Berry, to Mary

**sup_fan** · 11-01-2022, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by TheMotownManiac

She knew Tom was married, she was doing him in his wife’s bed! Mary was nuts about the guy and quite swept away with his charms. She would marry man who would cheat on her all the time, let’s face it: guys want to, they’re going to put it someplace.

and regardless of how many boyfriends she had on the road, if that’s how she coped with the intense pressures they were under, it’s a lot healthier than the way Florence and Diana dealt with it. Mary loved men and absolutely saw no reason to hide it. She loved to have a good time, and she did.

and, I agree with spreadinglove in that Mary’s accessibility to the fans served her in great stead over the years, as well as the fans. Everybody won. I understand the point he was trying to make and it worked for Ross. Mary made deep, lasting,loving relationships with some fans that lasted her lifetime. This was beneficial to the group and Berry should not have tried to make mary into something she wasn’t.

your last phrase is pretty much the key to the whole problem

berry saw one and only one path to success. and it was outlined in the path he and diana came up with together. when they started out, yes pretty much all black music was relegated to the chitlin circuit. but, much in part to their success, that changed by the later 60s and definitely into the 70s. black singers didn't have to only sing Lady Is A Tramp to be successful. and frankly the whole cabaret/dinner club concept was dying by the early 70s.

so you could still build DR up as the DR Star. but had M and F been given some amounts of creativity and success, had had some amount of effort invested in developing them, the entire situation could have been radically different. same with Martha, Gladys and others.

IMO I think martha found her sound with the MCA record. that combination of rock and r&b was brilliant and fit her voice perfectly. whereas Gladys was more of a traditional r&b singer and Diana was more pop. I think much of the later 60s material for MRATV is pretty atrocious and that wild vibrato that Martha developed wasn't a good sound. Richard Perry seems to have tamed that vibrato a bit, although it was definitely less pronounced on Black Magic too