Any details? Link? Bonus tracks?
Last edited by blueskies; 05-13-2014 at 12:48 PM.
Yes, I will be purchasing. I do love my physical product!
Me, too.....Mary!
I love everything about this LP, especially the cover photo. Does anyone else think that Scherrie and Cindy could be twins? I wonder where the photo was taken?
isn't this the same as the TITS CD set but it's getting a single release
Thanks for verifying that BayouMotownMan! I thought maybe he was right on this one....but....wasn't completely sure.
A broken clock is correct twice a day.
i always thought she didnt move into that house til 1976
Scherrie Payne is having a good year! First "Partners" is released on CD, now "The Supremes"; her first LP with the group.
My favorite track from this album [[and definitely one of my Top 10 Supremes songs) is "It's All Been Said Before". How Motown didn't release this as a single is beyond me. Perfection from start to finish.
Here's another video of "IABSB". I just like looking at the pictures. What a great line-up of Supremes.
she was still in the hollywood hills in 74. she sold that house and the houses in detroit to get the hancock park house later on
I've always loooved IABSB. Definitely should have been a single. Scherrie's vocals are flawless, and so are the backups and the instrumentation.
Relatively obscure cover by Donny and Marie. Not up to the caliber of the Supremes, but still interesting.
Pointless release... it's just been made available on the Let Yourself Go box set not too long ago.
How's about releasing something that's NOT recently re-issued instead??
Ive never" got "Its All Been Said Before. Sounds just frenzied and unmelodic to me. He's My Man was exciting Motown music to me. Should have been a smash.
I agree. Sounded just straight through bland, rushed. "He's My Man" was the correct song for the first single and had Motown did anything to promote it, it would have charted much higher on the hot 100. The record is just about as perfect [[for that time) as anyone could get.
This still so darn good! LOL! Only thing is that it should have been released in the Spring of 1975 rather than late Summer.
i think you have your stories mixed up. her house wasnt owned by nat king cole. but was in the same neighborhood. it was more late 75 when she sold the hollywood hills home and the houses she owned in Detroit.
Evidently trade ads, touring, 5 TV appearances and a heavily serviced club mix that went to #1 is not promotion. Maybe if Mary hadn't kept The Supremes without a contract for two years and allowed 4 years to pass since their last top ten, they would have been more relevant and been played. It was over for them. Sadly, I love both of these songs, I can't even pick a favorite. Mary's vocal is very good, but, still an acquired taste - to many, her voice on these singles, is lifeless. Not radio friendly, which I believe is why she could get a record gig. Her ballads sparkle. I think the problem for both is that the production accentuates Scherrie's need to enunciate more clearly. For radio, you need to be able to hear clearly, easily and while distracted, all the lyrics. I would have released He's My Man first and It's All Been Said Before right after. I cannot fault Motown for the failure of these singles, they had every reason to want this album to hit as they were not exactly selling a lot of records in 1975.
This lame, over used, blame game on "promotion" is so old and silly. LOTS of factors go into making a record a hit. Greg Wright had no magic touch, as The Supremes has lost theirs - chart wise. It's hard to be objective, but, they weren't exactly on fire at the time. Not EVERY record associated with Mary would have been #1 with the right promotion. Most, maybe ; ) EVERY? Prolly not.
Last edited by supremester; 05-31-2014 at 08:33 PM.
They [[Motown) didn't promote that album or the single "He's My Man". I remember. I was around. They told us they were working on it. That it was coming out and when it did, it was like by surprise! LOL! Mary was in the midst of one of her pregnancies and was not that much in the mood to fight .Then one day showed up on the Dinah Show performing it, but no radio play until sometime in August that year and then it was only once or twice......
This was one of the strongest groupings. They all looked good and sounded good. They appeared more like a group than that mess we had to endure called "Diana Ross & The Supremes"! I was soooooooo happy when that ended. The Supremes should had many more hits with Scherrie and Mary in the lead ,but Motown didn't promote them properly.
Not many people got the opportunity to hear this record when it was first released. Had Motown promoted radio play and gave it adequate distribution it would have been a sure fire hit, but that would have meant the Supremes would have to continue indefinitely,.
Last edited by marv2; 05-31-2014 at 09:17 PM.
Motown couldn't MAKE stations play it. With 75 singles being released per week, and 5 getting added to most playlists, what makes you think this would have hit? I learned about it from seeing the color ad on the cover of Billboard. It's a good record, but the group had been off too long with too many changes. Most Supremes fans had no connection with this yet, Motown could have easily ended The Supremes when Jean & Lynda left. The contract was up, and the public wasn't exactly demanding more. They could have just announced that "due to acrimony in the group and contractual disputes, The Supremes have broken up and will be going on in their separate ways. Motown wishes the best of luck to all former Supremes and will be releasing a 3 disc Deluxe Anthology early next year." if distributors didn't want to stock it, they couldn't be forced to. I don't believe there was any distribution issue at all. Many stores chose not to carry it perhaps because they got stuck with previous albums. Every store around here had it.
I'm all for The Supremes having hits but blaming Motown for every single failure is a little thilly, handsome.
Motown could have did it if they wanted to. They proved that if they did not want a record to succeed, that they knew how to make that happen too! That's why all the established artists were leaving the label in the 70's. They made Ewart the President of the record company/division and he was too old, too out of it to know what the public wanted at that time. They dropped the ball, they dropped artists and artists dropped Motown. "Bad Weather" was always the best example......pissed Stevie off so bad LOL!
i saw what u posted. i made a typo. i meant to say it wasnt his house that she brought.
they did resign in 74 but i dont fully blame mary for the 2 years lapse on the charts. i agree with you that their magic touch was gone but to be truthful their touch was fading after floy joy.
I'm not "Blaming Mary" per se', I'm just stating that, with a dearth of chart activity after Floy Joy, it was foolish to not get back on the charts ASAP just so she could claim the rights to the name Supremes. It wasn't hers to claim anyway. She should have had Ross, Flo & Barbara in on it as well - they had just as much right as she did. I digress. Motown book MSC all over TV and got the song out there as much as possible. One thing I've noticed on this site is that fans are so close to the music, that they lose objectivity about it's commercial prospects. I think it's absurd to suggest Motown was anti Supremes - especially in '75. There were no hits from Marvin, Stevie, Ross [["Sorry" failed to chart pop), Tempts, Eddie or Smokey in '75 - only Commodores & Love Machine [[Ross & Ruffin would hit late in the year.) By the release of He's My Man, Ross had become an international movie star, world wide smash hit records & concert draw plus collected American Music awards, Grammy nods and other international awards. The Success or failure of SMC had no bearing on her in the slightest. In order to keep cash flow and market share, Motown NEEDED The Supremes to succeed. It was simply too late. Like it was for Martha. Had Bless You come out on JMC or Ross, it would have hit huge. When it's over, it's over.
Mary didn't need those other women. She is the Supreme. She could have gotten any two female singers to join her and they would be the Supremes contracted to Motown [[no bogus Kaaren Raglands,etc. ) The album "The Supremes" was a very good album. Yeah Motown was foolish not to get the Supremes back on the charts as soon as possible once Mary revamped the group, but i believe Motown didn't want them on the charts. I think they wanted the group to disappear.
the problem for the post jean terrell supremes is, for me, by this third incarnation the supremes no longer had anything in common with the original brand. this high pitched model just doesn't work for me with the name supremes. i think after terrell quit they should have changed their name. they might have done better if people didn't realize that this group only had one original supreme and in the long history of the group that singer didn't do leads. the brand name had just drifted too far away ... and seemed like a whole new group. at this point, even me, a long time fan only knew wilson's name ...
Motown couldn't get the group back on the charts as they had no contract. That would have been a legal mess of epic proportions. The Supremes had to get signed and Mary held that up fighting for the name - which she had no right to as it turned out.
I know your love for Mary is fervent, but the fact is that every time there was a new member, the group lost fans. There are people who prefer Cindy over Flo, Jean over Miss ross, Lynda over Cindy etc - but, as a whole, the public could no longer identify with the group of strangers Motown was calling The Supremes du jour and they sold fewer albums, concert tix as they progressed. Mary and any two girls is The Supremes to you, so be it. Most would disagree. Even the RTL lineup has more cred than MSS.
they should have changed the name to a Supremes ish name like Supreme Experience or Team Supreme - that way there would be a freshness to the group while still claiming the legacy - instead of re-treads every year or two. I agree with THISOLDHEART: they were Supremes in name only and only a few fans remained to cling to them. ALL of the post ross Supremes had the talent to make it as a new group of some sort. Even Jean got sick of being asked about Miss Ross.
I agree with you 100%. The Supreme brand had an image and a particular sound that was deeply planted by the 60's era group. Scherrie and Susaye were both very talented and beautiful but it was not the Supremes as the public was willing to except them. I too believe that under another name or perhaps Mary as solo would have gone further. The 70's group was too vocally different from the 60's styling. It's not a bad thing, but music had changed and I feel it was time for the Supremes to R.I.P. The classic image ended after Jean. By now other female groups had taken hold like the sassy Love Unlimited or funky Labelle or The quirky Pointers sisters etc. These groups may not have sold as well but they captured the era perfectly. The glamor image that the Sups were holding on to was way over. This was the funky Disco 70's. If you notice most of the new Temps were very close vocally to their predecessors. If you want to keep the gowns and image then try to keep the sound! The group needed a new name and image. Ditch those heavy 60's beaded gowns for good. Vocally they could have competed with the Jones Girls but they always were compared to the 60's group which was a HUGE mistake. Plus those horrible 60's medleys didn't help at all. Again they should have ditched the iconic SUPREMES and recreated a new phenomenon! But I guess hindsight is 20/20
Last edited by soulballad; 06-01-2014 at 07:41 AM.
I don't know what you mean by "adequate" distribution. Motown had the gold standard of independent distribution. Their records were distributed by the strongest distributors in the country. In NYC, they were distributed by Alpha Dist. All Motown records were available to these distributors, including Supremes records. These distributors had more than enough of He's My Man, and they were bought by record shop buyers, the same buyers who sent them back to the distributors months later. The distributors then punched holes in them, and they wound up in the three for a dollar bins in record departments.
As for promoting radio play, they were advertised in Billboard, who's readership is geared to DJ's, programmers, record store buyers and others in the industry. They were also on the cover of Jet, Ebony and had featured articles in Soul Magazine.
Well, not all of them. The Supremes stayed even though Jean and Lynda wanted to leave and start with a new name. But now with the passage of time, we know that Mary depended desperately on the Supreme name for her career to continue.
Others survived with name changes. Jefferson Airplane, Chicago Transit Authority, even Prince who for a while was just a symbol.
Your hypothesis may be right. Motown got any other female singers to back Diana Ross and they were accepted as the Supremes on number one hits like Love Child and Someday We'll Be Together.
She was and is a bogus Supreme. Her only claim to fame is that she toured with Mary and was billed as a Supreme after Mary left the group to launch a solo career , but continued to bill herself as the Supremes.
After she revamped the Supremes and added Sherrie, did they even have a contract with Motown? Wasn't signing a contract being held up because of ownership of the name? I agree that "The Supremes" album was good. I do admit that I had to listen to it a few times to enjoy the entire album and accept the new group as The Supremes
Last edited by milven; 06-01-2014 at 09:49 AM. Reason: cutting toenails while typing <G>
No they did not have a Motown Recording contract initially upon adding Scherrie Payne to the group. This is why I blame Motown for the gap in the groups chart history. Mary had replaced Jean Terrell and Linda Laurence almost immediately, but Motown was not recording Mary, Scherrie & Cindy.
But we do know that at one point Mary was willing to leave with Jean and Lynda until Motown told them they would have to leave the name "The Supremes" with Motown. That was the game changer. Had she been able to leave Motown and go to another label with the name "Supremes" like the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips etc, she would have left! Too much work, blood, sweat and tears went into building that name up and making it a popular World-wide brand to just leave it for others to benefit from it.
Sure others survived names changes but none had a name as well know as "The Supremes". Ask Prince how well his records sold when he changed his name. Then ask him how many people ignored his request and continued to refer to him as "Prince"!
Adequate distribution means that I would not have to look for more than half a year only to find it in a gosh darned furniture store that just happened to sell some music with it's stereo consoles! Geez! You cannot defend Motown and their "practices" at that time. Too many people like myself were around at the time and knew the deal was.
You blame Motown out of one side of your mouth yet call the 70's Supremes the most successful girl group of the 1970's. Which is it Marvin? You are far too authoritarian on matters relating to the Supremes, Berry Gordy and Motown Records for your own good. Your constant interfering and speculation in all Supremes related matters may be an excuse, so that you can keep busy and forget about the emptiness inside yourself. In this is case you could very well be using all this second, third or ninth hand information you share here to inflate your own self importance and fulfill your own emptiness.
The road to happiness and inner peace is through how we help and promote the causes of others to bring harmony to our world. Tearing people down only achieves misery and loneliness.
I miss the old light-hearted and lively Marv that I used to giggle and jostle with over at the now defunct Supremes yahoo group.
CE
EXACTLY! Motown did little to nothing to support the Supremes staring in 1970 YET they reached some levels of success in spite of Motowns lack of attention. That was mostly due to their fans and they had plenty of them in the 70's.
I wonder if making movies really was all that in the end.
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