DRATS & Temps Enhanced from Sullivan

[blackguy69]

Its her book so what were you expecting? As far as the studio. That can be a positive and a negative. It would show she will work hard but on the flip side it shows that they wouldn’t be bothered having Mary and Flo coming into the studio.

but it's very one-sided. Mary doesn't acknowledge any idiot things she did as a teen. and her books fails to highlight the many positive things Diana did to accelerate the group's career. That Diana was willing to do spend MUCH more time in the studio than mary or flo, that diana worked tirelessly to perfect her components of the stage show, etc.

yet every little slight diana committed to mary, flo and/or cindy seems to be present in the books

[RanRan79]

Its her book so what were you expecting? As far as the studio. That can be a positive and a negative. It would show she will work hard but on the flip side it shows that they wouldn’t be bothered having Mary and Flo coming into the studio.

Yeah it's her book, so I think somebody like me was expecting her to write about, oh I don't know, herself.

I do agree about the studio. I don't think Diana was willing to spend any more time in the studio than Flo or Mary. The producers decided who they wanted to sing lead and they recorded the lead singer. Sure, most of the time they wanted the actual Supremes to sing backup, and apparently that's what they got. But one has to wonder how demoralizing it was when Flo and/or Mary would discover they weren't on a track, for whatever reason. [[And yet still being charged for the studio time.) I can imagine at a certain point there wasn't always an incentive to do as they were told. Can you imagine how Diana's work ethic might have suffered if she started finding out her leads were replaced with Flo or Mary? Yikes.

Even the Christmas album debacle is a bit strange. Diana says she recorded the album all by herself while Flo and Mary went on a break, but Flo and Mary recorded leads for the album during the same time Diana was laying down leads, so something doesn't make sense.

[sup_fan]

Yeah it's her book, so I think somebody like me was expecting her to write about, oh I don't know, herself.

I do agree about the studio. I don't think Diana was willing to spend any more time in the studio than Flo or Mary. The producers decided who they wanted to sing lead and they recorded the lead singer. Sure, most of the time they wanted the actual Supremes to sing backup, and apparently that's what they got. But one has to wonder how demoralizing it was when Flo and/or Mary would discover they weren't on a track, for whatever reason. [[And yet still being charged for the studio time.) I can imagine at a certain point there wasn't always an incentive to do as they were told. Can you imagine how Diana's work ethic might have suffered if she started finding out her leads were replaced with Flo or Mary? Yikes.

Even the Christmas album debacle is a bit strange. Diana says she recorded the album all by herself while Flo and Mary went on a break, but Flo and Mary recorded leads for the album during the same time Diana was laying down leads, so something doesn't make sense.

in my timeline work, i've listed out the session dates for the Xmas lp. It isn't as if the girls dedicated weeks and weeks to rehearsal, studio time, experimentation. it really was a factory assembly line. when their part was needed, they got into the studio. that was it. because everything was recorded separately, it seems they would have blocks of time for lead vocals and blocks for background. plus all of the other musicians. i doubt the producers often had the entire band and orchestra all there. they'd record the funk bros, then set time to record strings, then start layering it all together, then decide they needed more strings or revised backing vocals or a harmonica or more ooomph on the percussion, or whatever. so all of these would have had separate recording times

then add in all of the different producers - HDH, mickey stevenson, smokey, norman, clarence paul, berry and many many others.

an act or two would be off the road and available. obviously that had to take precedent for recording session prioritization. get diana or martha or levi or whomever into that studio and crank out as much stuff as you can. then all of those others i just mentioned had to be scheduled around that. I think that's why the A's were used on the Supremes stuff. given the volume of content being recorded, there's just no way to manage that PLUS all of the public appearances and performances.