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

five-song set, Flo’s singing on the wild bass line was so intense that the crowd was “totally amazed.” Then, when Diane pealed a fluttery, high-pitched counterpoint, “the whole place just went crazy.” From that moment on, it could be said that the two polar, and nuclear, forces of the group—Ross and Ballard—were established, to the benefit of the group, but also that the two performers had embarked on a collision course.
    On that day, though, they all were winners, and richer for it by $15—at least for a little while. As self-appointed group “treasurer,” Mary stuck the cash in her pocket; later, after they changed clothes and went on some of the rides at the amusement park, she went to divvy it up but found her pocket empty. When she told the girls the money was gone, apparently taken by a pickpocket, Diane accused her of lying so she could keep the money for herself. Even at the time, it didn’t seem the best of omens that the first payday they ever had, they still got nothing.
    But it was Florence who committed a far more grievous sin after the show—or at least it could have been a sin had a decision she made stood. Assuming she was group leader, an enormously tall black man with a very deep voice approached her and introduced himself as Robert Bateman of the Motown company. At the time, Flo had strayed from the other Primettes, whom Bateman praised for their performance. Handing her a card with a phone number on it, he told Flo to call to set up a day and time for the group to come in and audition for his boss, Berry Gordy.
    That name resonated with Flo as it did with everyone else on the Detroit music scene, but not completely favorably. Word on the street was that while Gordy’s year-old Motown shop was happening, he had bled a lot of young, naive acts dry when the royalties were supposed to be paid—not that this was an uncommon occurrence in the music industry in general.
    “Berry Gordy?” she repeated. “Ain’t he the guy who cheats his artists?”
    Bateman, who no doubt had heard this before, didn’t flinch or withdraw the invitation. “This could be the biggest thing that ever happens to you,” he said, his deep voice almost grim. “Don’t blow it.” 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:05 AM Page 44
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    THE SUPREMES
    Flo, of course, always took such lecturing as an insult. Rather than hurry over to the other girls to tell them of the Motown entreaty, she narrowed her eyes at Robert Bateman as he walked away and then, believing she knew best, said nothing about it to the others. Indeed, Wilson has maintained stoutly that no one from Motown or any other record company spoke with anyone in the group that day. Bateman himself, however, contradicts that, saying he surely approached Florence Ballard.
    “Yeah, I discovered them at that festival, I loved ’em when I heard
    ’em,” he says. “I was the guy who brought them to Motown.” But Bateman’s own memory is a bit fuzzy in that he swears the meeting somehow happened after the Primettes had already been to see Gordy, plainly a chronology that makes no sense since, in that case, he could neither have discovered them nor brought them in.
    In fact, he didn’t bring them in. That came about only after Diane Ross reckoned it was high time to get the group signed to a recording contract, knowing exactly the man to broker that deal—the lean, pale-skinned singer she’d found so beguiling when she watched him rehearse with his group, back when Smokey Robinson was a nobody. Now, only two years later, he was a nobody no longer, and that really beguiled her, considering that in the interim Smokey’s group—renamed the Miracles—had become the most recognizable signature voice of Berry Gordy’s original label and up to then the only jewel in his crown, Tamla Records.
    Still in its incubation stage, the label and its parent company, Motown Inc., had no national pull and Gordy had to lease out many of its records to other,