Chart entered : 21 April 1973
Chart peak : 37
Another long-lasting act bowed out with a very minor hit.
The Supremes' days seemed numbered ever since Miss Ross departed their ranks at the beginning of 1970. By that time Cindy Birdsong had already replaced the erratic and unreliable Florence Ballard and Ross introduced her own replacement Jean Terrell at their final gig in Las Vegas. According to Mary Wilson, Berry Gordy then immediately demanded they dump Jean in favour of Syreeta Wright and washed his hands of the group when the others refused. If true it was a strange and tawdry way of cutting his ties especially as he'd selected Jean and she'd already been working with the others in the studio. They then defied the sceptics by scoring a respectable run of hits in the early 70s. In April 1972 Cindy left to start a family and was replaced by Linda Laurence a former backing singer for Stevie Wonder.
Straight away Linda called on her ex-employee for a song ( note his appearance on the sleeve ) and he responded with "Bad Weather" a song he co-wrote with Ira Tucker Junior. He also produced the record. It's instantly recognisable as a Wonder relationship song with its bubbling funk rhythms , brass interjections and whistles. Jean acquits herself well on the lead vocal although she apparently disliked the song. What hampers the record is the lack of a strong chorus to grab the attention ; this sound was on the radio a lot and "Bad Weather" just doesn't have enough to stand out from the pack. It only reached number 87 in the States.
The fall out was immediate. Linda and Jean quit the group in quick succession after realising that Motown owned the group name and thus they couldn't move to a new label as hoped. The former was replaced by the returning Cindy and Freda Payne's sister Scherrie was hired to replace Jean. Motown released their version of Bobby Lewis's "Tossin' And Turnin'" from the 1972 album they made with Jimmy Webb in 1972 as a stopgap single. It's a credible R & B performance but didn't ignite any interest. They tried again with "I Guess I'll Miss The Man", a nicely arranged MOR ballad from the same LP but it's not really single material and Motown trying to revive a dead album wasn't doing them any favours. In August 1974 a reissue of "Baby Love" made number 12 here.
By August 1975 the new line up was ready to go with "He's My Man" a disco song with Mary and Scherrie sharing the lead vocal. It's not a bad effort but they were now up against The Three Degrees in their pomp and an increasingly disinterested label. "Early Morning Love" , from the same album was released in November and has Mary doing the lead and some nasty synth sounds. It's mundane.
At the beginning of 1976 Cindy quit in protest at the management of Mary's husband Pedro Ferrer. She had completed work on their new "High Energy" album but her replacement Susaye Greene ( another former Wonderlove singer ) was dubbed onto two tracks including the single "I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do The Walking". The song was written by Brian and Eddie Holland and the single benefited from hype about their return to Motown allowing it to reach the US Top 40 although in truth it's another average disco workout. Susaye provided a new lead on the title track with some piercingly high notes. Nevertheless it lacked the hooks to succeed as a single.
A new album with Susaye quickly followed , imaginatively titled "Mary, Scherrie and Susaye" with "You're My Driving Wheel" the lead single which gave them their final US hit ( number 85 ) . "Let Yourself Go" and "Love , I Never Knew You Could Feel So Good " ( the latter the first single released in Britain since 1975 to coincide with a tour ) followed. They're all good quality disco songs but they were working in a crowded market with an old name and a label that regarded them as second string. With Mary having recently given birth to her second child she decided to call it a day after a gig in London in June 1977. Gordy's first instinct was to bring in a replacement but Ross persuaded him that without an original member on board the name should be put to bed to protect the legacy. Scherrie and Susaye were allowed to record an LP of self-written material "Partners" as a duo in 1979 before being shown the door.
By this time Florence was dead. Her story has been romanticised particularly by the musical Dreamgirls in 1981. In reality she became difficult to accommodate. She suffered from depression, possibly as a result of a rape in 1960 and complained about both the material and the decision to push Diana out front. When she turned to alcohol she became unreliable missing both shows ( where she was sometimes replaced by an Andante ) and recording sessions. From April 1967 Gordy plotted to replace her with Cindy, Florence making it easy by asking for some time off with her new boyfriend. She was effectively sacked in July 1967 but her severance deal with Motown wasn't sorted until the following February.
She married boyfriend Thomas Chapman that same month and signed for ABC records. Her first single "It Doesn't Matter How I Say It" came out in May 1968; it's a likeable piece of pop soul fluff but her voice doesn't really cut through. Florence also realised what a disadvantage the clause preventing her mentioning her previous career in her promotion was going to be. The next single "Love Ain't Love" written by Van McCoy came out under the name "Florence "Flo " Ballard" but that didn't work either although the song's a bit of a dog anyway, just Motown-by-numbers. Florence took time out to have twin daughters in the autumn and performed at an inaugural ball for Nixon in February 1969. She recorded a full album but it was shelved and not released until 2002. ABC dropped her in 1970.
Worse was to come. Her attorney Leon Braun was found to have pocketed a large chunk of the Motown severance money. In 1971 she sued Motown for additional royalties but was beaten off. She gave birth to another daughter that year but financial problems caused the marriage to falter and she and Thomas were separated and the family moved into her sister's house. She started applying for welfare. In 1974 Mary tried to coax her back into The Supremes with an invitation to join them at a gig in California. Florence turned up but just uselessly banged a tambourine and sad she didn't want to sing anymore. Later that year she went into rehab for her alcoholism.
At the beginning of 1975 Florence received some of her money back from Braun's insurers , bought a new house, reconciled with her husband and tried to get her career off the ground again. She performed with a band in Detroit in June and started doing interviews. In February 1976 she was admitted to hospital with coronary thrombosis and died within 24 hours. Diana came to her funeral and made arrangements for her childrens' education though sadly they have ended up living on welfare themselves.
We cover Diana elsewhere of course so let's move on to Mary. After a protracted legal dispute with Motown she finally got a deal as a solo artist in 1979. During that period she performed with another girl called Karen Rageland who's sometimes claimed she was a Supreme as a result. The first single "Red Hot" came out in September 1979 and is a pretty good approximation of Chic ( a year before Miss Ross engaged their services ) though it only just scraped into the R & B charts .A second single from her self-titled debut album "Pick Up The Pieces" was only released in the UK. It's a mellow ballad which really drags. Mary started work on a second LP with producer Gus Dudgeon but after four tracks had been recorded she was informed that she was dropped from the label. The timing suggests that her solo contract had only ever been a sop to keep Miss Ross happy and once her intention to quit the label was known Mary was history.
With no immediate offers elsewhere Mary went off to tour Europe and then got involved in musical theatre so she was well placed to observe the success of Dreamgirls. In 1986 she published her account of The Supremes up to Diana's departure , "Dreamgirl : My Life As A Supreme" and found herself a bestselling author. The book is still one of the most popular pop autobiographies of all time . From being half-forgotten Mary became a chat show regular and sought to relaunch her music career with appearances in Las Vegas and a hook-up with British producer Ian Levine.
Levine, one of the main movers and shakers in the Northern Soul scene had moved on to the Hi-NRG disco scene and enjoyed success as a producer with Evelyn Thomas and Miquel Brown but his real ambition was to produce records for some of his Motown idols and Mary was one of the first he approached. "Don't Get Mad Get Even" released on his Nightmare label in 1987 was his own song and it's a reasonable stab at a gay disco anthem although Mary's vocal is a bit rusty; her time away from the mike definitely shows. Mary got a plug for the book on the sleeve too.
Despite the record's failure to chart Levine expanded his mission to America and Nightmare became Motorcity Records with an office in Detroit. Virtually anyone who'd ever recorded on Motown was invited along; nearly all the ex-Supremes did something there. Mary recorded another single "Ooh Child" in 1990 on which her vocal sounds horribly amateur-ish. You often hear talking heads blithely asserting that Mar had the best voice in The Supremes - not on this evidence she didn't ! After that her relations with Levine soured. Her manager strong-armed him into paying up front for Mary to record an album but no product was delivered, Mary preferring to write a second book about the post-Ross era instead of going into the studio. She got away with it because Levine had more pressing problems. Motorcity is a classic example of how a fan's enthusiasm is no substitute for a sound business head. Levine made two crucial errors. One was expecting substantial interest in America which never materialised; he was just wasting his time with second rate has beens as far as they were concerned. The other was taking on too artists so that the music had to be quickly produced on a Fairlight giving all the records a Stock, Aitken and Waterman feel, anathema to serious soul fans. The label did score a decent sized UK hit with Frances Nero's Footsteps Following Me in 1991 ( which Annie Nightingale raved about for some reason ) but it was nowhere near enough to save the label which Left Levine virtually bankrupt.
Mary signed for CEO Records in 1991 to record the album "Walk The Line" but the label went into liquidation the day after its release. Three years later her son was killed in a driving accident; Mary was only moderately injured. She spent most of the nineties fighting in court to keep control of the Supremes name against former bandmates who were touring under the banner, with mixed results but still managed to put the odd single out. Her venture into hip hop "U" in 1995 is embarrassingly bad; "Turn Around" from the following is merely a dull plodder.
In 2000 a reunion of The Supremes tour featuring Diana, Mary and Cindy was planned but came to grief over money haggles; there are different versions over the details. Diana then went out with Linda and Scherrie instead. The "Return To Love" tour got a mixed reception. Some gigs sold out but it was generally felt the tickets were over-priced and the tour was cancelled halfway through the schedule. Mary put out the anonymous electrodisco of "It's Time To Move On" instead, her last recording for over a decade.
Mary spent the noughties doing charity ventures , motivational speaking, concerts, guest spots on other arttists' records , continuing her "Truth in Music" crusade and generally being an ex-Supreme. Her biggest success was curating a travelling exhibition of The Supremes' stage costumes. In 2011 she released the nauseating "Life's Been Good To Me" where she croaks her way through an exercise in self-congratulation including a back-slapping MC introduction at the start . It trailed an album "Clarity" which has yet to see the light of day.
The story of Cindy, probably the most likable Supreme, is relatively quickly told. After leaving the group she was virtually penniless and worked for a time as a nurse under her married name before going to work as an assistant for Suzanne de Passe at Motown. In 1986 she was approached by Sherrie to join the Former Ladies of the Supremes project but quit before it really got off the ground. She has one solo single to her name "Dancing Room " which sounds like Living In A Box are the backing band with all the Fairlight brass going off and is standard mid-80s R & B fare. After that Cindy retreated into her church and eventually became a minister, occasionally giving interviews on Christian TV shows . By some versions Cindy accepted the invitation to join the "Return To Love" tour but for whatever reason it went ahead without her.
Jean also got religion but in her case it was the Jehovah's Witnesses. She eventually resurfaced on A &M where she recorded an album "I Had To Fall In Love" in 1978 featuring Lynda on backing vocals and eighties singer Jeffrey Osborne on percussion. She then refused to promote it properly for religious reasons ending her solo recording career. She supported herself by touring, often using Lynda as a backing singer. Cindy invited her into the Former Ladies of the Supremes in 1986 and when Cindy left Jean drafted Linda in to replace her. This venture actually had Mary's support. Their first single in 1987 was "We're Back" , an awful slice of sub-Jam and Lewis production and no tune with lyrics unwisely advertising their shopworn pedigree. Two years later they joined the Motorcity project and did several tours of the UK. Their first single for Levine "Crazy About The Guy" is a neat enough update of the classic Supremes sound within the parameters of the production problem noted above. The next one was a re-recording of "Stoned Love". The third single "I Want To Be Loved" actually came out as The Supremes in the UK after a successful registration with the UK Patent Office; it's routine sub-SAW pop R & B. Their final single for Motorcity "Hit and Miss" uses Linda as lead vocalist and goes for more of a Black Box Eurodisco feel but the song's undistinguished. The girls recorded a full LP "Bouncing Back" but the label folded before it could be released. When the label folded Jean opted to quit the line-up and has since worked out of the spotlight with jazz musicians, interspersed with the odd concert of Supremes material.
Linda initially returned to singing with Stevie Wonder and appears on Songs In the Key of Life. In 1976 she formed the Wilton Place Street Band with husband Trevor and her sister Sundray and released "Disco Lucy" a re-working of the theme to I Love Lucy in the style of The Hustle which is virtually an instrumental. That same year she duetted with Nilsson on his medley single "Just One Look / Baby I'm Yours" . In the eighties she preceded Mary into the Hi-NRG scene and released a string of singles on UK labels under the name Norma Lewis. They were popular in gay discos here and in Europe but none crossed over into the pop charts. "The Fight" from 1984 is the best of them and I suspect PSB's Chris Lowe was familiar with it as the rhythm track is rather similar to Always On My Mind. When F.L.O.S. joined Motorcity, Levine recorded a number of tracks with Linda alone including a single "Living With A Married Man" which is a good vehicle for her voice but the song is a bit generic. Linda stayed with F.L.O.S. when Jean departed , did the tour with Diana Ross and still performs alongside Scherrie Payne to this day.
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