The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard Read Online Free PDF Page A

Primettes were born.
    In the musical hothouse that was Detroit, when Flo and Mary returned to the Brewster Projects, they were greeted by the sounds of numerous other groups singing on street corners. At least in the minds of the youngsters who hoped to be its future participants, Detroit’s music world was booming.
    Maybe it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Pat Cosby insisted that in the Detroit of that era “even the smallest clubs featured topflight entertainment.”
    Flo and Mary soon recruited another member for the group, Betty McGlown (who later married and became Betty Travis), after auditioning several other young women who didn’t make the grade. McGlown didn’t live in the same neighborhood as Flo and Mary but had heard through the grapevine that they were looking for singers. A few days later, Paul Williams heard the young Diane Ross singing on some porch steps with some friends, told her about the group in formation, and brought her over to meet Flo, Mary, and Betty.
    Although Diane lived in the same neighborhood as Flo and Mary, she went to different schools. An interest in fashion design would lead her to Detroit’s Cass Technical High School. Her experience with music until that time had not been as successful as had the other girls’. Diane took a singing class at her school, but she dropped out when it became evident she would get a D. While she never had another singing class, she was by all accounts driven to succeed at whatever she did, and as her life came into focus, she decided she would succeed at singing.
    Thus Florence Ballard founded the Primettes, later renamed the Supremes.
    Flo would call the creation of the world’s most successful female singing group the major achievement of her life, and in the beginning, she was indeed its undisputed leader. She was older than Mary and Diane and sang with a full, warm, gospel-tinged voice that was stronger than theirs. “It was Flo’s voice that put us over,” Mary said.
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    “Every evening after school, we’d be rehearsing,” Flo said. “Not making any money—just rehearsing.” Soon, Williams taught the quartet “The Twist,”
    on which Flo took the lead, and “There Goes My Baby,” which Diane led.
    He also taught them the first of the onstage routines the Supremes would make legendary over the years.
    But before the group began performing in public, Flo’s parents had second thoughts. They wanted her to be successful in life, and to them that meant being successful in school. Singing, rehearsing, and performing with her friends would hardly help her get good grades. Diane and Mary visited Flo’s house many times to convince her parents that they’d make sure she studied and did her homework if the Ballards would allow her to sing with them.
    Eventually, they were successful. Ironically, Diane later criticized Flo’s parents for selfishly wanting Flo to be a singer more than Flo herself wanted it.
    The group began to perform at Detroit clubs and cabarets, church recreation rooms, and union halls, singing such standards as “There Goes My Baby”
    and “Night Time Is the Right Time.” Although Flo’s strong, deep voice was the dominant one, the lead passed democratically from one girl to the other, depending on who the group decided would be the best in that role for each song. At most of the small venues they played, the house supplied the food—
    sandwiches, hot sausages, fried chicken—and the patrons brought their own liquor. The Primettes were too young to sing legally in a club that had a liquor license. Betty McGlown was the old lady of the group, at seventeen; Flo was fifteen; and Diane and Mary were fourteen.
    The teens dressed their age. Diane and her mother made balloon dresses for the group—big-skirted orange dresses that would puff out over the body and then be reeled back in by elastic around the legs. Their alternate outfits were stretched-out red or white sweaters bearing the letter