That was the point where I was through with Diana Ross forever! It showed the general public who she really was.
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What's this thread about again? hmmmm
It is another failed attempt to rewrite history.
We all get it...some of you hate Diana Ross, Berry Gordy and Suzanne DePasse. Yet you continue to talk about them ad nauseam.
If not for Diana Ross this forum would be relegated to updates on Mary Wilson performing at the function room at the Olive Garden.
Diana Ross is an international icon and there is nothing that 5 people with no life, will do to change that.
In 20 years or less most of us will no longer be here, but please waste the time you have left wrapped in negativity.
Harsh! Scandalous! And ... absolutely correct. If we had been lucky enough to have Florence still among us, only one thing is absolutely true: Mary Wilson would have had no market for her book and most likely no post-Supremes career whatsoever. A maybe? A Supremes reunion at some point in time.
I love all The Supremes, but being on this forum makes it difficult to care about Mary Wilson in any kind of way. Diana does not need now or then to reunite with any of the Supremes...she already has backup singers in her band!
OK...I'll go back on track with the topic.
I think if Florence lived she would have [[provided she sobered up and had proper guidance and management) gradually etched out an entertainment career similar to Mary's..incorporating the Supremes legacy [[that she was also entitled to) into a livelihood that included acting, radio/ talk show hosting and writing. All things considered, I think TIME would have provided Florence with more insight than her contemporaries, struggling and being away from the business would have given her experiences that neither Mary or Diana had, since they remained in the business uninterrupted earning off performing....Cindy and Jean also have had that experience.
It's also very likely that a surviving Florence may have Post Traumatic Embitterment Stress Syndrome...although some of us take responsibility for our decisions and actions, we have a frequent amount of distaste, distrust and dislike for the people, places and things that we believe were contributing factors.
FYI..I admire DR very much, I am a fan of most of her post DRATS output..and I am a big MW /70's Supremes fan. Jean Terrell, Scherrie Payne....since Florence was already gone '68 when I became a fan, I am very partial and loving towards Cindy Birdsong. The group prior to her joining and during both her absences falls a bit out of favor for me.
^^ This.
Like most members of this forum, I have read all the Motown books. My view of Flo is that she primarily saw the Supremes as a ticket out of poverty. I don’t think she ever harboured burning ambitions to be the next Judy Garland/Lena Horne/Dinah Washington etc - either artistically or professionally. Unlike Diana, who after the Supremes hit, realised hard work was the key to greater and sustained success, Flo never made this connection and was happy to rest on the laurels of the Supremes success. Flo sabotaged her career in 1967 by leaving Motown signing that ridiculous release contract. Berry never wanted her out of Motown - leaving was her choice, she did it because she was angry and bitter. Justifiably, maybe, but a golden rule is never let emotion get in the way of business, and she broke this rule. Worse, she signed that release without getting proper legal advice. Then she signed with ABC and had her husband manage her. If she’d been a more dedicated artist, with a clear vision of what she wanted to achieve artistically, that wouldn’t have happed. She was, in many ways, trapped by her upbringing, which had fewer advantages and less structure compared to Diana’s and Mary’s. When the Supremes started earning good money, she squandered hers on her large family, with no thought for the future, unlike Diana and Mary who did at least plan for the future.
I sound like I am blaming her, and I suppose I am. She didn’t make the most of the opportunities Motown and the Supremes presented to her. She must have realised during 1966 that Diana had something she and Mary didn’t. She never stopped to think why, or what that might have been. Aside from their personal relationship, why was Berry singling Diana out? It was because Diana worked hard - very hard - to improve her craft and maintain success, and to take the Supremes to the next level. But Flo never saw this, she only saw Diana being pushed out in front and her own role being diminished, and instead just lashed out, getting depressed and starting to drink, and we all know where that ended. A smarter person would have asked why, and how do I get some of that, too.
When I think about Flo, I think about squandered opportunities. But: in the end, Flo just didn’t have the ambition and dedication that Diana did. Note: ambition and dedication do not equate to talent. One can be talented but unambitious. Similarly, one can be ambitious, but lack talent.
I will add my two cents trying to avoid rehashing things that will never change.
I will say that they were all ambitious but Diana was willing to be reshaped into what ever she needed to be in order to achieve attention and fame and that's cool. That kind of thing works for some people but not most. Florence just wanted to sing [[like most of young adults at Motown).
The business end of performing can be quite ugly and there are some willing to be reshaped where as many others are not.
They all used this as a means of leaving the projects and helping their families but at that time none of them realized at what cost
In theory, it would've been a great idea to have Jean, Mary & Cindy perform as The Supremes [[with Diana making her "star turn" doing "ANMHE") on Motown 25. Unfortunately, Suzanne DePasse [[possibly coerced by NBC) wanted a Diana, Mary & Cindy "reunion" to climax the show.
I feel that if Florence Ballard was still alive, she'd be doing the same thing that Mary Wilson is doing [[some performing here & there and recognition as a founding member of The Supremes). I even see her performing "Silent Night" & "Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem" during the holidays.
Diana is a rarity in that she is able to maintain superstar status for what seems like eternity....despite recording choice setbacks, spotty sales and some unappealing public moments....she's had the momentum and remained a household name. She's never been out of the public eye long enough to generate "Gee, whatever happened to..."
The chances of lightning striking twice, and having a full fledged career blast following a dormant period that either rivals or surpasses the first wave of fame is indeed a rarity. Very few are that fortunate...among them Cher, Tina Turner, Heart, Patti Labelle....Seems most once big time, later labeled "historical" performers struggle to stay in the business and continue earning enough to maintain solely from performing.
Royalty payments don't seem to be doing much to pay anybody's bills...the industry and the way people listen to and buy music has changed a lot
I think Florence would have returned to gospel music, her first love and greatest talent.
I don't think Jean would've done it, honestly. But the optics would've been bad if Ross and Wilson [[and Birdsong for that matter) were all at a Motown tribute show and didn't sing together just the three of them. There should have been a medley, but even if they only sang just the one song together, I think the setup was perfect. Diana sing her solo mega Motown hit and then joined onstage with Mary and Cindy for "Someday". If Diana really pushed Mary, then the problem was all Diana and the push. Without it, the Supremes reunion could have been reasonably perfect.
But lets be for real: outside of the most diehard of Supremes fans, no one there that night or tuning in during the broadcast would've been excited about Jean Terrell. To the general public the Supremes were Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Flo Ballard and probably Cindy Birdsong. The reunion of Diana with the Supremes was one of the selling points for the show.
Diana eased into her flat period. RCA was a transition from relevant to irrelevant because of music choice. Had someone other than Diana been in charge of her career while at RCA there's no doubt in my mind that Diana's success would've extended well into the 90s. Poor musical output cannot be underestimated as it relates to singers remaining at or near the top. It's hard to rebound from album after album and single after single that the public shuns because the music sucks.
Also, both Tina and Patti had the opportunity to undergo a reinvention, probably due to the fact that their identities were tied to others for a very long time. Add to that both "lucked" up on hugely popular records that spiraled them back into success. I imagine the fact that Cher was also a successful movie actress allowed her a better chance at rebounding musically than most others. Another knock against Diana is that after The Wiz she wouldn't do another movie for 15 years and it was made for TV. I'm not even sure her Josephine Baker project would've done much more for her in the late 80s unless it was going to be on the big screen. She did a disservice to herself not continuing the movie career.
Diana should've picked a different company than RCA. She obviously couldn't go to Arista since it was packed with divas galore [[DIONNE, ARETHA, WHITNEY) but I think she could've had a better career at, say, Columbia but I guess because RCA offered the most money, she took it. Shows how much Motown artists were treated after they left Motown!
Cher benefited from having a successful movie career and not to mention she reinvented herself into a rock diva much like Tina Turner had done at the same time frame. Patti benefited from having a smart management company led by her husband at the time to get her bookings in film, Broadway and on TV specials and that led to her finally having a successful solo recording career from 1983 until around 1998.
Diana definitely could've been there with them but what was different with her besides from RCA not knowing what to do with its artists, especially African American artists like Diana who didn't fit solely into a pop or R&B format [[which is why Tina Turner suffered for years until Private Dancer) was that she was a very attentive mother and that led to her cutting a lot of time so she could be a mother. She risked her career to be a mother rather than do the opposite in her early 20s.
I see Florence having the same type of career Bettye LaVette has now. She can use her voice to sing the rock and blues classics and have a successful Grammy-nominated career. I mean her comeback performance in 75 had her fronting a rock group singing "I Am Woman". It could've easily happened!
Arista probably would've been the best fit, but Dionne and Aretha were already there and that's probably half the company budget in just those two artists. [[Whitney was years away.) I'd be surprised if they could afford to pay Diana what she was worth at that point. Phyllis Hyman has complained about being lost in the shuffle when she got there. Diana Ross in 1981 wasn't going to be lost in anybody's shuffle at any record label in the country. She would've gotten a top priority spot, which may have ruffled the feathers of the other resident divas. But no doubt, Diana at Arista would've been quite different to Diana at RCA. I think Clive Davis might have had a way with singers at that time that would've allowed him to oversee a Diana Ross project, but allow Diana room so as not to feel stifled or bullied. She definitely wasn't going to go into another situation where some man was ruling over her with an iron fist. But she needed someone's guidance. Yes, that's the word I'm looking for: Clive would've been in a position to guide, rather than boss. After all, Aretha could be equally as difficult in maintaining control, and Arista gave her new life.
But what's done is done. We'll always have "Pieces Of Ice".:p
And she received a standing ovation as a result. If we imagine Flo's career if it re-started in 1977, I think Flo would've probably tried her hand at disco first. Maybe she'd do some ballads a'la Angela Bofill. In the early 80s maybe she'd cut some stuff similar to Gladys and the Pips, like "Landlord" or Dee Dee Sharp's "Dee Dee" album. Whether or not she would've had any hits would've depended on song selection, as I figure it does with anyone else.
My dream project would've been if Flo, Diana and Mary regrouped after Motown 25 and cut a Pointer Sisters "Breaking Out" type of album. That would've blown the public's mind.
just to toy with some other ideas, what about Flo on the screen? since this is a fantasy post...
perhaps Flo could have been the wise-cracking sister to Willona on Good Times. or a role on the Jeffersons.
the rumors have always floated around that she could have done the black version of Hello Dolly.
By all accounts Flo was a natural comedienne, so having her do television would've probably been a natural step for anyone guiding her career in the mid to late 70s. Movies also. Maybe even some commercial jingles or tv theme song. Florence would've needed someone knowledgeable about the industry and with tons of connections. One can have all the talent in the world, but without a good inter-industry support system, there's little chance for success, unfortunately.
Flo would have been great starring in The Fats Waller Musical: "Ain't Misbehavin": in the Broadway Production and/or The National Tour
Production!
aside from the fictional comedy elements of Tony's books, there are some great, shade-y, catty comments and one liners
Don't you walk out on me, i'll cut you too short to shit
Tambourine thumping project whore
if you reach that hand out to me, you'll pull back a bloody stump
horse-throated tramp
these are all phrases that are wonderful to drop into random conversations with people lolol.
yeah at the time, it was sort of "well if it's in a book there must be some level of truth." I happened to find and buy the Temps book he did relatively quickly. My understanding is that quite a few people brought lawsuits [[or threatened to) and so it went off market relatively quickly.
then as the internet started up and fan chat rooms began, people started poking holes in it.
I remember Martha Reeves saying something like "He [[Tony Turner) had nightmares and woke up and wrote them down."
His first book was sort of a more wicked, campy version of DREAMGIRL. His Tempts book was a tad darker. But when it came to some of the things he was proposing for his third book, I think people said enough is enough and it was never published.
He seemed to keep a low profile until RTL, when he released another paperback version of his Supremes book, which was supposedly updated to include new info regarding the tour. The "update" amounted to basically a couple of pages.
oh i didn't know of a third book. maybe that was the one that was pulled, not the Temps one
yeah the first one was just more of a tabloid version of Dreamgirl. but in Temps, he's digging much deeper into drugs, trash talking. alludes to some pretty wild sexual rumors about the people, hinting at this or that. and he didn't limit it to motown people - the chapter about Aretha was pretty entertaining. showing up naked under a glamorous fur coat to Dennis Edward's hotel room! ;o lolol
and to cap it all off with, the best rumor is that Tony slithered off to Europe and is the gay lover of some spanish count lololol. I guess that makes her Countess Tonita Turner now ;)
That's a great Martha quote!
Glittered was basically regurgitated Dreamgirl stories that Tony was able to conjure up details for. Where Mary may have written something vague like "Flo, Diana and I were having lunch one afternoon when Flo farted and I fell out laughing. Diana ran off to tell Berry. It was as if Diana no longer had a sense of humor." Tall Tales would then write "Flo, Diana and Mary were having lunch one afternoon in Mary's suite. I came to the hotel as soon as school let out, and of course, even though I was just a kid, security let me go up to Mary's suite to hang out. When I got there Flo was glad to see me, as usual. Mary was polite, and Diana just gave me her bitchy look that said 'If I could put you in an oven and bake you, I would'. In return I gave her a look I'd seen Flo give and proceeded to ignore her. Flo, who was lactose intolerant and enjoying a dish smothered in cheese, suddenly broke wind. Mary and I fell out laughing, while Diana rolled her eyes and said 'Oh how common.' And when Flo joined in our laughter, Diana had enough. She left the suite and went into her own suite to call Berry. I followed behind her, but she didn't know it. She told Berry that Flo was cutting the cheese just to piss Diana off and she was tired of it. I ran back to Flo and told her what Diana said to Berry, and Flo told me 'That bitch is just mad that my farts sound better than she does.':p
I didn't know he did an update regarding RTL. What in the world could he possibly know about it that the rest of the world didn't? I can't imagine that any Supreme had anything to do with him at that point in time.
I think he may still have had some contact with Scherrie and maybe Cindy at that point. Scherrie did write an endorsement for the book when it was first published. But the info was rather skimpy along the lines of "Cindy was drinking Slim Fast by the gallon trying to get ready" and stuff like that.