The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (67 page)

With all those thoughts swimming in her head, the last thing she seemed to want was to sing.

0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 354

354

THE SUPREMES

In early July 1969, the
Detroit Free Press
, following up its own optimistic take on Ballard the year before, ran a story titled “FORMER

SUPREME SUFFERS LONG FALL FROM STARDOM.” It mo-rosely told of Ballard being “flat broke” and “deserted by her husband,” and claimed that an offer had come to Baun for Flo to record again and that the Chapmans turned it down. Whether any of it beyond her being broke was accurate—Tommy’s regular desertions of Flo, for instance, had become something of a joke to her; so soon would he come crawling back that she’d tell her family, “Just leave the door open for him”—or lie after lie planted by Baun to make her look bad, Flo’s pride was hurt. Scrounging up enough cash to hire a lawyer, she and Tommy filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper asking for $10 million in damages and an apology.

That was just another delusion. Not only would they get nowhere with the suit, but by the time they dropped it in October 1970—the same month that Flo would make her legal move against Motown—

she wouldn’t be able to argue that she wasn’t in an even worse way.

While Flo was trying to keep afloat in Detroit, the Supremes had found some California grass. Carrying out Gordy’s westward-ho plans—

which were accelerated when Gordy Manor, in spite of its many alarms, was burglarized and ransacked, with expensive pieces of furniture and Persian rugs ruined, leaving Gordy to rant, “I’ve had it with Detroit!” though he had already given up on it—Ross and Wilson had, like him, moved into homes in the Hollywood Hills. Gordy’s, naturally, took opulence to burlesque excess, with an impressive estate bought from comedian Tommy Smothers that came complete with a stable grounds and even a moat around the property. Mary’s was a spectacular spired, glass-paneled ranch with a kidney-shaped pool out back. Diana found a mansion just down the hill from Gordy’s, and while it was being refurbished she took a rented home nearby. Cindy, meanwhile, made do in an apartment in Hollywood, living there with her boyfriend and future husband, a dental salesman named Charles Hewlett, while awaiting the closing on a house in Benedict Canyon next door to Diahann Carroll.

Diana and Mary left their families to continue living in their homes on Buena Vista, and Gordy kept Gordy Manor as a place to hang his hat during what could now only be described as business trips back to Detroit—which was how the Supremes’ trips back to Motown could be 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 355

THE LAST MILE

355

described as well, for sessions in Studio A deemed to be worthy of a single release, although Wilson and Birdsong were left off of those trips so that Diana could lay down her vocals with the Andantes on the backing track.

However, Hitsville sessions began to wither after Gordy gave the go-ahead to erect the MoWest complex in a modern, two-story brick office complex with an atrium on the roof at 6464 Sunset Boulevard. A new Studio A was built to Gordy’s demanding acoustic specifications on the first floor by his West Coast engineer, Guy Costa, nephew of the famous producer and arranger Don Costa; a second studio, to be used mainly for overdubbing and mixing, was erected on the second floor.

Musicians who’d worked in the original Studio A would come into the new one and do a double-take, seeing bits and pieces they knew had been taken from the old shop.

One of the more recent session players, guitarist Dennis Coffey, whose fuzzy feedback licks were heard most notably on the Temptations’ psychedelic funk records, recalled: “I saw a drum baffle, a sound separator, and a familiar microphone or two sitting in a corner, and I wondered why Motown had moved all that stuff to L.A. It felt really strange seeing it here, two thousand miles from home in sunny California, where almost everything else was brand new and unfamiliar.” Plainly, Gordy was not going to leave the future of Motown to chance; he had seen enough proof of a blessed voodoo while making music in the Hitsville snakepit to leave behind the tools of the magic. It was the beginning of what would become a wholesale dismantling of 2648 West Grand Boulevard.

And yet most of what the Supremes recorded in L.A. were slapdash albums meant to cash in on the group’s still-strong brand name and move as much product as possible, with or without a major hit—a commodity that would become rarer after “I’m Livin’ in Shame.” This was not exactly how Gordy wanted it, but he was comforted by the fact that albums were far more market-friendly in 1969 than in 1964. It also didn’t hurt that the providential teaming of his two biggest acts kept spilling forth ready-made albums—two more of which would come out in the fall, including the soundtrack of the second Supremes-Temptations TV special.

Not incidental to the sudden reliance on albums was the dearth of solid single material, the inevitable result of The Clan’s dismantlement—

thus answering Eddie Holland’s question about whether they could create a continuum of hits. After “I’m Livin’ in Shame,” Gordy decided to 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 356

356

THE SUPREMES

shuffle them to other projects. With arguably the most important Clansman (other than himself ), Deke Richards, he formed a new co-terie, airily dubbed The Corporation, whose priority was to develop material for the exciting new pubescent group he’d recently signed to Motown—the Jackson 5.

They had been “discovered” not by Diana Ross but by the Motown group Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers—who had been signed to Motown after Mary Wilson and Flo Ballard saw them perform in ’65 when the Supremes were in Vancouver. Seeing the kiddie act at Chicago’s Regal Theater, Bobby Taylor (whose guitar player and main songwriting partner in the group was Tommy Chong, of future Cheech and Chong fame) raved about them to Suzanne DePasse, who, in turn, auditioned them. Gordy was so knocked out that he immediately put the Jackson brothers on a fast track.

Having proved his point by propping the Supremes up—way up—

without the help of HDH, Gordy had no reason to divert valuable assembly-line manpower to a model about to be redesigned without its most popular feature. In truth, through most of 1969 there was no real urgency about fitting the group with another chart-topper. Because word of Ross’s imminent departure had been leaked to death in the media, even absent an official announcement from Motown the girls’

schedule of appearances was construed by fans as a kind of farewell tour, a victory lap that could easily get by on “Love Child,” nostalgic medleys of their hits, and vacuous show tunes.

They were, to be sure, certified. With Ross and Wilson now a ripe 25, showbiz veterans, even cultural icons, they and Gordy could savor a status that he would have considered a calumny in 1961—middle of the road. And so entrenched that within a new rock idiom—oldies but goodies—their legacy was already intact, even if they never had another hit. Dissecting this baby boomer–fed phenomenon, the March 22, 1968, issue of
Time
, in an article titled “Tapping the Roots,” reported that “[r]adio stations, courting the lucrative advertising market of 18-to-34-year-olds who grew up on rock ’n’ roll, [are] carefully balanc[ing]

their play list of new releases with selected classics of the genre (examples: the Platters’ “The Great Pretender,” Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven,” the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love”). ‘For the young married adult,’ explains one radio executive, ‘the so-called middle-of-the-road music is no longer Tony Bennett but Elvis Presley, no longer the Andrews Sisters but the Supremes.’”

The girls did cut a mass of songs during the year, but nothing was deemed remotely close to a decent single; some of these tracks found 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 357

THE LAST MILE

357

their way onto two albums of new material that were released in ’69, the first being the May issue of
Let the Sunshine In—
appending late-model Motown pop-funk like Smokey Robinson’s “The Composer” and the Gordy-Cosby “No Matter What Sign You Are” to covers like the Gamble-Huff “Hey Western Union Man,” the Bacharach-David

“Let the Music Play,” and Sly Stone’s “Everyday People.” What didn’t make the cut was bagged, most permanently, never to see the light even in latter-day compilations and box-sets. To at least keep the Supremes’

presence on the charts, Gordy cherry-picked tracks from their albums.

The first new release of the year, on February 20, was “I’ll Try Something New,” a Smokey Robinson tune produced by Frank Wilson and Deke Richards for
Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations
, a perfectly charming ballad reminiscent of the Tempts’ “You’re My Everything,” with a tropical xylophone-conga intro and a diaphanous, building string arrangement.

Next was the March 27 release of “The Composer,” another Smokey song produced by Robinson as a sweet, dainty piece with funky guitars and pealing strings, though a better title for it might have been “You Put a Song in My Heart,” from one of the verses. Neither single, however, made much of a mark, with “Something New” going to No. 25

and “The Composer” to No. 27. Gordy then made it a less than triumphant trifecta by putting out on May 9 “No Matter What Sign You Are” from
Let the Sunshine In
. This hash of pop, rock, funk, and new-age pretension—with an electric sitar playing an opening blues lick—

had Diana and the Andantes yowling about love, the zodiac, and “good vibrations,” Diana with a harder, sort of Joplin edge. Perhaps this was the reason it didn’t fly, stalling at No. 31. (Neither did it keep deejays from flipping it to play the B-side, “The Young Folks,” moving that song—later to be covered by the Jackson 5—to No. 69.) Whereas in past years three straight bombs like that would have driven Gordy onto a ledge, after selling 12 million Supremes records and seeing eleven No. 1 hits he could have described his attitude in terms of the title of his quickly forgotten song—no matter. By now, his plans for Diana were a given, as he’d made no attempt to stifle the growing speculation about her going solo; nor did he have any real objection to the media’s tendency, of late, to make the other two Supremes magically vanish.

An example of this prestidigitation was a
TV Guide
puff piece titled, simply but saying it all, “DIANA.” It ran the week of the “TCB” special but said almost nothing about anyone else—in fact, its subtitle was a mortal diss of the Temptations: “Her soul music will be heard in a 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 358

358

THE SUPREMES

special this week.” Three pages were filled with details of Diana’s life and ruminations, in tidbits such as “I’d like to have my own television show. But it’s very hard for a Negro. I think we have to work twice as hard to get that. I mean, if there were three white girls who had as many hit records as we do, they would probably have their own show by now,” and, “I would also like to get involved with the business end of the recording industry, producing records and so forth.” Though it was the “so forth” that might have scared some people, Gordy had to be thrilled about the story’s contention that Diana “does not exist apart from Motown,” which it said “has a ‘1984’ hold on her waking hours.” Diana, meanwhile, was quoted as saying—with “a cheerful indifference,” according to writer Digby Diehl—“Why should I interfere with the way he runs my affairs? He’s certainly been doing everything right.”

The manipulations to build a Ross groundswell continued all through 1969. In the spring, Gordy cannily welded the nascent fortunes of the Jackson 5 to her stardom by trying to create a bogus narrative that she was not just the boys’ guardian angel but their
guardian
, especially to 10-year-old Michael Jackson, who carried the group with a youthful exuberance in his voice and on-stage dance moves that left audiences breathless. Gordy saw a future for the kid that would retrace Stevie Wonder’s footprints to fame, eventually outshining and discarding his four brothers. In this respect, he was the perfect “student” of Diana Ross. Indeed, Gordy had wanted to name the group “Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5,” until the exacting family patriarch, Joe Jackson, ruled that out, not wanting one son elevated above the rest.

That Diana had never heard of them before they came to Motown was a detail soon to be expunged by a massive and meticulous PR

campaign at the core of which was Diana Ross as much as the group itself. In the early spring, after Gordy introduced her to little Michael, she hosted a party for the Jackson 5 at the Daisy Club in Beverly Hills, attended by 300 invited guests, many from the media (and, as last-minute-afterthought invitees, Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong, who were sent telegrams by Ross asking them to come and “listen to this fabulous new Motown group.” Years later, Wilson was still af-fronted; reprinting the telegram in the photo section of
Dreamgirl
, she provided as a caption: “How’s this for impersonal?”) When asked 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 359

THE LAST MILE

359

by reporters about his relationship with Ross, Michael finessed his words just as Motown had prepared him to do; not exactly lying but not quite telling the truth, he said with a weariness that was comical given his tender years that he had “just about given up hope. I thought I was going to be an old man before being discovered, but along came Diana Ross to save my career.”

Only by a careful parsing of his words could one not infer that he was saying Ross had “discovered” him. As Gordy would recall, approvingly, that was when “people started saying Diana had discovered the group. That didn’t hurt, either.”

Diana herself was careful not to make the claim, not outright. But she was more than willing to play along with the charade. When the Supremes played the L.A. Forum on August 16, Gordy made sure to install the Jackson 5 as the warm-up act, so that their first major gig could be “introduced” by Diana. Throughout the summer, as well, he had arranged for Michael to live in Diana’s house to further the prevar-ication of Ross mentoring him (the truth was that she was hardly ever there, practically living with Gordy up the hill). The Jacksons’ debut single, “I Want You Back,” was ready to roll out in mid-October—