The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal by Mark Ribowsky

Melvin Franklin during some of those backstage group gropes, though the most serious pairing was Flo and Otis Williams.
    “We had,” Williams confided, “an instant affection for each other.
    Flo was a few years younger than me, which could’ve been trouble, you know, for me. But I couldn’t help but spend time with her. Flo had a lot of sexual energy, but she had to really trust you first. We spent a lot of time talking about life before we ever did stuff. It was more than sex; we loved and respected each other.”
    The most significant change during the early months of 1960 was in Diane Ross. Her confidence, tempered after being rejected by the Cass High School sorority, got a lift when they reconsidered and accepted her after all. The reversal came after she had refused to take no for an answer and threw herself into a plethora of school activities to impress them. It wasn’t so much that she got them to like her much better; they may even have been the same as when, originally, as Wilson observed,
    “she brought out the worst in those girls.” Rather, she simply overwhelmed them with her obvious qualifications and tenacious resolve, or else they were just tired of her bugging them.
    That attitude was no different when it came to the Primettes. In all group matters, Wilson ventured, Ross “was certain that she knew everything, and no matter what everyone else did . . . Diane would comment on it.” She almost always got her way. On fashion and cosmetic issues, her word was inviolate.
    “Personal style,” she would tell Mary and Flo, sounding trés sophisticated, “is a real important expression of self.”
    “Self,” evidently, was far more important to Ross than to her three mates. While throwing her weight (as sparse as it was) around was a constant with the Primettes, Wilson noted that Ross “didn’t seem to mind being away from us” as she went about polishing and refining her own rising star by taking weekend modeling classes. Years later, after Ross had proven her lone-wolf priorities beyond all doubt, she offered some rationalizations, writing in her autobiography Secrets of a Sparrow: 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 41
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    “Mary, Florence, and I were not true sisters. [We] started out as three strangers who were randomly placed together. . . . When difficulties arose, we did not have the kind of bond that automatically exists among family members.”
    If Ross’s plans, even in 1960, wandered beyond Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, the latter was still somewhat blinkered—assuming, naively to be sure, that she was inveterately the Primettes’ fulcrum. Her sassiness could always convey the image for outsiders. But she may not have noticed that Ross had curried Wilson for leverage; accordingly, the course they were following was being laid down by the girl Flo believed couldn’t sing her way out of a paper bag.
    But then Flo herself was providing a vacuum for Diane to fill.
    Falling behind in her final grades, she was ordered by Lurlee to quit the Primettes when school let out that spring. It took an impassioned plea from Diane and Mary for Lurlee to allow Flo to return after several days. Just in time, it turned out, for the Primettes to enjoy their first big break.
    In late June, they decided to enter the talent competition at the Detroit/
    Windsor International Freedom Festival, an annual jamboree that began the summer before to celebrate in early July both the American and the Canadian Independence Day, with events on both sides of the Detroit River culminating in a gigantic fireworks display. One event, the talent show, sponsored by some of the area’s radio stations, offered a venue for local amateur singers and bands to compete for a top prize of $15 and a bit of local publicity.
    While technically a professional act, the Primettes qualified because they’d never been paid a thin dime by Milton Jenkins. As putative amateurs, the girls again