Supremes gold and platinum records per Billboard

[luke]

Gold-Stop in the Name of Love
Baby Love
Platinum-Im Gonna Make You Love Me
Someday We'll Be Together

Billboard Top Pop Hits published 2009 [[Joel Whitburn)

[jobeterob]

This is why they don't list Diana Ross in the quasi official list of artists with sales over 100 million records ~ because you need to have CERTIFIED sales for something like a third of your sales and Motown didn't certify much and nothing in its heyday. So Ross makes the "unofficial" list for sales of 100 million.

What I always found interesting about this little list that has been around for years is that it features Baby Love.

Baby Love is one of the songs that books like Randy's say didn't sell all that much. He says Where Did Our Love Go sold over 2 million and Baby Love was more like half a million; and thereafter, many people bought that line which I think is inaccurate.

[daviddh]

Randys facts were incorrect

[midnightman]

J. Randy's figures for the Supremes, Diana Ross and the Jackson 5 were off by a lot.

[BayouMotownMan]

Randy's facts were accurate insofar as sales figures in the 60s for Motown were horribly inaccurate. First of all, no agency audited Motown's sales figures until the 1980s. Secondly, for much of the 60s, distributors regularly ripped off record companies, especially the smaller ones. By 1966 Motown was gigantic so distributors had more respect if not fear.

[captainjames]

Has anyone asked Motown/Berry Gordy why he did not feel the need to certify the Supremes sales ??

[jobeterob]

Isn't the story that his company was "private", not a public company, no requirement to satisfy auditors and shareholders ~ so he kept it private.

Now it is far to late to verify anything.

Randy obviously loved Diana and he had much positive to say. But a lot of his information was from questionable sources, people that had an axe to grind, the dismissed, the less successful, the jealous ~ massive hearsay; and as I've said before, no Court would allow any of that type of evidence as credible.

[captainjames]

Definitely Private selling to the Public seeking public recognition.

[daviddh]

when STOP and BABY ....were certified gold along with some others , it was based on sales from 1976 forward and did not include record sales from the 60s as Motown claims that info was lost.? how does that kind of info get lost when they get their royalty checks every year??

[jobeterob]

when STOP and BABY ....were certified gold along with some others , it was based on sales from 1976 forward and did not include record sales from the 60s as Motown claims that info was lost.? how does that kind of info get lost when they get their royalty checks every year??

Berry sold Motown in 1986; who knows exacty what Universal got in the way of accounting records? Would they have even wanted them? I'm sure they only became liable for future royalties ~ nothing from the past.

You might keep accounting records for 10 years or so but I would bet you that little or nothing remains of anything regarding actual sales from the 60's or 70's from Motown. And so all those people who claim to "know", probably don't.

Ask Diana what she got for money or what she was told she sold; ask Mary Wilson what she got as a Supreme. Ask Berry who sold the most. None of them talk except Mary one said, perhaps loosely, that anything that reached #30 nationally sold a million.

[marv2]

Berry Gordy sold Motown in 1988 and it was not to Universal. He sold it to MCA & Boston Ventures reportedly for $ 61 million.

[jobeterob]

OK, but what I said is still accurate; they won't have any of Motown's accounting records and Berry probably doesn't have them anymore either.

So, Marv, which of the songs do you think sold the best? People seem to say it's Love Child and Someday We'll Be Together ~ some of the ones without Mary!

[bradsupremes]

There have been so many reports about what record sold how much, etc. but I think for how many hits they had, the exposure they had in the 60's and early 70's, and how their success even rivaled the Beatles; I would think it's safe to say the Supremes' record sales are far more than what we know them to be. In all honesty, I don't think anyone knows. Someone once said their sales were around 20 million while another said it was roughly 80 million. Wikipedia has it listed as 20 million, but I believe the true sales are greatly higher. If there was a way to know exactly how much they did sell then I wouldn't be surprised if it placed them at top as the best selling girl group beating the Spice Girls.

It makes you wonder if one of the reasons why Motown didn't certify the record sales of its artists was because of how much they would have to pay them. Mary Wilson once said when Diana left the group in 1970 the Supremes' total profit was $100,000. Clearly their profit was far more than that.

[jobeterob]

I agree with all of what Brad wrote. One of those others lines from Randy's book was Diana saying she could only lay her hands on a couple hundred thousand dollars when she left Motown which is why she took the $20 Million advance from RCA.

[midnightman]

Randy's facts were accurate insofar as sales figures in the 60s for Motown were horribly inaccurate. First of all, no agency audited Motown's sales figures until the 1980s. Secondly, for much of the 60s, distributors regularly ripped off record companies, especially the smaller ones. By 1966 Motown was gigantic so distributors had more respect if not fear.

That's easier said than done. Therefore I don't see how he was accurate.

[daviddh]

as I recall from an interview with BG, ...SOMEDAY,sold over 3 million and was the biggest seller at the time with WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO,LOVE CHILD,YOU CANT HURRY LOVEand STOP ,coming up closely behind.
over the years, with reissues,BABY LOVE,took the lead with over 4 million.
also I remember him stating LoveChild was the first single to crack 2 million in the USA alone and it became the biggest seller at that time as previous singles usually sold 1.5

[jobeterob]

David: Interesting interview. Now Berry was there, he has first hand knowledge and is to be believed. Would the interview be available anywhere?

[supremester]

I believe Baby Love to be their biggest seller - probably the biggest in Ross' career unless Endless Endlessness topped it. Baby Love was their biggest record impact wise - in the US and internationally. It was what made The Supremes. There were other important records, but not like this. I believe Baby Love sold over 3 million and might have hit 4 if the album hadn't come out and the follow up single rushed a month in advance. There is plently of chart comparisons to support this. My guess, in order of sales over 2 million:
Baby Love
Love Child
Where Did Our Love Go
Someday
You Can't Hurry Love
Come See About Me
I'm Gonna Make You Love Me
Stop!

I think, with a bevvy of accountants and historians, a case could be made to get a couple dozen certifications, but who is going to fund it? Does Miss Ross care? Berry? ......... doesn't look like it. Maybe Mary, Cindy, the producers or writers would like them.

[sup_fan]

part of the reason Motown didn't report the sales is that they wanted to control the PR. if a record was certified as selling only 400K, then it wasn't a gold record. motown ads, press releases, interviews, etc were notorious for over-stating the sales in order to make the story even better. if they were being audited, then those claims would have evaporated

[vgalindo]

part of the reason Motown didn't report the sales is that they wanted to control the PR. if a record was certified as selling only 400K, then it wasn't a gold record. motown ads, press releases, interviews, etc were notorious for over-stating the sales in order to make the story even better. if they were being audited, then those claims would have evaporated

This was done by a lot of the record companies. I don't believe this was unique only to Motown.

[jack020]

Her biggest selling single of all was the 1981 duet with Lionel Richie Endless Love. This was also the biggest selling record of the year in the US, platinum certified over 2m. [[Only #2 on Billboard's top 100 of 1981 because it was based on an inverted points system and not actual sales.)

[REDHOT]

I think the post was about The Supremes,not Diana Ross,the solo artist.

[supremester]

She was alone in the studio 99% of the time anyway and never knew who would wind up in the bg, so it's kind of a moot point.

[jobeterob]

An irony in this all is that many of the biggest hits of Diana Ross and or the Supremes are songs on which only Diana sang - of course, Endless Love, Touch Me In The Morning, Upside Down, Ain't No Mountain High Enough but also Love Child and Someday We'll be Together.

[florence]

when STOP and BABY ....were certified gold along with some others , it was based on sales from 1976 forward and did not include record sales from the 60s as Motown claims that info was lost.? how does that kind of info get lost when they get their royalty checks every year??

Where did you get this information from, daviddh?

Would Someday for example really have sold 1m after 1976? - I would find that hard to believe, but couldn't definitely say it didn't but it could also help to explain why there so few certifications.

We could talk around the Supremes' sales for ever and the sad fact is that we will just never know the true level.

We can all have our own theories - I really don't think apart from Someday which could have hit 2m any other of their singles were anywhere 2m let alone 3 or 4m [[I presume we are talking US sales alone?) BUt there is no hard fact to prove this one way or another. Based on it's chart performance in Cashbox in December 1966 Love Child would surely be a massive seller though.

What puzzles me about the Universal certifications in the late 90s is if they were based on sales right from date of release why would they have the documentation for The Temptations but not The Supremes. There were literally a couple of dozen for The Temps but again I would find it impossible to believe that all those sales could only have been post-1976.

The information might just be out there lying in some vaults in a Detroit courtroom. Wasn't there volumes of official Motown sales data [[all artists) produced to them at some Michael Jackson court case?

[daviddh]

there was an interview with BG on Motown 40???where he talked about some record sales and LOVE CHILD.