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  1. #101
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    Quote Originally Posted by sup_fan View Post
    isn't gordy still listed as Executive Producer for The Boss? clearly that was mostly just a title rather than actually partnering with the team on the content. and maybe that was the link for bringing them back into the motown studios. sort of like the Hollands with the Supremes.

    diana was hot as hell with her 76 album and Hangover. the problem is motown bungled any solid follow up. One Love is probably the next best dance track on the album but it pales compared to LH.

    then in 77 she went on and did BIM. this is a glorious album but out of place, timing-wise. it was released in fall of 77 just prior to Saturday Night Fever and the total explosion of DISCO across the US. the content on BIM is too pop and lightweight to compete with the heavy dance songs like Stayin Alive and the others. had it been a year earlier or a couple years later, i think it would have been huge.

    and in 78 she did Ross with some disco tunes but none truly massive ones, along the lines of LH.

    So by 79, she was no longer really hot in the discos. back to back lp disappointments plus the Wiz debacle. i could see people in the motown offices saying "WTF - we need a surefire hit on DR." Michael Masser was all about lush ballads so he wasn't the answer. so who else had had massive hits with DR? A&S. plus they'd had a lot of recent successes themselves.
    As i posted, i’m almost certain it was Diana herself who approached Nile and Bernard to write and produce the “diana” album for her.
    As regards ”The Boss”, i guess we can only speculate. One can imagine Diana’s anger that Motown would follow a flop film with a dud of an album. It’s more then possible that being friends with A&S it was she who suggested teaming up again. Who knows?.
    I do find it hard to believe at that crucial point in her career, and after the disaster of “Ross” she would have left the decision making entirely to the company.

  2. #102
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    Ross moving to New York might also have been a reason to reach out to producers who were working in the same city. Both The Boss and diana fit the whole "I'm now an independent woman living in Manhattan" vibe that was surrounding Diana Ross at the time: https://people.com/archive/cover-sto...z-vol-11-no-2/

  3. #103
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    Quote Originally Posted by sup_fan View Post
    isn't gordy still listed as Executive Producer for The Boss? clearly that was mostly just a title rather than actually partnering with the team on the content. and maybe that was the link for bringing them back into the motown studios. sort of like the Hollands with the Supremes.
    Berry had "Executive Producer" on all Diana albums from LADY SINGS THE BLUES through AN EVENING WITH DIANA ROSS. BABY IT'S ME carried no executive producer credit but a "Special Thanks" to Berry and Suzanne dePasse.

    ROSS [1978] was Diana's last album to have an "Executive Producer" credit for Berry.

    From what I recall reading in J. Randy's books, THE BOSS was the first album that Berry had little or nothing to do with. Randy also wrote that the promotion for THE BOSS might have been half-hearted as some of the Motown staff resented Diana's growing independence around this time, with her starting her own company and such.

  4. #104
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    Quote Originally Posted by reese View Post
    Berry had "Executive Producer" on all Diana albums from LADY SINGS THE BLUES through AN EVENING WITH DIANA ROSS. BABY IT'S ME carried no executive producer credit but a "Special Thanks" to Berry and Suzanne dePasse.

    ROSS [1978] was Diana's last album to have an "Executive Producer" credit for Berry.

    From what I recall reading in J. Randy's books, THE BOSS was the first album that Berry had little or nothing to do with. Randy also wrote that the promotion for THE BOSS might have been half-hearted as some of the Motown staff resented Diana's growing independence around this time, with her starting her own company and such.
    Randy mentions that Motown would make efforts to promote “The Boss” when Diana was around but curtailed it’s efforts when she was absent, being probably on the road.
    A controlling attitude that Diana certainly inherited from BG.
    It would be intriguing to know just what his final offer was to keep her with the company regarding creative control as opposed to monetary.

  5. #105
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    I don’t believe everything in Randy’s books, as you know a lot of the crap that he made up in the first one got added it out of the second one when they were proven to be untrue. There’s nothing wrong with an artist wanting to have some control over their career, if the folks at Motown didn’t like that she was wise to leave. I don’t believe it though because for an album with one single that barely scraped it to the top 20, it sold extremely well. Motown issued promo 12 inch singles on no one gets the prize, it’s my house , and the boss. Motown had very little to do with the chic album in the car well it did. Makes for a good story perhaps but I don’t believe it, unless somebody who was there told the story. JRT is not exactly a slave to the truth … he wanted to sell books And when he saw all the nonsense that Mary was able to perpetuate into dollars, I think he decided to do the same thing. At least he admitted some of his information was incorrect when it was proven to be incorrect, Mary never addressed it.

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