Sorry Sup, I gotta add my two cents before getting back to the initial topic. BG makes an excellent point about Otis and Melvin. Otis gets a lot of credit for keeping the Tempts together, but he had Melvin with him for some 20 odd years after Eddie and Paul left. That's two original members making that thing work. Mary was a woman alone, and on top of that she was a woman period, which meant she was never going to get the respect that an Otis or Melvin was going to get from Motown or the business in general. The two situations are not comparable.

As far as Mary putting herself before the group...I need receipts. She says in her second book- and I believe her- that her confidence was still shaky even in the 1980s. Shaky confidence might allow a woman to dream of being Diana Ross, but shaky confidence will not allow a woman to attempt to be Diana Ross. Mary wanted more spotlight time as a Supreme, and who can blame her? She was smart enough to recognize that she had to look out for herself because clearly no one else was going to do it. But when is it documented that she demanded all the leads or most of the leads? Those last three albums are chocked full of Scherrie. And if Mary was all about self, why not jump ship when Motown basically gave her the finger when Jean and Lynda left? If she was that convinced she could be Diana Ross, why not go for it somewhere other than Motown [[which obviously already had THE Diana Ross and didn't need another one), rather than basically beg the company to get behind yet another grouping of Supremes and deal with that mess for the next few years?

I'm not convinced that Mary was ever going to be a superstar, but I figure I'm among the few dozen folks Maniac references as having a belief in Mary's talent. I think she had the goods to produce given the right material. I caution people to keep in mind that if not for the right material because of one man's obvious gut belief in Diana's abilities, we would not have had a Diana Ross. There's every reason to believe that if not for Gordy, had the Supremes either broken up before "Where Did Our Love Go" because of disillusionment or because Motown dropped them, Diana probably wouldn't have had much success anywhere else, and that's assuming that she could've gotten a foot in the door. I personally find it doubtful that pre "Where Did Our Love Go" Diana Ross could've walked into Stax, Atlantic, Columbia or any number of record companies and gotten signed. I'm not going to write Mary's talent off because she's not Diana Ross.