

Cosmopolitan
, “The Supremes: They Make You Believe,” Rona Jaffe, 9/67.

Detroit Free Press
, “Supremes’ Flo Ballard: It’s Said She’s Leaving,” Lorraine Alterman, 9/1/67.

Fortune
, “The Motown Sound of Money,” Stanley H. Brown, 9/1/67.

Time
, “Tapping the Roots,” 3/22/68.

TV Guide
, “Diana,” Digby Diehl, 12/7/68.

Ebony
, “Former Supreme Talks a Little,” 2/69.

Detroit Free Press
, “A Talk with Berry Gordy,” Bob Talbert and Lee Winfrey, 3/23/69.

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Philadelphia Bulletin
, “Diana Ross Walks Out,” William Forsythe, 6/1/69.

New York Post
, “Diana Ross Sings the Blues for Her Dogs,” Earl Wilson, 6/9/69.

Look
, “The Supreme Supreme,” Jack Hamilton, 9/23/69.

Time
, “Situation Report,” 4/6/70.

Time
, “Baby, Baby, Where Did Diana Go?” 8/1/70.

Michigan Chronicle
, “Super Sacrifice for Ballard,” 11/14/70.