The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (14 page)

The heart of Motown, however, was a dank, unfinished cavern that could be entered only through the rear of the house and down a flight of stairs. Used as a darkroom by the previous owner, it had a dirt floor and cracked cinder-block walls. The room may have struck most people as a good place for a septic tank, but Gordy from the start wondered what the acoustics would be like when he could get some session musicians in there.

It was that dingy basin—soon to be Motown Studio A—that Gordy built before anything else was renovated. Supervising its construction, he carried in the first piece of equipment himself—a rudimentary two-track recorder he bought from the deejay Bristol Bryant.

Gordy would replace it with state-of-the-art equipment manned by brilliant music technology geeks, but Studio A—by intent—would forever remain a pit, never becoming modernized and retaining its ambiance as a grimy, sweaty, incorruptible geyser of live music.

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Barrett Strong, a Gordy pal who’d recorded for Anna Records. Berry had been noodling with a lyric but was stuck until he ran what he had past a young female songwriter, Janie Bradford, who met him when she was 14 and her older sister was dating Jackie Wilson; now 17, and having written a few songs with him, she had been hired on as Gordy’s Motown receptionist.

He began singing, “
Your love give me such a thrill
—”

“But your love don’t pay my bills
,” she rejoined.

Bradford contributed a few more similarly ticklish lyrical punchlines, and the song was done. Everyone who heard it agreed: Gordy had to get down to his new studio and lay it on vinyl, which he did with a rumbling bass, drum, and piano arrangement swelling a throaty, near-delirious vocal by Strong. Unsure of its potential, though, after its release on Tamla he chose to lease it to Anna Records, a bit of largesse for his sister having gone to bat for him. Both reaped the whirlwind when the record was issued in late August and sprinted onto the charts for a twenty-one-week residence, cresting at No. 23 pop and 2 R&B by the dawn of the new year, and the new decade.

The symbolism of the record’s timing—the sound of Motown Inc.

blaring from radio speakers just as pop music sought its next new thing—was matched only by the symbolism of its title, as the absolute perfect creed for the company:

“Money (That’s What I Want).”

For the president of Motown Inc., that wasn’t a wish anymore; it was a reflex, and an indisputable reality. And if, as Flo Ballard suspected, it came at the expense of his artists, such things as the fine print of contracts and clauses about artists’ royalties paled next to whatever titanic forces were at work to forge together Diane Ernestine Earle Ross and Berry Gordy III.

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Listening to Diane endlessly talk up Motown and Smokey Robinson caused even Flo to warm to the idea of auditioning for Berry Gordy, though she thought it best not to mention Robert Bateman lest the other girls not appreciate how she’d blown him off. Smokey was a better conduit, anyway, because of his pull, than some shad-owy Motown underling. She dug Smokey, too, for sure, just as did every girl who ever saw or heard him. It never seemed to matter that he was now a married man, possibly because Claudette was so demur and nonterritorial, and for years she herself seemed not to know that she was too forgiving and trusting for her own good, especially when it came to Diane Ross.

In July 1960, though, the 16-year-old Ross wasn’t quite old enough to seduce Smokey Robinson; but she was wily enough to use him toward the end of getting to Motown. Once again, she was aided by the serendipity that characterized her youth. In an amazing but true coincidence, the woman who owned and was renting to the Ross family their apartment at Brewster-Douglass, a Mrs. Wiggins, also owned a convenience store in the neighborhood, Two Sisters Unique—and recently had hired Smokey to work the counter, which helped him to make ends meet while waiting for a hit record.

That was all Diane needed to know. Sweeping in one day to greet the semi-famous Motown star, who looked anything but in his white apron—an image right out of “Got a Job”—she acted as if she’d run into a long-lost relative. “Smokey!” she burbled, “I’ve been hearing your 63

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records. I’m so proud of you.” Then, in the next breath: “I have a group, too. Will you introduce us to Berry Gordy?” Hit with this barrage, and barely remembering her from a year ago, he vacantly said, “Oh, you have a group?” Then when she clattered about the Primettes and about how she’d love for him to hear them, he tried to dismiss her nicely, telling her that he and the Miracles were going out on the road in a few days.

“Then we’ll come over tomorrow night,” she chirped, without a notion where she was inviting herself.

Having learned that Diane Ross was not a girl who could be dismissed easily, he could only give in, instructing her and her mates to come to Claudette’s family house on Warren Court, where the Miracles did their rehearsing in the basement. The following evening they arrived with Marvin Tarplin in tow. Wanting to give Smokey the full aural and visual treatment, the girls wore matching white skirts and blouses, prompting Claudette, who was a few years older than the three core Primettes, to think of them as “quite the refined young ladies.” Then they ran through three of their songs.

“I was impressed,” she says. “Those girls could sing and they had a lot of energy. I could see Smokey was surprised. I think he probably thought before they started, How am I going to let them down? But then he felt that energy and knew they had possibilities.” It was possible, too, to get a read on each of them. “It was unusual for a group to have distinct personalities and voices like they did. It was like they represented a different side of young womanhood, and amplified that by having three different lead vocalists on the songs.

“At that point, I didn’t feel there was any rivalry about it. They were equals, and wanted to appear that way. But at the same time, you could see Diane was . . . well, she had the most energy, was the most aggressive. Her attitude was there, as a go-getter. She had that determined quality. But it was still within the framework of the group.

“Diane was too young and immature to believe she could do something on her own. She needed the other girls for security and confidence. But that instinct, that ultimate goal, I imagine it was there, in the back of her head.”

It was Flo whom Claudette thought was the most mature, both

“charming and funny,” and seemingly by default the leader. Wilson was, she says, “as she always was, and is. Very attractive. And she exuded class. So did the older girl [McGlown]. It’s just that they all seemed to defer to Flo, and she spoke for them all. That girl had a great personal-0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 65

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ity. Diane knew what she wanted to accomplish, but I think she knew it couldn’t happen without Flo to lead the way.” Smokey’s review of that performance, in his 1989 autobiography
Inside My Life
, was less than a rave, and was altered by memory. Confusing Betty McGlown with another girl who soon came into the Pri -

mettes, he wrote that they were “four foxes, sexy and stylishly dressed,” but, “[f ]act is, they looked better than they sang. They weren’t bad, just not polished,” and he admitted he was more taken with the cat on guitar, who was “a monster, the smoothest I’d ever heard” playing his

“easy-wristed riffs.”

Smokey, though his image was that of a sweetheart, had no reservations about coldly leveraging Tarplin away from the Primettes. “I think we can help each other,” he told them, sweetly, explaining that the Miracles needed a guy like that to rehearse and tour with. If it was okay with them, he said, he’d like to “use him for a while.” Then, dropping the hammer, he promised that “[w]hen we get off the tour, I’ll set up something for you with Berry. What do you say?” What
could
they say? It was either a guitar player or Berry Gordy. So, a week later, Smokey and the Miracles were on a show with Jackie Wilson and Little Willie John, their singing keyed by Tarplin’s easy wrist, performing far more harmoniously and effortlessly than they had at their disastrous Apollo gig. In Tarplin they’d found their missing link, one who would remain soldered to Smokey Robinson for the next four decades; in contrast, Tarplin would never again accompany the Primettes.

It was a large price to pay for a vague promise to “set up something” with Berry Gordy. But Smokey kept his word. In the late summer, Richard Morris, a Motown producer, called Jesse Greer and said he should have the girls come to 2648 West Grand Boulevard a few days later for an audition. Giddy about the invitation, the four of them met in front of the house with the “Hitsville U.S.A.” sign. Ross and Wilson, a little jelly-legged, nervously hung back as Ballard and McGlown confidently strode across the weedy lawn, up the landing stairs, and through the door.

Once inside, they were met at the front desk by the co-author of

“Money.”

JANIE BRADFORD: Now, my mind may be playing tricks on me after all this time, but I remember it differently than the story about Diana being friends with Smokey and all that.

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Jackson 5, which was a bunch of bull. See, what I think happened is that Eddie or Paul got them an audition. And then Smokey became involved with them later.

I also think I knew them before they came in. I never saw them performing, but I knew Milton Jenkins. Or rather, I knew of him. Because I got to know Paul and Eddie and Kel, and that whole crowd hung together. With the Primettes, though, Milton was very protective of them, and he was a guy you just naturally kept a distance from, you know, because you’d hear stories. So it had been a while since I’d even thought about them. Usually I had an idea which groups were coming in, there was word of mouth around Motown. Like, I knew Otis and Melvin had joined up with Eddie and Paul and formed the Elgins, and they were going to be coming in. But the Primettes, they were the furthest thing from my mind.

Mary Wilson recalled, conversely, that the Primettes were surprised to see Bradford, having lost track of her and unaware that she’d cowritten a big hit song. They understood that another familiar face on the Motown lot boded well for them as part of the extended Detroit music family. However, if Bradford is incorrect about how they got there, she’s right in saying the Primettes were still out of their league, as

“just one of a million teenage groups that came on and thought they owned the world.”

She laughs. “We were all just kids. We all thought we owned the world. But it really wasn’t a big deal to be in a group. They came through that office, like lemmings, every day. Usually I had to be the one to tell them don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Confirming their appointment, she had them take a place in the waiting area; but this irritated Flo, who pontificated that in light of Motown’s reputation on the street, “Mr. Berry Gordy is lucky we’re even here.” Mary and Diane, who were thrilled be there, ignored her.

When a dashing-looking black man walked through the room and Bradford told them he was Barrett Strong, they squealed like the little girls they still were.

After a fifteen-minute wait, someone came and ushered the four girls into the studio, which with renovation was connected by a four-step stairway to the main floor.

Overlooking the studio was a glass-paneled control booth that had been converted from an old kitchen. The makeshift nature of the operation was evident from the dungeon-like atmospherics of the studio.

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Tangled cables hung like cobwebs from the ceiling, and the walls had what looked like rodent holes through which peeked some sort of red matter, actually remnants of thick theater curtains that Gordy had used as soundproofing material.

The studio floor was unfinished; unsecured wooden planks wob-bled when walked upon, and when one came up, the solution was to push it back into place with the stomp of a foot. The floor was also unpartitioned—unlike most studios, even ancient ones, which normally had drywalls or even panes of standing glass in order to separate musicians and isolate their instruments so as not to bleed into each others’ microphones. In the entire room was only one very weathered amplifier the size of a small refrigerator, tucked into a nook abutting the stairs; during sessions, all the guitars and the bass would be plugged into the amp at the same time, inviting a blown fuse or even a fire, both of which had already happened. On the main floor adjoining the booth a bathroom was sometimes miked up and a track piped in through a speaker for use as an echo chamber, with someone at the door screaming “Don’t flush!” while the music or vocals were playing.

It was every bit the “pit” that the session musicians called it, and must have been what Gordy was thinking of when he wrote in his memoirs of the early Motown formula of “rats, roaches, guts and love.” For the Primettes, however, or at least most of them, it might as well have been Xanadu. Inside were Robert Bateman, who either didn’t recall his brush with Flo or assumed they were there because of it, and Richard Morris. Moments later, bouncing in came the budding black Napoleon himself, wearing not rags but a dark suit. “That’s Berry Gordy,” Ross informed the girls.

He smiled pleasantly, and despite Wilson’s recollection of him as

“[not] exactly handsome” yet still a dominating figure, he didn’t stay long. Appearing only minimally interested in the proceedings, and ducking in and out of the room, he must have been disconcerting to the girls as they ran through three of their standard songs—“Nighttime Is the Right Time,” “There’s Something on My Mind,” and “There Goes My Baby.” Knowing a valuable element was missing without Marvin Tarplin’s guitar lines, they traded nuance for volume, singing loudly and with gospel flourishes. Ballard, Wilson, and Ross each did the lead in turn, and they all strained a bit, but the energy and inter-woven harmonies jelled, and Gordy was moved to keep on returning, intrigued mainly by the scrawny girl with the big eyes. After she’d concluded “There Goes My Baby,” he intoned from the booth through the 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 68