[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.When they returned, at Gordy s instruction, with an originalsong called  Please Mr.Postman, his ears perked up, and he sent theminto the studio with Brian Holland and Robert Bateman.By then, it hadmany fathers; originally co-written by the group s Georgia Dobbins anda friend, at Motown it acquired no fewer than three more co-writersHolland, Bateman, and real-life postman Freddie Gorman, all of whomearned royalties.At the session, when Benny Benjamin didn t show,Marvin Gaye played drums, laying down a spontaneous shuffle back-beat.And with Gladys Horton s lead vocal beseeching a mailman to deliver the letter the sooner the better and its catchy  Wait a minute,wait a minute hook, it would catch the early wave of homesick blues asthe Vietnam War escalated and girls pined for just such missives.The Supremes or, rather, one of them earned an assist, too.Upon meeting the Marvelettes, as Gordy had renamed the Casingyettes,moments before they went in for their vocals, Ballard and Wilson sizedup the new girls, not entirely favorably. We were jealous of [them] en-croaching on our territory, Wilson would recall.But an altruistic Flo,upon hearing their first takes, couldn t help but offer a few suggestionswhen the Marvelettes took five. Understand, says the Marvelettes Katherine Anderson,  we dnever even been in a studio before.We d only sang in choirs or gleeclubs.It was our own song and we didn t know how to sing it.Lead singer Gladys Horton adds:  Florence came over and said shehad a few ideas that would make the song sound more loose andhomey.We were all tight petrified and Florence was a sweetheart,and what she said was dead on.0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 93SMOKEY PLACES 93That included having Horton draw out the word  postman andhaving the group pepper the background with  oh yeahs. All these ele-ments built Gordy his dream vehicle, not just any Cadillac but a fullyoperational crossover chart-topper.Released exactly a month after theabortive  Buttered Popcorn, fourteen weeks later it was sitting in the topslots of both the pop and R&B charts, clearing over a million records,at least according to Gordy.In the wake of  Mr.Postman, distributors who had to be per-suaded to take Motown product in the slump period following  ShopAround now begged for it.In turn, Gordy had Ales drive a hard bar-gain: Distributors would get no Motown hot wax unless they paid everycent held back in the past for  expenses  a most ironic and duplicitousdemand, given how Gordy stiffed his own talent using the same dodgeand promised to pay every cent that would be earned by future records.And meanwhile, back on the Supremes front, there was mostlyempty space.Not only had they been overtaken by the Marvelettes butthey weren t even running second among the girls overall.In fact, MaryWells had been the first individual singer to break out, when the songshe d penned,  Bye Bye Baby, hit No.8 R&B and No.45 pop late in1960, followed in 1961 by  I Don t Want to Take a Chance, which hitNo.9 R&B and No.33 pop.Smokey Robinson then wrote and pro-duced  The One Who Really Loves You for her, and it exploded toNos.2 and 8 (the first Top Ten pop song on the Motown label), kickingoff a string of bright, bouncy collaborations between the two, withWells s fey, feline voice a near-copy of Smokey s and the songs mirrorsof his dreamy pop confections with the Miracles.The Supremes did well by merely staying in the game, when the al-ternative might have meant withering apathy from Gordy.For this,they had Ross s gall to thank.At 17 and still working toward her highschool graduation in January 1962, she had nonetheless won a reputa-tion as an intolerable harpy among the women folk of Motown.Feign-ing friendliness for the sake of  family comity while passing cattyremarks about the female competition, she was especially competitivewhen the Marvelettes shot to the top of the charts.While the rest of thecompany, including Wilson and Ballard, delighted in their sudden suc-cess, Ross turned up her nose in disdain. Diane was so jealous, you could smell the jealousy, says Mar-velette Katherine Anderson. Florence and Mary were happy for us, soit wasn t like it was them against us.When we first met them, Florencetook to us right away.And Mary was, well, Mary; she was always verynice.But Diane was standoffish.She felt we were a threat.And they0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 9494 THE SUPREMESwere nobodies like us, but Diane felt like they were the first girl-groupat Motown so they deserved to have the first hit.To her, the Mar-velettes were like dirt, little ninnies from Inkster, and she was MissSophistication and she was from the projects! The thing I remember about her was what we called  the look, the Diane look. She used to have this look on her face, like a scowl.Evenwhen she was acting all buddy-buddy, she d be scowling at you.Our at-titude was, we don t really care whatever your problem was.We d justlaugh at her and walk away saying,  Is she for real? Ross s attitude would worsen.In the spring of 1962, when the Mar-velettes were to go out on tour to promote their first album, one of thegirls, Wanda Young, had to miss the tour because she was about to havea baby.Because their contract with promoters required that there be afull contingent of five Marvelettes on stage, the group proposed thatthe Supreme who had been so helpful to them be Young s stand-in.FloBallard agreed, and Gordy signed off on it.As Ballard saw it, doing so was perfectly in keeping with the com-munal, all-for-one, one-for-all spirit of Motown, and of mutual benefitto both groups. She went with us to help us out but also to experiencelife on the road on a big tour, said the Marvelettes lead singer, GladysHorton.But to Diane and, to a lesser degree, Mary, she was less D Artag-nan than Mata Hari.Ross kept the Motown crowd entertained for dayswith melodramatic diatribes when Flo came to Motown not for Supremesbusiness but to rehearse with the Marvelettes. If she wants to be a Marvelette, she would say,  then she shouldbe a goddamn Marvelette for all I care.Mary, not given to such garish scenes, quietly brooded that Ballardwas  our sister, not theirs, but, as always, she capitulated to decisions be-yond her control after Flo explained that she had no disloyalty and noagenda.In fact, she had a hidden agenda, but that had nothing to dowith group matters: She was sweet at the time on the Marvelettes roadmanager Joe Schaffner, who was spending a lot of time with KatherineAnderson; Flo didn t mind a bit that she d be making time for herselfwith Schaffner.In fact, when Esther Gordy Edwards, who would accom-pany them on the tour as a chaperone at her brother s request, forewarnedthe four actual Marvelettes that there d be no time for fraternizing andthey d have to stay in their rooms and do their high school homework,Flo figured that being a dropout had a definite upside.As for Ross s objections, Flo and her new temporary mates jokedthat Diane was so out of joint only because she hadn t been the one0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:06 AM Page 95SMOKEY PLACES 95asked to sing on a major tour.Indeed, the loyalty issue would not beone Diane Ross reminded anyone else of down the road.The Marvelettes-plus-one-Supreme tour, with stops in Washing-ton, D.C [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]