Interesting Article on Diana Ross and Arthur T Boy Ross's Life, Passing and Funeral
DIANA ROSS didn't attend the funeral of her brother Arthur, murdered in a drugs-related robbery in a run-down district of Detroit.
Instead, she sent her 24-year-old daughter Tracey Joy to read a poignant message to the gathering of 150 people at the Greater Grace Temple at the family's home city ofDetroit, Michigan.
In it, the 52-year-old multi-millionairess, one of the last of the great pop superstars, wrote of her `utter devastation' and `my broken heart'. She is said to be consumed with guilt and grief.
But Diana's letter could not properly explain the depth of feeling between brother and sister, blacks from the poor side of town who came to lead such extraordinarily different lives.
While she had a glorious 35-year career and amassed a [pounds sterling]50 million fortune, had worldwide fame and 150 hit records, he was a songwriter who became bitter and angry when he never quite made it, turning instead to drink and drugs. At times he was insanely jealous of her success . . . and she had dreaded his premature death all her adult life.
Ten days ago his body was found bound and gagged alongside that of his wife Patricia in a rented apartment in downtown Detroit, apparent victims of a drug-related robbery which turned into murder.
Diana, the loving big sister who had tried in vain for years to help him conquer his self-destructive streak, was doubly horrified when she learned that Arthur's body had lain undiscovered for three weeks and was badly decomposed. She had loved him `very, very much', she said in the message read by Tracey.
`Why?' was her first heart-rending question. `It is so hard to understand. Why did you make the choices that you made in your life?
`It breaks my heart that someone like you, with so much life to live, should be taken like this. I cannot blame you for your imperfections. You were such a beautiful boy, a beautiful smile and beautiful eyes. Such spirit and yet so mischievous.'
And while Diana, on a Japanese tour, sat in her plush Tokyo hotel room and composed the line which blamed the tragedy on the `drug-infested world of today', it might also have crossed her mind that the reasons for his death at 47 could have been closer to home.
Friends say Diana is torturing herself with guilt over her brother's ugly life. A close relative said: `She is trying to cope for the rest of the family but she is finding it extremely difficult. She is haunted still by the death of Flo Ballard [[the Supremes star who died of drink and drugs). Arthur's death has put Diana in a state of shock. She was devoted to him.'
WHILE Diana went to great lengths to
provide him with an opening to stardom, their relationship was one based on contradictions since her every public achievement cut him to the quick.
He never really forgave her, for example, for leaving Detroit, since her departure became a catalyst for the legendary Tamla Motown records moving out of the city. For struggling black songwriters in Detroit, Tamla had been their way out of poverty.
Arthur clearly blamed Diana, now married to Norwegian shipping magnate Arnie Naess. And yet Diana had a similar start in life to Arthur.
They were both born into poverty, along with four other brothers and sister, on the infamous Brewster housing estate on the east side of the city.
And while Diana knows she was the one with the strength of character to fight her way out, she is also painfully aware that she had a massively lucky break at the age of 16 with Motown and The Supremes, the group which gave her hits such as Where Did Our Love Go? and Baby Love and led to a film career with her portrayal of Billie Holliday in Lady Sings The Blues.
The great irony was that, like her, Arthur had talent, though clearly not the same drive and energy.
He wrote Marvin Gaye's hit I Want You along with songs for Michael Jackson, The Miracles and even Madonna. But it was never enough. His own solo record with Motown flopped 20 years ago, selling only 12,000 copies because he released it under a nickname rather than the Ross surname, which would have linked him with Diana.
`He could never measure up,' says Ajene Smith, a close friend of Arthur's since his schooldays. `You don't realise how he made himself suffer. He was playing out the role of the black sheep of the family and he played it out to the end. Maybe that is the only way he knew to get away from his sister's shadow.'
The jealousy began privately in childhood in the scrublands of Detroit, where he used to hang out with his gang and was nicknamed T-Bone after his love of steak, a name which became T-Boy as a spiteful joke. He was also known from the age of 11 as brother of `one of The Supremes' and he grew to loathe it.
BUT in public, in the early days at least, he and
his family were content to wallow in the glow of Diana's phenomenal success.
And as a big sister, she was always generous towards him.
Arthur told a friend, lawyer John Mackay, that Diana would line up her brothers and sisters and other relatives backstage after a concert and hand them all white envelopes containing money. And by the time Arthur was a teenager, the Rosses had moved to the tree-lined Russell Woods neighbourhood. It was Diana's money that financed Arthur's school and university education.
As a 20-year-old student he was involved in a fracas with a policeman in Alabama, which ended with the officer firing a shot that whistled inches past Arthur's face. A high-powered lawyer, paid for by Diana, managed to get the charges dropped.
There was a short stint as a high school teacher, and then it was Diana again who opened doors at Motown to get Arthur his own recording contract.
It was a path that was to lead Arthur to his downfall.
He thought he wasn't getting the respect he deserved from his peers. He began feuding with Diana. He accused Marvin Gaye of stealing his music. Then he fell out with Motown and Diana sided with her record label against her brother. His friend Ajene said: `He loved to play the big man, telling strangers, `You don't know who I am.' But then Arthur would as easily bore friends with the complaint, `Nobody does actually know who I am. To everyone, I am just Diana Ross's brother'.'
In the end, after Diana had `given up' on her brother, his absence was obviously still a loss to her. At the lavish family dinners laid on by the star at her multi-million pound Connecticut mansion, Arthur was always absent.
He seems to have had one last hope - for a while it appeared to Diana and the rest of the family that Arthur's second wife, Patricia, 54, whom he married 10 months ago in Las Vegas, could halt the tailspin. She was very different from the younger women he usually dallied with.
THE day after his body was found, Arthur had been
due in court on drug and gun charges. Detectives had picked him up in his car with bags of heroin, cocaine and marijuana and a loaded 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. Arthur told officers he was intending to trade the drugs for sex at a party.
He was also in town to pick up a royalty cheque. One theory is that the couple were robbed of the royalties and then choked to death by the thieves.
No one knows what they were doing in the house in the rundown Oak Park district where they were found, and nobody reported them missing.
The tenants who rented the dilapidated home, Ricky Brooks, 44, who has a criminal record for armed robbery, theft and burglary, and Regina Smith, 36, are both still being hunted by police.
Now full of grief, Diana has personally called the incident room to check on the progress of the inquiry. She has hired O. J. Simpson's lawyer Robert Shapiro to liaise with the murder squad and now the family has put up a [pounds sterling]20,000 reward for information about his death.
She had earlier warned her family she was afraid her appearance would turn last Monday's ceremony into a media circus. Arthur would still have been in her shadow at his own funeral.
And that, she knew, would posthumously inflict a cruel irony on the brother who lived his life in a self-destructive jealous rage over her enormous success. `I couldn't do that to little T-Bone, could I,' she told them.
Just when I thought it was . . .
safe to come back to the Forum along comes this old garbage. T Boy passed away in 1996.
Can we move on people and talk about the music. These kind of posts are just tired.
