Originally Posted by
sup_fan
I'd be very surprised if there were any serious discussions in 69 of Mary stepping in as the lead singer for the Supremes. I tend to ignore most interviews since who knows what the heck they'll say. often they're just trying to pull together a quick answer while on air.
according to mary's book, she didn't want the position as she felt she wasn't prepared to take it on.
another POV is the motown had never had any interest in Mary as a lead singer. during the very earliest sessions, she had only a couple vocals while Flo had quite a few. They seemed to pretty much just give her a token track on the specialty albums and that was it. There certainly wasn't any significant investment in studio time for her to trail things, experiment, test, etc. And she wasn't a "problem" like Flo.
As for the Lynda shows when Jean was ill, the musical charts were all written for a soprano lead line. You would have had to redo all of the vocals and that would have been out of the question. If you listen [[if you care to lol) to Mary's live shows that are on YouTube from that ill-fated South America tour in summer 77, during the choruses of the songs, she's singing her alto part. sure during the verses she's on lead but it makes for a rather confusing listen. her mic is the lead mic but she's often not singing the melody.
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