The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (68 page)

coincidentally, just as the Supremes had been booked to host
The Hollywood Palace
on October 18, with the proviso that the Jackson 5 also be on the show, their first national TV appearance.

Two months later, their debut album, produced by Bobby Taylor, would be released with the enough-already title
Diana Ross Presents the
Jackson 5
, in the liner notes for which Diana wrote with a loony irony,

“Honesty has always been a very special word for me,” before relating that the mayor of the boys’ hometown of Gary, Indiana, had “brought them to my attention.” Again, this detail may not have been factually untrue; but because it implied that Ross became aware of them before they were discovered by Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, it was anything but honest.

Neither did it hurt Gordy’s schema for Diana that she was now growing a little too comfortable in the role of the temperamental diva. Because each of the other Supremes, Florence included, had sometimes brought a Yorkshire terrier on the road with them, Diana literally one-upped them by starting to tote two dogs, both Malteses, beginning in early 1969. Irresponsibly, she would let them roam unleashed in hotels and 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 360

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theaters. Then, during the second night of a two-week engagement at New Jersey’s Latin Casino in June, the dogs ate some rat poison backstage. When the girls came offstage before what was to be their encore, Diana saw the dogs vomiting violently and, as Mary recalled, “let out a blood-curdling scream.” She then flew into a furor, alternately screech-ing to get the dogs help and castigating the theater staff for putting poison out and poor Joe Shaffner for not looking after the dogs—evidently, that being one of his assigned tasks—though she was to blame for letting them roam.

Eschewing the encore, she demanded an ambulance, which came and took the dogs to a hospital, although one had died in Diana’s arms and the other was comatose. She then made for her dressing room, saying she was going to the hospital, braying at everyone in her way.

Gordy, who was with the girls on the trip, could only watch limply and follow her like just another Maltese into her room. There, one of the club owners, Dave Dushoff, pleaded with her to go back out on stage, claiming that if she didn’t he’d have to refund the 400 people in the audience for their tickets and meal and bar tabs. “We had a very famous singer here recently,” he went on, “and his
mother
died and he still did the show. It’s only your dogs, come on.”

Eyes bulging like blown bubbles, she sputtered, “
Only
my dogs! I’m canceling this show—and we’re going to sue this club! And we’ll never be back here again!”

Once, seemingly ages ago, Gordy would likely have pulled rank and ordered her back out. Now, acting as a foot page, he timidly echoed her, telling Dushoff, “Miss Ross has to leave. She is very upset.” The next morning, with Diana still upset over the dogs’ deaths, he agreed to the unthinkably unprofessional move of canceling the rest of the engagement. “You guys can go wherever you want,” he said disinterestedly to Mary and Cindy, who as usual weren’t asked for an opinion. “I’m taking Diana back to L.A. with me.” In so doing, he forfeited the $55,000 fee they would have been paid—still a rather chintzy payout considering their status—and all but begged for a lawsuit by the club (which was promptly filed, and settled years later). Ross, indeed, would never play a return engagement at the Latin Casino, by mutual consent.

But while Gordy was worried about bad publicity, telling everyone in the Supremes’ retinue to keep the incident quiet, of course it leaked within hours. In Earl Wilson’s column that same day was an item that read, “Diana Ross of the Supremes was left broken hearted by the loss of two dogs, believed to be poisoned, and left the act at the Camden Latin 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 361

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Casino and flew home”—and a nice big picture of her with the caption

“Diana—She flew home.”

In the burgeoning mythology of Miss Diana Ross, every little bit helped.

If only as a launching pad for Diana, only one more big hit was required at this point, which was to be the Supremes’ swan song. While that search began in earnest in mid-year, as the farewell tour moved apace, plans were made for Ross’s exit, her last performances scheduled for their year-end, three-week run in Las Vegas at the Frontier Hotel.

Even as the girls were walking their last mile—in May at the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria, in June at the Center Barron Amphithe-ater in D.C., in July at the Copa and the Westbury Music Fair in New York and the Carousel Theater in Framingham, Massachusetts—the wheels of the transition were turning.

In the early spring, Gordy had yet to inform Mary and Cindy what he planned for them. He kept them hangin’ on as the Supremes toured, knowing, as Birdsong once said, that “it was going to be the end of something, but we didn’t know exactly of
what
”—whether just Ross’s involvement or the group itself. But then Gordy himself didn’t know what direction he would take them. He could opt not to replace Diana and have Wilson and Birdsong go solo and allow the Supremes to “go out on top” with their legacy complete and pristine. Or he could promote the long-aggrieved Wilson to lead singer, which was a logical progression. There was even some (brief ) debate about bringing Flo back, which would appease the fans and trade an outgoing Supreme for a reinstated one.

SHELLY BERGER: It was all risk management, to the extreme, because one wrong move and the Supremes would lose all credibility as an ongoing act. We had constant meetings, tearing our hair out in frustration. Mike Roshkind kept on saying,

“Let’s just think of it as a two-for-one split,” meaning, like a stock split, that we’d have two brand-new acts with the Supremes’

imprint. Mr. Gordy would say, “But what if they both fail?

Then what? We have a two-for-nothing.”

We just knew we had to have the ducks all in order, and fast. The first thing we needed to do was find a replacement for 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 362

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Diana we and the public would feel comfortable with, and see how it worked. Mary just wasn’t a good enough singer to carry the Supremes forward, but she was a valuable asset. A Supremes without her wouldn’t work. So we assured her we were continuing the group and she was quite happy about that, as was Cindy.

We had to find a voice and a presence ideally like Diana but not an imitation, something with an identifiable difference but strong, not just a backup singer moved out front. And it looked for all the world like that was going to be [Motown singer] Syreeta Wright. She was a gorgeous girl. Everybody loved her, she was family [Wright would marry Stevie Wonder in 1970], she had a Minnie Riperton–like octave range. We all thought, “Perfect!”

Then Mr. Gordy and I were in Miami Beach on business.

We were in the hotel bar and suddenly this huge man comes to our table and introduces himself and it’s Ernie Terrell, the boxer [and former husband of Tammi Terrell, who’d been pounded and humiliated by Muhammad Ali in a February ’67

heavyweight title bout, when after refusing to call him by his adopted name Ali taunted him throughout the fight, “What’s my name, Uncle Tom?”]. And Mr. Gordy, being a former boxer, invited him to sit with us, and Ernie started talking about this singing group he had, Ernie Terrell and the Knockouts, in which his sister Jean sang lead. They had a show that night in the lounge at the Fountainbleu Hotel, and he said to come and watch because Jean would blow us away. And we did, and we
were
blown away. Jean Terrell was fabulous.

Mr. Gordy and I looked at each other at once, thinking the same thing. “She’s gotta be the replacement,” I said first. He said, “I think you’re right.”

The Mississippi-born, Chicago-raised Terrell, then 24, was signed in late May to Motown with caution as an individual act so it could first be seen if she was right for the Supremes. At the time, Wright seemed already to have earned the job after cutting a track called “The Beginning of the End,” which was remixed with a Ross vocal lead and used as the B-side for “The Composer,” with Wright adding a backing vocal. Now it was Terrell’s turn, though Gordy did have some misgiv-ings about her looks—even with an engaging smile and warm demeanor, Jean seemed almost plain by comparison to Mary and Cindy.

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Not that there wasn’t an upside to that for those glamorous two: It was unlikely they’d feel overly eclipsed again by the lead singer.

Indeed, being spectacularly unspectacular was the clincher for Terrell, her cool exterior seeming to keep under control her tendency to emote gospel-style flourishes. She presented a certain “sound”—a bit darker and smokier than Diana’s—without potential complications, whereas Syreeta Wright’s model-looks and vocal pyrotechnics might well make the holdover Supremes feel inadequate. Not that they were ever asked for any input on the matter. In fact, Mary and Cindy met Terrell for the first time only when she came to the studio in June to begin cutting possible Supremes tracks produced by Gordy and Frank Wilson.

The “new” Supremes were recorded with a far greater sense of equality. The backing vocals were turned up in volume and at times sung along with Terrell’s lead for a natural cohesion—and Terrell was told to turn down the gospel into a relaxed, sensuous pop-soul, like Diana’s but without the hyper-dramatic excursions that characterized the HDH days. In the same way, putting together new on-stage routines for them, Cholly Atkins and other choreographers concocted more intricate movements integrating all three women in weaving patterns rather than having the head singer off to the side on her own,
a la
Ross.

Often, songs would begin on stage with Mary and Cindy in front of Jean, a conscious nod to their seniority and group unanimity that had formerly been shunted aside.

For Mary, who hadn’t seen Diana in the studio for many months—

even when she did do backing tracks, Ross laid down her lead vocals at separate sessions—and Cindy, who barely had seen her at all, it was a genuinely refreshing experience, and for a good reason: It harked back to precisely what the Supremes were at the very beginning. A team. If only they could have been free of the divisive Ross vibe. Instead, they led a bizarre double life—by day, alloying with Terrell on new songs and routines, by night doing the old songs and routines as retainers for Ross, who was just as eager to be rid of them. Even Birdsong, with the free ride she’d been getting, was chafing, recalling later that “[i]t was rough getting onstage with Diana and having to project happiness when everyone was so unhappy.”

The forced smiles masked the frigid distance they kept from her offstage. Wilson, in fact, said she and Birdsong “never once talked [to Ross]

about her leaving. . . . Diane and I never said two words to each other about it. Like everyone else in the world, I read about in the papers.” 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 364

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Not long ago, Mary had told Flo she was making herself crazy about Diana and to just go with the Flo. Now, she had come to see why Flo had been driven to drink and distraction. She realized that, as with Flo, the friction wasn’t caused by a need for her ego so much as by her psychological reaction to Diana using the lead role to social-climb. She felt no such reaction to Terrell, not needing to sing out front to feel useful—and was actually enjoying not singing lead more now than when she
did
sing it on the rare occasions when Ross was around, as in a new feature of the stage act that had her doing a solo rendition of

“Can’t Take My Eyes off You” (which she got to perform on
The Hollywood Palace
episode that introduced the Jackson 5).

Part of her resignation was that, with all of Gordy’s slurs about her voice, “[m]y confidence was shot.” Had the lead been offered, she said,

“I am sure I would have declined.” In this respect, at least, she was different from Flo. As Mary saw it, “I doubted I could have sung lead well enough.”

Flo was never able to admit that.

Not only were the Jackson 5 ready to roll out in the fall of ’69, so were Versions 2.0 of Diana Ross and of the Supremes. For Diana, the star treatment in the press was nearly over the top. Proof that there was no bigger media darling on the planet required only a glance at the cover of the September
Look
. It presented just a single image—Diana Ross striking a sexy psychedelic “Aquarius” pose against a black backdrop, shown from the waist up wearing a bikini top and rainbow-hued body paint, a skinny right arm raised at a 45-degree angle, mascara-lined eyes in a hard stare, lips caught between a smile and a pout. The image, diverting all attention from cover lines about the Mafia and an essay by historian William L. Shirer, was eye candy for the article titled “THE

SUPREME SUPREME,” the lead paragraph of which referred to “Diana Ross and her two Supremes.”

She was now the paragon of with-it womanhood, socially and self-aware—“[M]aybe I
am
some sort of symbol for the black girl . . .

because I respect myself [and] I just help other black girls respect themselves, too”—but beyond the limits of race and gender, with Hollywood and Broadway on the horizon. Gordy—“Motown’s tough multimillionaire head”—laid it on thick: Ross, he said, in addition to whatever else, “was the best athlete I’ve ever seen [and] she could be the 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 365

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first lady astronaut.” Diana herself, though, came off as an enviably down-to-earth womanchild, dispensing baubles like “I want to be a strong woman and a good woman for a man, whatever man I choose—

and if he chooses me.”

The author of the valentine, Jack Hamilton, called the Supremes a

“lacquered fantasy.” But for Mary and Cindy, there was no fantasy, or even a promise of one for the new edition of the group, only the work-manlike chore of keeping the “new” Supremes a viable act. Most of their debut album was already in the can, awaiting only the single still to be chosen as their breakout song. But that song, and the group’s first round of appearances, would not be considered until Gordy could find that last, enduring valedictory single for the “old” Supremes, as just this sort of hit was needed to boost Diana’s solo career.