Mary Wilson Dead: Supremes co-founder was 76

Singer Mary Wilson, who co-founded the Supremes at the age of 15 in a housing project in Detroit and remained with the legendary successful trio Motown Records until its disbandment in 1977, died Monday night at her home in Las Vegas. She was 76 years old.

Longtime Wilson reporter Jay Schwartz reported that she died suddenly. The circumstances of his death were not immediately disclosed. Funeral services will be private due to COVID, he said, but there will be a public memorial later this year.

“I was extremely shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of an important member of the Motown family, Mary Wilson of the Supreme,” Berry Gordy said in a statement Monday evening. “The Supremes have always been known as the ‘Motown lovers’. Mary, along with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, arrived in Motown in the early 1960s. After an unprecedented streak of # 1 hits, TV and nightclub bookings, they opened doors for them- same, other Motown artists and many others. … I have always been proud of Mary. She was a true star in her own right and over the years she continued to work hard to strengthen the legacy of the Supremes. Mary Wilson was extremely special to me. She was a trailblazer, a diva and will be sorely missed.

Just two days before her death, Wilson posted a video on her YouTube channel announcing that she was working with Universal Music on the release of solo material, including the unreleased album “Red Hot” which she recorded in Les. 1970s with producer Gus Dudgeon. “Hopefully some of this comes out on my birthday, March 6,” she said in the video. She also promised upcoming interviews she had done on the Supremes’ experiences with segregation that she said would be coming in honor of Black History Month.

Wilson had been very visible in 2019, when she appeared on the 28th season of “Dancing With the Stars” and published “Supreme Glamor”, her fourth book.

Wilson had been preparing to spend part of the year joining in celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the Supremes, still the most iconic trio of singers of all time.

With lead singer Diana Ross and founding member Florence Ballard (and with Ballard stand-in Cindy Birdsong), Wilson appeared on the Supremes’ 12 No. 1 pop hits from 1964 to 1969; During that time, the act – the biggest of Motown’s vocal groups thanks to their silky sound – listed a total of 16 Top 10 pop singles and 19 of the top 10 R&B 45 (including six to top the charts ).

While Ross went on to become the group’s international superstar, and Ballard, who died prematurely at the age of 32 in 1976, came to be remembered as his tragic figure, Wilson was his constant, ubiquitous and outspoken driving force – though much consider it a little more. as a supplier of the backup hooks that supported Ross’s core work.

“They think I’m just an ‘ooh girl’,” Wilson said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1986.

After Ross left the group in 1970 for solo stardom, Wilson remained his linchpin and dutifully supported a succession of leading women. Although the Supremes never resumed their dominance of the ’60s, they still managed to collect a 1970 R&B # 1, “Stoned Love,” and returned to pop top 20 five times.

The image of the behind-the-scenes act of glamor and brotherhood that was carefully crafted by Motown was belied by Wilson’s scathing description of bandmate Ross in a 1986 blockbuster memoir, “Dreamgirl: My Life As a Supreme ”, the first revealing book by a member of the so-called“ Motown family ”.

In the book, Ross – mentioned explicitly throughout her birth name of Diane – was described as an attention-seeking diva who used her relationship with Motown founder and president Berry Gordy. , to get what she wanted professionally and personally.

Opening the book with an episode in which Ross literally shoved her on stage during a recording of the 1983 recording of NBC’s anniversary special “Motown 25,” Wilson wrote, with mixed emotion: does a lot of things to hurt, humiliate, and upset me, but, strangely enough, I’m still on her and proud of her.

Wilson, who released two solo albums and toured successfully with a solo act combining cabaret with renditions of her old hits, Supremes, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the group in 1988.

She was born on March 6, 1944 in Greenville, MS. After moving to St. Louis and then Chicago with her parents, she was sent at the age of three to live with her aunt and uncle in Detroit, and she grew up believing that she was their daughter. She didn’t learn who her real parents were until she was six, when her mother came to Detroit to live with the family. She moved with her mother on several occasions until she moved to the Brewster-Douglass housing project at age 12.

Wilson had previously briefly performed in a group led by Aretha Franklin’s younger sister Carolyn when she was approached by Ballard, a charismatic neighbor in the Brewster Projects, to form a new group that would serve as the ‘sister number’ of the Bonuses, a man. quintet which included Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks, both future members of the Temptations Motown unit.

The two girls were soon joined by Ross (who would only take the professional name of “Diana” after the group’s first hits). Along with fourth member Betty McGlown and her successor Barbara Martin, they would perform as the Primettes until they renamed themselves the Supremes in early 1961.

After unsuccessfully auditioning for rising Detroit label Motown, the band cut a pair of tracks for another local brand, LuPine; Wilson sang the lead role on the B-side single “Pretty Baby”, but, like Ballard, she was quickly moved in front by Ross. Eventually boarded Motown, they struggled to find their musical niche, recording songs (by Smokey Robinson and others) that languished in the charts or were in the vault. In 1963, the fourth member Martin left the unit.

The trio finally started to hit the dirt when the songwriting team of brothers Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier became their primary collaborators. After reaching No.2 on the R&B side with the writers “When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” in late 1963, the Supremes simultaneously rose to the top of the pop and R&B lists with the pied-à-terre “Where Did Our Love Go ”in the summer of 1964.

With Ross now installed as lead singer, the trio rivaled The Beatles for radio and chart ubiquity over the next three years. Their 1964-67 No. 1 pop included “Baby Love”, “Come See About Me”, “Stop! In the name of love ”,“ Back in my arms ”,“ I hear a symphony ”,“ You can’t hurry to love ”,“ You keep me hooked ”and“ Thoughts ”.

In mid-1967, the increasingly unreliable Flo Ballard ravaged by alcoholism, drug addiction and depression, was kicked out of the Supremes and replaced by Birdsong. Gordy – who already envisioned a career in Las Vegas, television and film for Ross, with whom he was now romantically involved – established his lover’s supremacy by renaming the group as Diana Ross & the Supremes this year.

The writing was really on the wall for the Supremes after Ross started recording as a soloist in 1968, and at the end of the following year it was announced that she would be leaving the group. The swan song from the act with its founding singer, “Some Day We We Together,” topped the pop and R&B charts in December 1969, and Ross was released after a very managed farewell show on stage. at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas in Las Vegas. January 1970. The single marked the act’s last visit to the top of the American pop charts.

The Vegas show featured Jean Terrell – the sister of heavyweight fighter Ernie Terrell, and a vocalist from his band The Knockouts – as the new lead vocalist for the Supremes. Surprisingly, Berry Gordy quickly tried to replace Terrell with Stevie Wonder’s wife, Syreeta Wright, but, according to the tart and obnoxious 2009 story of Mark Ribowsky’s band, Wilson stepped in; while Terrell stayed, the Supremes never appreciated the kind of budgets or promotion they had with Ross in the fold.

With Terrell in the lead, the Supremes maintained their momentum: beyond “Stoned Love”, they reached the top 10 in R&B with “River Deep, Mountain High”, “Nathan Jones” and “Floy Joy”. But Wilson remained the one constant in an ever-changing lineup after 1972, and by the end of the 1970s the trio were mired in light disco gear – some provided by the returning Holland-Dozier-Holland team.

The Supremes folded their tents with a farewell show in London in June 1977. Wilson’s eponymous solo LP for Motown (which Marvin Gaye had planned to produce before his divorce dispute with Gordy’s sister scuttled it) n ‘managed to scratch the national album chart, and her single single peaked at No.95.

With the exception of her appearance on the 83 Motown special, Wilson was little heard until her mind-boggling memoir was released. (She would go on to write two more books on the Supremes, in 1990 and 2019.) The title “Dreamgirl” was inspired by the 1981 hit Broadway musical, which the singer said was a largely accurate portrayal of uproar within the Supremes during Ross’ tenure.

Defending herself in a 1986 interview with Jet magazine against potential charges of serving sour grapes, she said, “I’m sure people will have their own opinion on this, but I don’t care. My main thing is that when I was in the group, I maintained my position and I did not take Diane’s place. I am no longer in the group now. I have my own position to defend and it is not in the background. “

An attempt to reunite Wilson with Ross and the other surviving members of the Supremes for a 2000 tour failed after a protracted and public dispute over Wilson’s fees for the trek.

Wilson’s album “Walk the Line” was released on the CEO label in 1992; she released a pair of live DVDs in the new millennium.

In 2015, she released what was to be her last single, “Time to Move On,” which reached No. 23 on the Billboard dance chart.

Her press secretary said she tried to get a US postage stamp for Ballard. Wilson’s activism included traveling to Washington, DC to lobby for the Music Modernization Act, which was passed in 2018.

She is survived by her daughter Turkessa and her grandchildren (Mia, Marcanthony, Marina); his son, Pedro Antonio Jr and his grandchildren (Isaiah, Ilah, Alexander, Alexandria). The two children are from her marriage to Dominican businessman and former Supremes manager Pedro Ferrer, from whom she divorced in 1981. In 1994, the couple’s 14-year-old son Rafael was killed and Wilson was injured when his Jeep rolled over on the road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Wilson is also survived by his sister Kathryn; his brother, Roosevelt; her adopted son / cousin Willie and her grandchildren (Erica (great-granddaughter, Lori), Vanessa, Angela).

In lieu of flowers, the family asked friends and fans to support UNCF.org and the Humpty Dumpty Institute.